Sharon's Dad Found Elkie's X Factor

Pop

YOU might expect Elkie Brooks to have some sympathy for the young hopefuls who used to stand in front of Sharon Osbourne on "The X Factor" in the hopes of achieving fame and fortune.

Half a century ago it was Brooks who auditioned in front of another generation of Osbourne’s family, but though it marked the start of her successful music career, unlike the case for "X Factor" winners, it was to be far from an instant passport to fane and fortune for the 15-year old.

"Don Arden, who was a very big promoter at the time and Sharon Osbourne’s father, was doing an English rock and roll show with all sorts of artists who were very big at the time and put an advert in one of the papers saying that he was looking for artists," Brooks recalled.

"He didn’t specifically say singers, but there were all sorts of people who turned up that morning for that audition. I was the last one he heard that morning. I was 15 years old, I’d only just left school, but he was very taken back and put me on the show that night."

The teenager even went on tour with Arden’s other acts, but was forced home early after contracting flu after a few days.

However, Arden did not forget his young protégée and soon she had a week long run at the Astor Club in London, a favourite haunt of the Kray twins and their gangster rivals the Richardson gang.

"Though of course I was too young to know what that was all about," Brooks added.

She also appeared at US air bases in the UK and Germany and Brooks revealed she has since been asked many times whether her parents knew what their teenage daughter was getting into when she embarked on a music career.

"In pure honesty, my parents were terribly naive, and so was I," she said.

"I didn’t know anything about the business, and just thought it would be OK. If I do have any grandchildren and they get to 15 and I’m still around, I don’t think I would be that eager to let them go on the road!"

After getting her start with Don Arden, and still just 16, Brooks went on to sing with band leader Eric Delaney for a couple of years before, while still in her teens, taking up a residency at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go club in her home city of Manchester, a residency which came to an abrupt end when the club burned down.

That led her to move down to London with her band, and there in 1964, she made her first record "Something’s Got a Hold of Me".

"It got a lot of attention, but didn’t get into the charts," Brooks added.

"Unfortunately Lulu had done ‘Shout’ a few days later and the record decided to back her and she did very well with that. It took many, many years — not until I was 32 in 1977 — that I got my first chart record with ‘Pearl’s A Singer.’

"I never, ever thought I was going to get a record in the charts, but as long as I’m happy musically, that’s all that’s really mattered to me.

"As long as enjoy what you are doing, people will respect that. People aren’t silly. They can tell if I’m enjoying it or not and I think that’s why they keep coming back and I’ve got such a strong live following."

However, she revealed there had been a time when she did contemplate giving up music and becoming a domestic science or PE teacher, but it was meeting the late band leader and radio presenter Humphrey Lyttelton, again at an army base show, which restored her faith in music.

"Humph really liked my singing and it was at a time when I wasn’t really feeling very good about myself and Humph certainly gave me back a lot of confidence. I sang with the band off and on for a couple of years until I met up with Pete Gage, my first husband, and we had this idea about forming a band called Dada."

Dada eventually evolved into the bluesy Vinegar Joe, where Brooks worked alongside another soon to be future pop star, Robert Palmer, before she embarked on her solo career and a 25 year run of 16 hit albums starting with her second solo album, the Leiber and Stoller produced "Two Days Away".

Brooks, who believes she is now singing better than ever, now finds herself still pursuing a busy singing career in an industry much changed from the one she embarked on 52 years ago, and like many other artists, she now releases her own material which fans can download directly at her shows.

"It has changed," she said.

"It’s very hard for people getting into it to make a lot of money out of selling records these days unless the record companies really promote it — but that’s no different from it ever was."

• Elkie Brooks is at the Empire Theatre, Eden Court, on Wednesday at 8pm.