Hear the 1962 Beatles demo that Decca rejected
Back in 2012, a compilation of ten early Beatles demos recorded at Decca Studios on New Year’s Day, 1962, was sold at auction for over £30,000. 50 years previously, Decca had rejected the offering in favour of a few ditties by a group called The Tremeloes, who were then regarded as the future of UK music.
As the label’s senior A&R man at the time, Dick Rowe, told the Fab Four’s new manager, “guitar groups are on the way out, Mr Epstein.” Today. Rowe’s dismissal of the Silver Beatles is regarded as one of the biggest errors of judgement in music history. But he wasn’t the only one to have his doubts about John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and their pre-Ringo drummer Pete Best.
It was the autumn of 1961 and The Beatles’ new manager Brian Epstein was on his way to London to meet with executives from EMI and Decca records. The plan was to secure the group a record deal. On arrival, he met with EMI’s general marketing director, an old friend of his called Ron White. He handed him a copy of The Beatles German-language version of ‘My Bonnie’ with Tony Sheridan, which White was instructed to play to four of EMI’s A&R reps, although he ended up playing it to just two of them: one of whom was George Martin.
As Martin later explained, Beat groups presented significant challenges for A&R directors. EMI was looking for a band with a unique and marketable sound. The Beatles, sadly, were deemed too indistinct and EMI refused to offer them a contract. Unperturbed, Epstein organised for The Beatles to audition for Decca, for whom they recorded 15 songs in total – only three of which were Lennon-McCartney originals. Decca also had another group auditioning that day: The Tremeloes, who would go on to score a number one single with “Do You Want Me’ in 1963. Decca chose The Tremeloes, probably because they were closer to Decca and thus more manageable because they were from Essex.
So, once again, Epstein and The Beatles walked away empty-handed. Shortly afterwards, however, Martin arranged a meeting with Epstein during which Epstein played him the audition tape that Decca had rejected. As the producer explained in 1964, he wasn’t blown away, but he did sense the group had a certain appeal. “The first thing that I heard was a recording they’d made – rather a bad one – and I didn’t do a sort of backwards somersault and hit the ceiling and say, ‘God, this is the find of the century’ or anything like that. I just thought they were interesting and thought they had something slightly different and I liked to know something more about them.”
Epstein and Martin sat down again on May 9th at EMI Studios, where he informed the manager that he would be willing to sign The Beatles to a standard recording contract with Parlophone, which required them to record a minimum of six tracks in the first year.
That June, The Beatles returned to the studio and recorded, amongst other tracks, ‘Love Me Do.’ And with that, they were away.
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