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What makes
FABIAN
fabulous
HOME life is precious to Fabian, here lending his mother a helping hand with spaghetti dinner.
Without any musical background or training, this 16-year-old zoomed to the top of the record
world; his outstanding asset — magnetism
By HELEN BOLSTAD
J 1ST SUPPOSE that you axe 14 years old. crazy about football, a little worried because vou have just flunked music and. at the moment. you"re out in the street in front of your house, energetically pegging passes at your best pal.
A strange man walks up to you and says, "You're a remarkably handsome kid. I'd like to make you a top recording star, a real teenage idol." ^ hat would you do?
And while you're supposing, put yourself in the place of the father of such a boy. Suppose, too. that for 15 years you have been a big city policeman and have a deeply furrowed knowledge of all the artful dodges which unscrupulous persons can use to entice teenagers into trouble or dupe their parents into parting with their life savings. Suppose your son runs in to shouL "Dad. there's a man out here talking crazy!'" Again, what would you do?
It sounds like the opening gambit of a confidence game, doesn't it?
It is, instead, the literal description of the start of one of the most unusual careers in show business, a career that experts said couldn't be created.
Today when that "strange young man." Bob Marcucci of Chancellor Records. Philadelphia, speaks of the day when he discovered Fabian, he says. "I wouldn't have blamed his familv if they had had me thrown in the clink. But Peter DeAngelis and I had just started Chancellor and we needed young artists. I looked at Fabian and I had a hunch. It was so strong a hunch that I had to act on it It was lucky for me that instead of getting mad. Fabian's father. Domenic Forte, took the trouble to ask questions."
Says Domenic Forte. "Maybe it didn't sound quite so crazy to me as it might have to another father living somewhere else. This is South Philadelphia . . ."
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