Howie Klein (born 1950) is an American writer, concert promoter, disc jockey, music producer, record label founder, record label executive, progressive political activist, and adjunct professor of music. He is perhaps best known for his role as President of Reprise Records from 1989 to 2001. He appears occasionally as himself in music-related film documentaries and has received accolades for his stance against censorship and for his advocacy of free speech protection.
Howie Klein was born in Brooklyn in 1950. He is a writer and a fan of punk rock. He attended Stony Brook University in New York during the mid to late 1960s, where he first worked in the music industry by writing about bands and booking them for local performances. Notable acts he successfully promoted during those years included Big Brother, Byrds, Jackson Browne, Tim Buckley, Sandy Bull, Country Joe, The Doors, The Fugs, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, John Hammond, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Pink Floyd, Otis Redding, The Who, and the Yardbirds.
He then spent several years exploring Afghanistan, India, Nepal, and Amsterdam, before moving to San Francisco. There, from 1976 to 1978, he co-hosted North America's first regular punk radio show, The Outcastes, with fellow program founders entrepreneur Norman Davis and Chris Knab, then-owner of Aquarius Records on Castro Street. They broadcast from San Francisco's Jive 95, KSAN, from 2-4am on Friday nights, hosting guest interviews with bands such as the Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop, Devo, The Cramps, The Dead Boys, The Nuns, and Roky Erickson. After Davis' departure from the trio in June 1978, later shows were retitiled The Heretics, and featured Davis' replacement, Sean Donahue. While Klein lived in San Francisco, he also hosted a long-running Sunday night radio program on KUSF.