In 1982, Seymour Stein wound up in Lenox Hill Hospital with a heart infection. But he’d sent his Sire Records scout Mark Kamins out into the world to find new acts, and Kamins, a deejay, came up with Madonna.

In his must read book, “Siren Song,” Stein wrote about their first meeting — in his room at Lenox Hill.

He recalled:

By the time Madonna walked in with Mark Kamins that evening, I had been fully briefed and tidied up by a team of ladies. My hair was good, I no longer smelled like a French farm laborer, windows had been opened, piles of magazines and tapes had been neatly stacked. All that was missing was the pipe, the monocle, the book, and the beagle asleep at my feet. Of course, Madonna took one look at the tube stuck into my skin and squirmed. Not that she really cared about my predicament. She’d come to get a record deal before some old record guy croaked, along with his check-signing hand. She was all dolled up in cheap punky gear, the kind of club kid who looked absurdly out of place in a cardiac ward. She wasn’t even interested in hearing me explain how much I liked her demo. “The thing to do now,” she said, “is sign me to a record deal.” She then opened her arms and laughed. “Take me, I’m yours!”

She was goofing around doing a Lolita routine because I was twice her age. Or maybe I really was smiling back at her like a dirty old man, because she didn’t take long to cut through all the small talk and go straight for the kill. Peering into the back of my head with those Madonna eyes, she said, “And now, you give me the money.” “What?” I snapped back, which was unusual for me. As a rule, I’m always careful around artists, but Madonna had bigger balls than the four men in the room put together. “Look, just tell me what I have to do to get a fucking record deal in this town!” she hit back, sounding deflated. “Don’t worry, you’ve got a deal,” I assured her.

And with that exchange, we finally met each other on level ground. Madonna had a power over men, a power over everyone that I think she was too young to control or even realize. For obvious reasons, her magic didn’t work the same way on me, which I think was a good thing for us both. I doubt she knew I was gay, and all I knew about her was the tape I’d heard. I had no idea she was stone broke and secretly hoping to leave the hospital with a check.

The pair went on to have a string of hits through the 80s, from “Lucky Star” to “Vogue,” making Madonna rich beyond even her wildest dreams. It was all due to Seymour Stein.

I am very sorry to report the death at age 80 of my friend, Seymour Stein. He was a visionary music man, the creator of Sire Records, and the man who gave us Madonna, the Ramones, the Talking Heads, Pretenders and more. He was also one of the best people I’ve known professionally and personally.

Yes, it was Seymour who made all those groups possible with his Sire Records, started in 1966. As Sire was later subsumed into Warner Music, Seymour became their international ambassador, traveling the world looking for new acts. He had a genius ear, and an eye for acts that would resonate.

Most importantly, he was there when punk and New Wave music took off, pushing it to be mainstream while still keeping its integrity. And all these groups loved him. Other acts who benefited from Seymour’s genius, and appeared on Sire, included Depeche Mode, Seal, Ice-T, Lou Reed, Regina Spektor, the Smiths, the Cure, the Replacements, Aphex Twin plus the Replacements (and leader Paul Westerberg), Echo & the Bunnymen, Madness, the Undertones, the Smiths (and lead singer Morrissey), Everything But the Girl, Aztec Camera, Erasure, the Flamin’ Groovies, and My Bloody Valentine.

By the way, out of Talking Heads Seymour was smart enough to give us the offshoot Tom Tom Club with Jerry Harrison, Chris Frantz, and Tina Weymouth. Their debut album, and the track “Genius of Love,” has outlasted 90% of popular music. Mariah Carey sampled it whole for one hit, and it’s used and heard over and over every day.

Seymour’s expertise wasn’t just in rock. He signed country star Delta Rae to Warner Bros. But my favorite single of his hundreds of hits was “Ca Plane Pour Moi” by Plastic Bertrand. I used to ask him, “Seymour, do you know what it means?” And he’d say, “Who cares? You can dance to it.”

Seymour was an ardent antiques hunter and once took me on adventure in London looking for military pieces. He knew every market in every country and had an astute eye for what was valuable. But mostly what he valued were his wife, Linda, the famous realtor who helped him launch Sire, and their two daughter, Mandy, and Samantha, who passed away several years ago from cancer. In recent years the native Brooklyn kid had been living in California with Mandy, enjoying his grandchildren.

Seymour was certainly one of my mentors who helped me navigate writing about the record business. He was a founder of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame but disagreed vehemently with how Jann Wenner ran it. He stood up for every R&B group and act that had been omitted, fighting against the tide every year. He had a deep respect for rock’s architects, and wanted to see them honored as much as possible. He was great friends with Atlantic’s Ahmet Ertegun because they believed in justice for the artists.

Like Ahmet, who passed away several years ago, and Clive Davis, who is still with us, we will never see anyone like Seymour Stein again. God bless you, Seymour.

Bruce Springsteen is like some kind of car– Maserati, Lamborghini? — that goes from zero to 60 in 2 secs. That’s what happened when he took the stage at Madison Square Garden last night with the enormous and gifted E Street Band. Maybe it was more like a rocket blasting off. Bruce is 72, so fit that at the end of show he rips his shirt apart to show his mighty chest and proclaim, “I am the Lion King.”

The show starts with “No Surrender” and “Ghosts” and feels like you’ve walked into the middle of a show. The group begins at warp speed. Have they been playing somewhere else and you just found them? How could be they be going 100 mph from the get-go? I was thinking maybe Bruce thinks it’s all a continuous show. They just wake him, then put him to sleep, then reactivate him again. The E Street Band just comes in like a cyclone.

Mind you, I’m watching this show with distractions: Paul McCartney and wife Nancy are sitting just above me. In their section are Michael J. Fox and wife Tracy Pollan; Ben Stiller and Adam Scott, having a “Severance” moment, with their respective wives. I see a lot of other people I recognize in their section including actor Keegan Michael Key, and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame chief John Sykes, and my old friend Leslie Sloane, the great Hollywood publicist, who’s dancing like she’s Courteney Cox in the “Dancing in the Dark” video. When the people in my section on the floor see this group, they start taking pictures of them like they’re seals at the zoo. They’ve also spotted “East New York” actor Richard Kind, and everyone wants a selfie.

Other celebs included Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Michael Gandolfini, and Broadway stars Andy Karl and wife Orfeh.

Back on stage, Bruce and co. command attention. How could they be better than ever? But they are. The show is exactly three hours, and even though Bruce is getting the crowd to shout “We won’t go home,” it’s better that he realizes for once we must go home. So he packs in four hours of excitement into three, never takes a break, a sip of water, a bathroom break, never flags, and is so authentic and genuine it almost breaks your heart. We don’t deserve this.

Since it’s 2am, I’ll give you a couple of highlights: first of all Max Weinberg, age 71, is a mother on those drums. He’s the driving force, just pounding away, killing it. How he doesn’t collapse when the show is over, or during it, is anyone’s guess.

Huge moments during “Kitty’s Back” for all the players. It’s an especially difficult number combining jazz solos with swing and rock. It was mesmerizing.

The main show has 19 songs including “Out in the Street,” “The Rising,” and the poignant “Last Man Standing,” plus “Badlands” and some other top notch Springsteen cuts.

But the last hour brought “Jungleland” for the first time since 2017, followed by a Murderer’s Row of favorites: “Thunder Road” — the final sax solo is the signature sound of the E Street Band. Listen to it, you’ll see what I mean. No other short piece of music from the catalog defines them this way.

Then: the lights come up for “Born to Run” and stay up through “Rosalita,” “Glory Days,” “Dancing in the Dark,” and “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out.” There’s nothing like hearing and seeing 20,000, lights up, singing every word, doing call backs with Bruce, freaking out to the sizzling guitars of Little Steven van Zandt and Nils Lofgren. Nothing. It’s a glorious feeling. Bruce make a small town of out a massive group. People who don’t know each other are dancing together.

The show ends with Bruce alone on stage, under a hot spot light, singing his “I’ll See You in My Dreams.” After all that celebrating, the grace note is funereal. He’s confronting the death of dear friends and looking at his own mortality. The original “I’ll See You in My Dreams” from 1924 was a love song, a lullaby. But Springsteen has turned the idea on its head. It’s a sad song, but realistic: “Death is not the end.” We can only hope and wonder.

Wherever Bruce Springsteen is playing on this tour, get in there and see him. That’s an order.

PS McCartney, below, stood for most of the show and made it all the way to the end.