When Samantha and Mandy Stein decided to write a book about their late mother, real estate broker to the stars Linda Stein, they invited Larry “Ratso” Sloman to lunch in Chinatown during a break in the trial of Linda’s murderer.
Sloman, author of “On the Road With Bob Dylan,” also helped Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis write “Scar Tissue” and Howard Stern write “Private Parts” and “Miss America.”
“They reached out to me,” Sloman told Page Six. “They said, ‘My mother loved Bob Dylan, loved Anthony Kiedis, and loved Howard Stern.’ ” Linda also loved pot-smoking — a subject Sloman covered in “Reefer Madness: A History of Marijuana.”
“It’s fate. You have to do this,” Sloman quoted the sisters as saying.
Sloman enthusiastically agreed to work with them. “Linda was at the epicenter of every cultural trend,” he said. Linda, who managed punk rock pioneers the Ramones, was married to Seymour Stein, whose Sire Records signed the Talking Heads, the Pretenders and Madonna.
Linda, a regular at Studio 54, later switched to real estate, where she brokered deals for pals like Sting, Angelina Jolie, Billy Joel, Bruce Willis and Elton John.
“Samantha and Mandy had this amazingly interesting childhood,” Sloman noted. “And then, after their mother was murdered, the two girls came together and dealt with the craziness of the trial. Suddenly their mother was gone and they both grew up.”
Linda’s personal assistant, Natavia Lowery, 28, confessed to bludgeoning the broker to death in her Fifth Avenue apartment and is now doing 27 years in prison. Lowery’s family constantly disrupted the trial, and after one hearing, her mother approached Mandy and screamed, “You know you did it!”
Sloman is polishing up a proposal their agent, Luke Janklow, will soon be shopping.