Howie Klein, a veteran record executive, radio DJ and political activist who was a top executive in the Warner Bros. Records family during its golden era of the 1980s and early ‘90s, died Wednesday after a long battle with cancer, according to a social media post from his sister. He was 77.
Most notably, he was Seymour Stein’s no. 2 at Sire Records during the label’s peak era — a time when the label had everyone from the Smiths and Depeche Mode to Madonna and Lou Reed on its roster — and later was president of Warner’s Reprise label from 1989 to 2001. He was a strong and vocal presence in the music industry’s anti-censorship efforts in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s and focused on political activism in his later years.
Born in Brooklyn in 1948, Klein began his music career at Long Island’s Stony Brook University, where he began writing about music and later booked them to perform at the school: The formidable roster of acts he booked in the late 1960s includes the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Otis Redding, Pink Floyd, the Doors, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Tim Buckley, Jackson Browne, and many others. He spent several years traveling in Asia and Europe before settling in San Francisco in 1976. There, he became a popular DJ at the city’s KSAN and a vocal supporter of the then-nascent punk and alternative scenes, where he interviewed such acts as the Sex Pistols, Devo, Iggy Pop, the Cramps and others. In 1978, he co-founded the San Francisco-based 415 Records, which released singles and albums by Romeo Void, Wire Train, the Nuns, Translator and others, several of which were distributed by major labels.
Klein moved to Los Angeles to join Sire Records in 1987, which was then at the peak of its reign as a mecca of alternative music.
more to come…
variety.com
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