Yesterday, we began the story of the most famous rejection in music history: the Beatles’ audition for Decca Records on New Year’s Day, 1962. After a harrowing 10-hour drive through a blizzard from Liverpool, the four lads—John, Paul, George, and drummer Pete Best—arrived late and exhausted at Decca’s West Hampstead studios. They recorded 15 songs for producer Mike Smith (who was nursing a New Year’s hangover), using unfamiliar equipment in an unfamiliar room. The performances were stiff, nervous, and nothing like the raw energy they brought to the Cavern Club stage every night. 🎸
(If you missed the beginning of this story, published yesterday, here’s the link.)
So, instead of signing the Beatles, Dick Rowe, Decca’s A&R man, chose to sign Brian Poole and the Tremeloes instead, reportedly telling Beatles manager Brian Epstein that “guitar groups are on the way out” and that the group had “no future in show business.” Ouch. The rejection was devastating, but Epstein refused to give up. He had acetates cut at the HMV store on Oxford Street, where a chance encounter led to an introduction to George Martin at Parlophone Records. Martin signed the Beatles in May 1962, though he had serious reservations about Pete Best’s drumming. By August, Pete was out and Ringo Starr was in. On October 5, 1962, they released “Love Me Do,” which reached number 17. Three months later, “Please Please Me” hit number one. 📈
What Happened to Everyone Else
Let’s check in on the other players in this drama:
Brian Poole and the Tremeloes had a successful run. Their 1963 cover of “Do You Love Me” hit number one. They racked up a string of Top 40 hits throughout the ‘60s. Brian Poole himself insists their audition wasn’t on New Year’s Day 1962—he claims it was sometime in late 1961. Either way, they got the Decca contract the Beatles didn’t. But their legacy? Well, let’s just say it doesn’t quite compare to the Fab Four. 🎺
Rowe, although his career was highly successful, became forever known as “the man who turned down the Beatles.” But here’s the thing: he wasn’t actually a terrible A&R man. In fact, he was pretty damn good. And he had help, as it turned out, from a Beatle.
On May 10, 1963, Rowe and George Harrison were judges at a talent show in Liverpool. Harrison mentioned he’d seen a “great” band recently, the Rolling Stones. Four days later, Rowe went to see them perform at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond. And four days after that, he signed the Stones to Decca. Their first single, a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Come On,” was issued on June 7, 1963 and was moderately successful. Four months later, they released “I Wanna Be Your Man,” a gift from Lennon and McCartney they’d written for Ringo as an album track for With the Beatles. For the Stones, it was their first major commercial success, peaking at Number 12 on the singles chart.
Rowe went on to sign the Animals, the Moody Blues, the Zombies, Them (featuring Van Morrison),the Small Faces, Lulu, and Tom Jones. He’d previously discovered Billy Fury and worked with Jet Harris and Tony Meehan. The man had a stellar track record. He was known in the industry as “the man with the golden ear.”
But for most people, none of that mattered. The Beatles rejection defined him. Until his death from diabetes in June 1986, Rowe was haunted, ridiculed, by that mistep. And honestly? That seems unfair. Rowe wasn’t the only one who flubbed it. As Stones manager Andrew Oldham pointed out later:
“Everybody turned them down. Columbia, Oriole, Philips and Pye turned the Beatles down, based on what they heard from the Decca session.”
It wasn’t Rowe’s last mistake, however. In 1966 he turned down Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix’s managers, Chas Chandler and Michael Jeffery, had funded his debut single “Hey Joe,” but Rowe reportedly believed Hendrix’s music wouldn’t last. Rowe never publicly addressed this second legendary miss. Track Records signed Hendrix instead, and the rest is history. 🎸
Epstein guided the Beatles through their explosive rise to fame, managing them until his death from an overdose of alcohol and barbiturates in August 1967. He was only 32. The Beatles were never quite the same after losing him. John Lennon later said, “I knew we were in trouble then … and I was scared.”
Martin became known as the “Fifth Beatle,” producing virtually all of their records and helping them achieve sounds nobody had heard before. His willingness to experiment, his classical training, and his respect for Lennon and McCartney’s songwriting were crucial to the Beatles’ artistic evolution. He remained close to McCartney until Martin’s death in 2016.
Pete Best had the misfortune of being the drummer who was there for the struggle but not the success. After being fired in August 1962, he briefly joined other bands but eventually left the music business. In later years, he spoke about the experience with remarkable grace, acknowledging the pain but also recognizing that the Beatles made the right decision. The 1995 release of Anthology 1—which included five songs from the Decca audition featuring Best on drums—finally earned him some royalties from Beatles recordings.
And the Beatles? Well, you probably know what happened to them. 🚀
The Tapes Themselves
The Decca audition tape itself had its own strange journey through history.
In spring 1962, the Beatles gave a copy of the tape (possibly not all fifteen songs, just a selection) to Astrid Kirchherr, Stuart Sutcliffe’s girlfriend, who had taken iconic early photographs of the band in Germany. That copy somehow ended up with a private collector, and from there it spread into the bootleg underground. By 1977, bootleggers were trading the full fifteen-song audition.
Starting in 1981, various “grey market” albums appeared—semi-legal releases that skirted copyright laws. Some of these albums omitted the three Lennon-McCartney originals to avoid legal trouble. By the late 1980s, Beatles lawyers had shut down most of this.
In 1995, the Beatles officially released five songs from the Decca audition on Anthology 1: “Searchin’,” “Three Cool Cats,” “The Sheik of Araby,” “Like Dreamers Do,” and “Hello Little Girl.” The accompanying documentary included snippets from other Decca recordings.
But what about the original master tape?
In December 2012, an auction house called the Fame Bureau sold what they claimed was “the original safety master tape” to a Japanese collector for £35,000. The buyer—one of the top buyers for Hard Rock Cafe—wanted it for his personal collection. But experts immediately questioned its authenticity. The auctioned tape contained only ten songs (not fifteen) and was recorded on Ampex tape, which wasn’t in use in 1962. So... maybe not the real deal. 🤷
Then, on March 11, 2025, a record store owner named Frith in Vancouver found another tape—this one with all fifteen songs. It appeared to be a professionally edited recording of the audition. In September 2025, Frith handed the tape over to McCartney.
The actual original master tape? Its whereabouts remain unclear. It may be in the possession of Apple Corps Ltd., or it may still be out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered. Perhaps it will appear on the nextAnthology?
There’s also a legendary 10-inch 78 rpm acetate containing “Till There Was You” and “Hello Little Girl,” with Epstein’s handwriting crediting them to “Paul McCartney & The Beatles” and “John Lennon & The Beatles.” Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn called it “one of the rarest and most collectable of all Beatles records.” It was previously owned by Les Maguire from Gerry and the Pacemakers (another Epstein-managed band). Maguire said Epstein gave it to him in 1963. It sold at auction in 2016.
What Do the Recordings Actually Sound Like?
If you listen to the Decca recordings today, you can hear why both sides of this story make sense.
On one hand: these are not the Beatles at their best. They’re nervous, they’re using unfamiliar equipment, and they’re tackling a weird mix of material that doesn’t quite capture what made them special live. Paul’s performance on “Till There Was You” is reportedly shaky—understandable given the circumstances. The arrangements are straightforward, without the inventiveness they’d bring to their later work.
But on the other hand: there’s something undeniably there. The three Lennon-McCartney originals show a band that could write their own material—still rare in 1962. The energy is there, even if it’s muted by nerves. And George’s vocals reportedly shine throughout the session.
But Lennon never forgave the snub by Decca, saying years later:
“I wouldn’t have turned us down on that. I think it sounded OK... I think Decca expected us to be all polished, we were just doing a demo. They should have seen our potential.” ✊
Both perspectives are valid. The tapes show a band with raw talent and potential, but not yet the confidence, polish, or material that would define them a year later. Decca was evaluating them based on what they heard in that moment. George Martin, by contrast, bet on what they might become.
The Sliding Doors Moment
So here’s the question that Beatles fans have been asking for decades: What if Decca had said yes?
Would the Beatles still have become “The Beatles”?
The conventional wisdom says no—and for good reason. Consider what they gained by not signing with Decca:
1. They got George Martin. Martin’s contribution to the Beatles’ sound cannot be overstated. His classical training, his willingness to experiment, his respect for their songwriting, his openness to their crazy ideas—all of this was crucial. A more conventional producer might have tried to mold them into something commercial rather than encouraging them to push boundaries.
2. They got an extra year to develop. By the time they recorded their first album with Martin in 1963, they’d been through another year of songwriting, another few trips to Hamburg, hundreds more gigs. They were a different band—tighter, more confident, with better material.
3. They got Ringo. The drummer change only happened because Martin raised concerns about Pete Best after the June 1962 EMI session. Would Decca have cared? Maybe not. And without Ringo’s distinctive drumming, without his personality in the group dynamic, would the Beatles have been the same? Hard to imagine.
4. They avoided a potentially bad deal. We don’t know what Decca’s contract terms would have been, but we do know the industry standard was to push artists toward covering hits rather than writing originals. Decca might have pressured them to be a covers band. Martin encouraged their writing.
In his book Tune In: The Beatles: All These Years, Mark Lewisohn suggests that had the Beatles signed with Decca, they might have had a few modest hits but never developed into the revolutionary force they became. The rejection, painful as it was at the time, might have been one of their biggest lucky breaks. 🍀
Even if nobody realized it at the time. 🎸✨
SOURCES & REFERENCES:
* The Complete Beatles Chronicle by Mark Lewisohn
* A Cellarful of Noise by Brian Epstein (ghostwritten by Derek Taylor), 1964
* Tune In: The Beatles: All These Years by Mark Lewisohn
* The Beatles Bible (beatlesbible.com) - comprehensive Beatles history resource
* Beatles Anthology documentary (1995) and accompanying album
* Multiple interviews and accounts from George Martin, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Pete Best, and Dick Rowe published over the decades
