American music producer Seymour Stein was BOTD in 1942. Born Seymour Steinbigle in Brooklyn, New York City to a working-class Jewish family, he talked his way into an internship at magazine Billboard when he was 13. After graduating from high school, he joined the staff of Billboard, helping develop the Billboard Top 100. He moved to Cincinnati when he was 17 to work for King Records. He returned to New York in 1963, working for record producers Herb Abramson and George Goldner, before founding his own music label Sire Records in 1966, later purchased by Warner Bros. Records. After regrettably turning down the opportunity to represent Jimi Hendrix, he went on to sign some of the biggest pop acts of the 1970s and 80s, including The Ramones, Talking Heads, The Pretenders and Ice-T, and helped re-ignite the careers of Brian Wilson and Lou Reed. He famously signed the then-unknown Madonna from his hospital bed in 1982, before undergoing heart surgery. A dedicated Anglophile, he also launched the international careers of British New Wave and electronica acts Depeche Mode, The Smiths, The Cure, Echo & the Bunnymen, My Bloody Valentine, Soft Cell, Aphex Twin and Everything But the Girl. In 1983 he helped found the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, into which he was inducted in 2005. Stein remained at Warner Records until his retirement in 2018. Stein was married to Linda Stein, whom he met while she was managing The Ramones, and whom he credited with discovering many of his key clients. They had two children together, divorcing in the late 1970s but continued working together until her death in 2007. Stein publicly came out as gay in 2017. In his 2018 memoir Siren Song: My Life in Music, he described his attraction to men and the gay subculture that permeated the music world. He died in 2023, aged 80.