In the summer of 1973, EMI plucked eleven-years-old choirboy Darren Burn from obscurity and tried, at great expense, to turn him into the British equivelant of the American pre-pubescent pop stars then dominating the Top Twenty. EMI believed they were on to a good thing. Certainly Darren, from Southgate, north London, had a lot going for him. He was pretty; he could really sing and father Colin, for instance, was an executive with EMI. Darren's first single, SOMETHING'S GOTTEN HOLD OF MY HEART / TRUE LOVE WAYS (EMI 2040) arranged by Cy Payne and produced by Eric Woolfson, was released in a blaze of publicity on Friday, July 20th, 1973. For a few months, Darren was treated like royalty by EMI and his launch was captured for posterity by BBC Television in their Man Alive colour documentary film "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." His debut record reached number 60 in the charts and his second single, IS IT LOVE / CONCRETE AND CLAY (EMI 2096) again arranged by Cy Payne and produced by Eric Woolfson, released on November 2nd, 1973, was even better at showcasing Darren's fabulous singing voice, although it got nowhere chart wise. For a reason I have been unable to discover, an unusual six months went by between the release of Darren’s second single, “Is It Love”, in early November, 1973, and the release of his third single, TEENAGE LOVER backed with THE MOMENT YOU SMILE on EMI 2132 in early April, 1974. In the interim, EMI had, strangely, changed Darren’s producer from Eric Woolfson to Biddu. The two songs were quite pedestrian in nature, were not a patch on Darren’s previous records and were so beneath his unique talent, that anybody could have been brought in off the street to sing them. What were EMI up to here? Having Darren make records that they knew would never sell, so that they would have an excuse to get rid of him? After all, they must have had egg on their faces, having spent a lot of money on Darren, having had no return on their investment and predicted on national television that Darren was going to be a big hit. His fourth and final single, SUMMERTIME TIME backed with QUICK JOEY SMALL on EMI 2173, released in early June, 1974, was even worse than his third single. What on earth was going on here? I was emailed by someone purporting to have been an EMI employee when Darren was fired and according to him, the incident happened on Darren’s 13th birthday (Wednesday, August 28th, 1974). His dismissal led to a heated row between Darren and the executive, which led to a very upset Darren being thrown out of the executive's office. One thing that puzzles me about all this is why Colin Burn didn’t take his young son to one side and break the news to him gently himself? A bit of a mystery there. Why was Darren so upset when his contract was terminated? We'll probably never know, but perhaps he needed a hit record to save face in front of all the boys at the City of London School who had been making fun of him and his lack of chart success, calling him "Top of the Flops". He had to show them he could do it and then, out of the blue, EMI pulled the rug from under him. No wonder he went off the rails from there on. I also think that he was a very proud boy and that his pride had been terribly hurt by all this. After that, Darren faded back into obscurity and in early September, 1977, two weeks into his second year in the sixth form at the City of London School, he went home on the Friday afternoon for the weekend as usual, but never returned to the school…in effect, abandoning his education. The school archivist could find no reason why he should have done that without warning. Perhaps he had been very unhappy there and had had enough. Haunted for the rest of his life by a feeling of failure, he killed himself in October, 1991, aged 30.