Colin Burn

It is always sad when you hear that a former boss & colleague has died & it is with regret that Colin Burn is added to the list of inspirational people who make up www.jacobsladder.org.uk

I worked for Colin in the mid-seventies when he was head of licensed repertoire at EMI Records. At the time the label I worked for, Capitol Records, was going through enormous changes & was about to enter a period of success with a diverse range of acts, some signed to the label a decade or two before and others recently signed but now household names. Colin was a great boss & his laid back approach allowed others to help develop & grow a very successful division of a very successful record company. I could write volumes about this man but I leave it to another former colleague, Paul Watts, to succinctly put what I am trying to say into words. The following is  reproduced with thanks to Music Week.

“Trapeze Music & Entertainment’s Paul Watts, who worked alongside Burn in the 1970s, has written an obituary of “one of the ‘old school’ record men”.

“Sadly, I have to report the death on Oct 19 of Colin Burn at the age of 76. Colin, who spent about 25 years with EMI Record through their most successful post-war years, was one of that generation of record company professionals that shepherded the business from the days of the Fifties era crooners, through the birth of rock ‘n’ roll to the successive revolutions provided by the Beatles, Motown, psychedelia, bubblegum, glam rock and punk. They all came alike to a hardened veteran like Colin, at heart a natural promotion man, who took on the mantle of general management, without ever being entirely comfortable with the corporate manoeuvring that went with it.

Colin was an easy guy to like, handsome in a classically post-war Hollywood way, with a showbiz urbanity that made him a brilliant promotion man, at ease with the radio and TV producers and DJs who were the key to getting the hits that opened the door for wider success. Whether it was Doreen Davies at the BBC, Ken Evans at Radio Luxembourg or Johnny Stewart at Top of the Pops – they would all pick up the phone to Colin.

He worked with just about every big name that emerged from the giant EMI machine, based initially in Great Castle St. and then Manchester Square, and could reel off the hits that passed across his desk, from Dennis Lotis, Lita Roza and Tony Brent through to Cliff Richard and Adam Faith, then of course the Beatles and their beat era cohorts and great American acts like the Supremes, Gene Pitney and the Beach Boys.

Come the Seventies, he found himself promoted to general manager of EMI’s Pop Division (probably a senior VP in modern parlance), later taking over the Licensed Repertoire Division, and turned his hand to managing people and budgets in an era when MDs like Leslie Hill and Ramon Lopez were bringing a quiet professionalism to the old firm. As ever, Colin was unorthodox but hugely popular, and contributed hugely to breaking acts like the Eagles, Steely Dan, Helen Reddy and others.

Aimed out of EMI with senior colleagues after 25 years service in some ugly political shenanigans in the early 80s, Colin found himself working for the Rolling Stones, who were signed to EMI, and he quietly gained a vicarious pleasure from giving his erstwhile employers a hard time on behalf of his new masters for seven years until he left the business and took up landscape gardening, a long-time hobby of his.

Colin’s friends remember both his kindness towards junior colleagues learning the ropes, which belied his hard-bitten exterior, as well as his sharp wit and evil sense of humour, which did not always endear him to the more self-regarding characters on the upper floors of EMI House.”

The fact that his funeral looks like being the catalyst for one of the biggest reunions of ex-EMI people for many years is a testament to the esteem in which he was held by his peers.”