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Darren Burn |
England |
 Pictures kindly supplied by David Rayner |
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 Darren
Burn was born in Barnett, Hertfordshire, England, on Monday, August
28th, 1961, the son of Colin and Johanna Burn. A child prodigy, he
showed great promise from an early age and was a child model by the age
of two years. By the time he was nine years old in 1970, he had already
appeared in a large number of television commercials and even a film.
By early 1973, at the age of eleven, Darren was living with his parents
and younger sister Deborah in a house in the leafy suburbs of Southgate
in north London. By this time also, he had become a choirboy at his
local church, where his unique singing talents had become wonderfully
apparent. His father was by now an executive at EMI records and, when the company was searching for a British pre-teen (or weenybopper) boy singer to rival such Americans as Donny Osmond, someone at EMI suggested Darren Burn. And so, EMI plucked the talented ex-choirboy from obscurity and spent a fortune promoting him and launching him as a major record star. His first single release, “Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart” was wonderfully produced by Eric Woolfson and beautifully sung by Darren and his follow up single, “Is it Love” was even better at showcasing Darren’s fabulous singing voice. For a few months, Darren was treated like royalty; attending record promotion receptions; having his picture in all the newspapers and music magazines; having his first single played on Radio One by Tony Blackburn as his Record of the Week and even appearing in a BBC Television colour documentary in the “Man Alive” series entitled “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, a fascinating programme that covered the launch of Darren’s debut single in July, 1973. Darren, in turn, came across as the perfect little gentleman who would not have been out of place having tea with the Queen at Windsor Castle. His interview with John Pitman in the “Man Alive” programme showed Darren to be a wonderfully intelligent boy for his age; full of enthusiasm for the project and full of hope for the future. However, despite all the expensive hype, Darren’s first single reached no higher than 60 in the UK singles charts and within a year, despite the release of another two singles in 1974, he had faded back into obscurity. The ensuing years saw him become a sound recording engineer. In 1988, John Pitman, sent to interview Darren for the “Whatever Happened To…?” section of BBC Television’s “People” programme, tracked him down to a flat in Southwark, London, where, now living alone, he was a 26 years old unemployed computer programmer, suffering from depression and taking medication for it. Pitman found Darren a pale shadow of the bright and bubbly little boy of fifteen years earlier. “It didn’t work out particularly well. It didn’t make any money for EMI or for me. I mean I went through that experience and I had the power of a major record company behind me and it didn’t work out.”, he told Pitman. “It left me with a feeling of failure. It was a very strange thing for a child to go through.” The whole 1973 venture had adversely affected him in the long run. When his records failed to sell, his schoolmates started calling him “Top of the Flops”, which had really hurt him. He was obviously unhappy and not very pleased with the way things had turned out for him. His last words on camera were: “I certainly wouldn’t allow one off my children to do that…should I ever have any.” Three years after that interview, on Wednesday, October 30th, 1991, Darren was found dead in his flat. He had taken an overdose of his anti-depressant tablets. At the Inquest in January, 1992, the coroner recorded a verdict that Darren had killed himself. It was a terrible tragedy and a very sad loss of a wonderful, unique and talented person. It is a terrible shame that Darren died all alone and believing himself to be a failure, because he wasn’t in any way a failure. He and EMI had put everything they had into that 1973 venture, but no one knows why some excellent records become hits and others, just as excellent, don’t. No, it wasn’t through lack of talent that Darren’s records failed to take off as expected, it was just through plain bad luck. - David Rayner. |
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