Cliff Burnstein

Clifford "Cliff" Burnstein (born July 1948) is an American music manager and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder of Q Prime, a New York-based music management company that has represented prominent rock acts, including Metallica.

Burnstein began his career at Mercury Records, where he signed Rush to their first American record deal. He later worked with Peter Mensch at the management firm Leber-Krebs, which managed AC/DC and other artists, before the two co-founded Q Prime.

Early life and education

Burnstein was born in July 1948, and grew up in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois. His father was a tax lawyer, and his grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Burnstein's maternal grandparents were garment workers, and his paternal grandfather arrived in the United States "from Russia when he was thirteen or fourteen." Without knowing any English, his grandfather learned how to typeset for Yiddish newspapers, eventually earning enough to relocate to Chicago.

Burnstein attended Highland Park High School, where he competed in debate and found a passion for music. He grew up listening to soul, rock, and blues on AM radio stations from across the country, such as "WBZ from Boston, WLAC from Nashville, KAAY from Little Rock, [and] WABC from New York." In high school, he would send self-addressed envelopes to 20 or more radio stations each week to collect their local surveys, compiling them into his own crudely weighted Top One Hundred national survey. As Burnstein recalled, "'I was obsessed. And it was a tremendous amount of work. But I did this all through high school.'"

Burnstein then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned both a B.A. and M.A.

That same year, Burnstein was promoted to National Album Promotion Director within the label. In this role, Burnstein cold-called every station on the Walrus FM radio tip sheet, a newsletter that tracked the most added and popular records of the previous two weeks. At the time, Burnstein was promoting bands such as Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Thin Lizzy, and the New York Dolls. When he called Brandeis University's WBRS, the program director, Peter Mensch, picked up. The two became fast friends, connecting over their shared music taste.

By 1977, Burnstein had started a punk rock label under Mercury called Blank Records. He hired Peter Mensch as its general manager. The label signed and released the influential debut albums of rock bands Pere Ubu and The Suicide Commandos.

In addition to the aforementioned artists, Burnstein signed Faith Band, Roadmaster, and The Brains during his time at Mercury. Together, the pair also managed Scorpions, Michael Schenker Group, and Def Leppard.

Since 1984, Burnstein has played a key role in managing Metallica—negotiating the band's major label deal with Elektra Records and overseeing the release of Master of Puppets in 1986, widely regarded as one of the most influential metal albums of all time.

Over the decades, Burnstein and Q Prime have managed artists including Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Smashing Pumpkins, Cage The Elephant, and worked with artists such as The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and Madonna. Artists managed by Q Prime have won dozens of Grammy Awards while under the company's representation, earned numerous Billboard 200 Top 10 Albums, and include two Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees.

Personal life Burnstein is a longtime baseball fan, particularly of the Chicago White Sox, and has frequently attended spring training games in Florida. He has also expressed a lifelong passion for film.

In 2007, Burnstein made a $1.5 million gift to Yale School of Medicine to support cancer research led by Dr. Jeffrey L. Sklar, a former middle school classmate. Reconnecting decades later, Burnstein said the gift was inspired by trust in Sklar's intellect and integrity: "Jeff’s one of the highest-quality people I ever met in my life, and I’m backing him." The donation supported research that challenged long-held assumptions about how cancer develops at the chromosomal level.