Wed, Oct 24, 1973
By July, 1973, the British record companies realised they had missed out when the Americans had invented the weenybopper singing star and the latest to join the race to find a British version of Jimmy Osmond was EMI, the world's biggest recording company. Their protege, an eleven years old City of London School pupil and ex-choirboy named Darren Burn, seemed to have all the right ingredients. He was very beautiful; very intelligent and impeccably spoken. He could really sing and his dad was an executive at EMI, who spent a fortune promoting him. During the last half of 1973, Darren was treated like royalty and, sensing the start of something big, television camera crews and reporters followed his every move. His picture was in all the newspapers and music magazines and he attended posh receptions in chauffer-driven limousines, coming across as the perfect little gentleman who wouldn't have been out of place having tea with the Queen at Windsor Castle. EMI had great faith in his singing talent and believed he would become the weenybopper superstar of 1973.
However, despite all the expensive hype, Darren's recording career failed to take off as expected, although his first single, "Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart" (EMI 2040), did manage to get to number 60 in the charts. The feeling of failure that Darren was left with when all this came to nothing and EMI callously got rid of him was to haunt him for the rest of his life and lead to depression; drug addiction and eventually suicide at the early age of 30. Thus, with the benefit of hindsight, watching this programme now is like watching the prelude to a terrible human tragedy.
But that was all in the future. Here, in July, 1973, Man Alive reporter John Pitman follows the expensive marketing of Master Burn and his weenybopper rivals Ricky Wilde and The James Boys and talks to them and their parents. However, it primarily concerns itself with Darren and we see him at his then home at 17, Queen Elizabeth's Drive, Southgate, north London; attending a huge reception at EMI House in London to promote his first single; recording "Concrete and Clay" in Studio 2 at EMI's Abbey Road Studios, under the direction of his producer, Eric Woolfson; reading his fan letters; being interviewed by John Pitman and by Tony Prince on Radio Luxembourg and finally, his memorable personal appearance live on stage at the Sundown, Edmonton, north London, in front of hundreds of screaming fans. The programme also takes viewers inside the EMI factory at Hayes, Middlesex, to see Darren's first single being pressed by the thousand and shipped out to the shops.
However, despite all the expensive hype, Darren's recording career failed to take off as expected, although his first single, "Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart" (EMI 2040), did manage to get to number 60 in the charts. The feeling of failure that Darren was left with when all this came to nothing and EMI callously got rid of him was to haunt him for the rest of his life and lead to depression; drug addiction and eventually suicide at the early age of 30. Thus, with the benefit of hindsight, watching this programme now is like watching the prelude to a terrible human tragedy.
But that was all in the future. Here, in July, 1973, Man Alive reporter John Pitman follows the expensive marketing of Master Burn and his weenybopper rivals Ricky Wilde and The James Boys and talks to them and their parents. However, it primarily concerns itself with Darren and we see him at his then home at 17, Queen Elizabeth's Drive, Southgate, north London; attending a huge reception at EMI House in London to promote his first single; recording "Concrete and Clay" in Studio 2 at EMI's Abbey Road Studios, under the direction of his producer, Eric Woolfson; reading his fan letters; being interviewed by John Pitman and by Tony Prince on Radio Luxembourg and finally, his memorable personal appearance live on stage at the Sundown, Edmonton, north London, in front of hundreds of screaming fans. The programme also takes viewers inside the EMI factory at Hayes, Middlesex, to see Darren's first single being pressed by the thousand and shipped out to the shops.