Seymour Stein (born 1942 in Brooklyn, New York) is an entrepreneur in the music industry who has been a part of the business since getting his first job as a clerk for Billboard magazine in 1958. Stein is a vice president of Warner Bros. Records and a co-founder of Sire Records.

In 1966 Stein and record producer Richard Gottehrer founded Sire Productions, which led to the formation of Sire Records, the label under which he signed pioneer artists such as the Ramones and Talking Heads in 1975, the Pretenders in 1980 and Madonna in 1982. Other acts signed by Sire include Depeche Mode, The Smiths, Ice-T, The Undertones and Echo & the Bunnymen.

Such was Stein's influence in signing and promoting the "New Wave" genre of music that he is sometimes credited with coming up with the name as an alternative to the term "punk", which he found derogative. The term had previously been used to refer to the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s.

To date, Stein remains the President of Sire Records and is also Vice President of Warner Bros. Records with which he has had a marketing and distribution deal from 1976 to 1994 and again since April 2003. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 14, 2005, under the lifetime-achievement category.

Stevie Jackson (born 16 January 1969, Glasgow, Scotland) is a Scottish musician and songwriter. He plays lead guitar and sings in the Glasgow based indie band Belle & Sebastian. Jackson's guitar playing is distinctively retrogressive and melodic, with a heavy use of reverb and minimal effects.^{[citation needed]} He has, in the past, been nicknamed 'Reverb' or 'Stevie Reverb' due to his use of the said effect.

Prior to joining the group, Jackson was a member of the now-defunct The Moondials, a band that released a single on Electric Honey, a label that would later issue Belle & Sebastian's first album, Tigermilk. The Moondials experience was a pleasant one for Jackson, and it took a great deal of work for nominal Belle & Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch to convince him to join his group. At the time, Murdoch was playing the open mic circuit in Glasgow as a solo act, and it was at one of these performances, at The Halt Bar, that Jackson first saw Murdoch play.

In the beginning, the band existed mostly as an outlet for Murdoch's songwriting. Since the band's third album, The Boy With The Arab Strap, other members have begun to contribute, Jackson chief amongst them. All of the band's subsequent full-lengths have featured compositions by Jackson, and he wrote the band's 2001 single "Jonathan David" as well as "To Be Myself Completely" for 2006's The Life Pursuit. His songs are noticeably different from Murdoch's compositions. They tend to be shorter and less introspective, opting for catchy 1960s-style pop more often than the folky melancholia that defined Belle & Sebastian's early releases.^{[citation needed]}

"The Man" is a slang phrase that may refer to the government or to some other authority in a position of power. In addition to this derogatory connotation, it may also serve as a term of respect and praise.

The phrase "the Man is keeping me down" is commonly used to describe oppression. The phrase "stick it to the Man" encourages resistance to authority, and essentially means "fight back" or "resist", either openly or via sabotage.

The earliest recorded use^{[citation needed]} of the term "the Man" in the American sense dates back to a letter written by a young Alexander Hamilton in September 1772, when he was 15. In a letter to his father James Hamilton, published in the Royal Dutch-American Gazette, he described the response of the Dutch governor of St. Croix to a hurricane that raked that island on August 31, 1772. "Our General has issued several very salutary and humane regulations and both in his publick and private measures, has shewn himself the Man." ^{[dubious – discuss]} In the Southern U.S. states, the phrase came to be applied to any man or any group in a position of authority, or to authority in the abstract. From about the 1950s the phrase was also an underworld code word for police, the warden of a prison or other law enforcement or penal authorities.

Don Kirshner (April 17, 1934 - January 17, 2011), known as "The Man With the Golden Ear", was an American song publisher and rock producer who is best known for managing songwriting talent as well as successful pop groups, such as The Monkees, Kansas and The Archies.

Don Kirshner was born to Gilbert Kirshner,^{[citation needed]} a tailor, and Belle Jaffe^{[citation needed]}, in The Bronx, New York. He attended the Bronx High School of Science (classmate of Bobby Darin), and Upsala College in East Orange, New Jersey.

Kirshner achieved his first major success in the late 1950s and early 1960s as co-owner of the influential New York-based publishing company Aldon Music with partner Al Nevins, which had under contract at various times several of the most important songwriters of the so-called "Brill Building" school, including Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Neil Sedaka, Neil Diamond, Paul Simon, Phil Spector, Howard Greenfield, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil and Jack Keller.

As a producer-promoter, Kirshner was influential in starting off the careers of singers and songwriters, including Bobby Darin, (with whom he collaborated on a number of advertising jingles and pop ditties, their first was called "Bubblegum Pop"),Neil Diamond, Carole King, and Sarah Dash of Labelle, as well as discovering the occasional rock act such as Kansas.

Richard Gottehrer is an American songwriter, record producer and record label executive. In 1997, he co-founded The Orchard, an independent music and video distribution company, with long-time partner Scott Cohen.

His career began as a Brill Building songwriter in the 1960s. His first #1 record as a songwriter and producer was "My Boyfriend's Back" followed by other hits like “Hang On Sloopy” and "I Want Candy," eventually leading to the formation of Sire Records in 1966 with Seymour Stein. His career continued as producer for acts such as Blondie, The Go-Go's, Dr. Feelgood, Richard Hell, and the path eventually led him to Orchard Street in 1997.

Richard Gottehrer was born in The Bronx in 1940 and graduated from Taft High School. He pursued a B.A. in History at Adelphi University, and spent one year at Brooklyn Law School before leaving to pursue a career in the music business.

Gottehrer came to prominence as a songwriter in the 1960s with his most notable songs being "My Boyfriend's Back" and "I Want Candy". As Feldman-Goldstein-Gottehrer (FGG Productions), he wrote various songs including "Sorrow" with Jerry Goldstein and Bob Feldman. The three were also known as The Strangeloves.