Howie Klein

Howie Klein grew up in a working class family in Brooklyn. After college, he went to Europe for the summer and stayed away for nearly 7 years, 2 of them driving across Asia and living in places like Afghanistan, Iran, Nepal and India. When he returned to the U.S. he was a radio dj on the first punk rock radio show in America and then co-founded an indie record label, 415 Records. Eventually he went to work at Warner Bros Records where he was general manager of Sire Records and then president of Reprise Records. He retired from the increasingly corporatized, artist-unfriendly record business about 3 years ago. Currently he is an Adjunct Professor at McGill University in Montreal, serves on the Board of People For the American Way and blogs under the nom de guerre "Down With Tyranny." He likes Green Day, Howard Dean, raw food, swimming and grassroots activism. He hates fascism.