BRYAN STANTON PASSES
Jim Austin
I met Bryan Stanton before I knew I had met him, not too long ago. AXPONA 2019 was over. I packed my bags, came downstairs, and saw several of my colleagues sitting at a table. I’d be heading for the airport soon.
With them was a gentleman I didn’t know—or anyway, not by sight. Everyone assumed we knew each other, no one introduced us, and neither of us introduced ourselves. We all chatted like old friends, then I excused myself. My car had arrived to take me to the airport.
Not a mile down the road, I got an email from Bryan. While we didn’t know each other by sight, we’d exchanged many emails—the first one in my inbox is from 2005, when Bryan was representing NAD and I was preparing a review—and shared a couple of long telephone conversations. After I’d left for the airport, Bryan had asked who I was; embarrassed upon learning, he fired off an email. I just found it; the subject line is “Ships that pass in the night.” Which is a good way of expressing how I feel now that he’s gone.
Bryan Stanton was known by all of us in the hi-fi press, but few knew him well.1 During one of our marathon telephone chats—Bryan was one of several members of our industry who helped me get up to speed after I took over Stereophile—he shared that he was experiencing some health problems. I was sympathetic: He had Parkinson’s disease, and I’d recently watched that disease claim my mother.
Bryan was an important figure in the industry; years before, he had been even more so. I took the time to learn
