87: The Beatles’ Decca Audition

1161-99-37The New Years Day 1962 showcase at Decca Records in London did not pan out as The Beatles and Brian Epstein had hoped. But the decision to turn down the Beatles has long been regarded in rock history as one of the most bone-headed executive decisions ever made. But was it? Should it more properly be regarded as a lucky break? Find out what Robert and Richard have to say as they analyze the material performed and what it said about the group’s thought process. Songs include “Like Dreamers Do,” “Hello Little Girl” and “Silence is Golden.”

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16 thoughts on “87: The Beatles’ Decca Audition”

  1. Very entertaining guys, thank you, brought back some wonderful memories of my Cavern Club days!like seeing Stu Sutcliffe sing “Love me tender”on his one and only lunchtime session appearance with the Beatles! I was also in the Cavern on the day Brian Epstein first visited the club! I purchased all my early vinyl collection from NEMS…Ah…Happy days!

    1. Great memories there you lucky man. I was too young to see them at The Cavern (still at school) but my mates older sister used to tell me about this great group who played every lunchtime in town. That’s the first time I had heard the Beatles mentioned. Summer 1962.

  2. The Decca audition is so embarrassing. Paul in particular in the early songs is so timid and weak he gets better on the last few songs. Lennon was also so timid and of course the selections are just damn bizarre! All for the best as it turned out. And whoever mic’d the guitars obviously hated the instrument.

  3. I would have signed the Tremelos over these guys, too. Really weak work from all four, especially Paul and John in that order. George and Pete are actually pretty solid on “Sheik Of Araby” but as you both point out that wasn’t going to break it for them down south.

  4. Enjoyed the programme and the judicious mix of original versions with the Decca recordings Re the falsetto trilling on “Bulldog Drummond” in Searchin’, is it possible that could be a conscious imitation of Goon Show character Minnie Banister as played by Spike Milligan? Something done to amuse each other, perhaps.

    My only other thought is with regard to Joe Brown and where *he* got the song The Sheik of Araby from. When he was interviewed by Brian Matthew on BBC Radio 2 in the 1980s Matthew played him the recording of I’m Henery the Eighth I Am by Harry Champion, complete with verse. Brown expressed surprise at hearing the verse and said that because he was brought up above a pub he knew the chorus from singalongs but had never heard the verse before. I imagine he heard The Sheik of Araby in the same way.

    1. Good catch on the Minnie Banister thing. John especially was a huge Goon Show fan, writing an introduction to a collection of Goon Show scripts Spike Milligan put out in the 1970s. It is her voice, right out of “The Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler of Bexhill-on-Sea” or something.

  5. Generally, let’s all be grateful they underperformed so mightily at Decca. Had they wowed the Decca folks they never would have found their way into the sympathetic arms of George Martin and…well there’s no telling how history would have played out.

  6. Their early repertoire was so diverse that they really had a tough time defining themselves musically, I think. Lewisohn really blew my mind with the revelation that J&P stopped writing for years and had to be prodded into playing their own tunes. It seems ludicrous in retrospect. George Martin really helped bring the band into focus. They did a few semi-corny cover tunes on the early LPs, but really steered clear of the wackier ones.

  7. The questions about “Why this, why not that?” I’m wondering if a lot of it had to do with Pete’s drumming. The songs we know that they tore up in Hamburg and later on Beatle albums had Ringo on the kit. Man, if you listen to these Decca tunes, with Pete, there’s like, ONE beat that he’s mastered. It’s POSSIBLE that those other great songs (Long Tall Sally, Roll Over Beethoven, etc.) sucked with Pete on drums and therefor wouldn’t have been good for the audition. I mean, look at what Ringo does at the end of Both of those tunes- NO WAY Pete could’ve done that from everyth8ing we’ve heard.

    1. I know from personal experience that it is next to impossible to give a good performance with a crap drummer on the kit. You can’t relax to sing properly, for a start. Poor Pete. His playing really never developed despite the endless hours of stage time.

    2. BW I am no drumming expert, but you’re comparing Pete to Ringo’s work two years later. Who knows where Pete would have been with his drumming in that time or how he would have reacted to working in the studio. I was disappointed the programme didn’t compare in more detail songs from Decca with versions done later on in their career, (for example the Decca version of Crying Waiting Hoping with the BBC version). Here I don’t see Ringo’s drumming or the group’s performance as significantly superior, but I could be wrong. Finally I quite like the Decca version of Money, it sounds pretty raw and energetic and Pete’s drums on this occasion I thought were effective. Reminded me a bit of Adam and the Ants!

      1. Here’s the thing: we can speculate all we like about where Pete would have gone as a drummer in The Beatles, and infer perhaps he may have reached a Ringo-like level of proficiency, had they kept him around. But that’s not likely: we KNOW what he sounded like in the outfit bearing name that recorded for a few years during the ’60s; we also know that his services were never in demand after 1962, except as a marketing tool. Even when he began playing live again in the ’90s, he let his brother handle the heavy-lifting, drum-wise. Ringo, on the other hand, has only gotten better and better. Not everyone is cut out to be an exceptional drummer.

        The thing about Ringo – all things being equal for the sake of discussion skillset-wise – is what he brought in terms of spirit. That uplift they all felt when he was with them was immediate and unmistakable. If you’re a musician and all of sudden, someone sharing the stage with you gives up an uplift that excites you musically and raises your game – that’s pure gold and Ringo clearly had that, the same way Billy Preston coming on the scene made everyone better.

  8. Who was it that said ‘guitar groups are on the way out’ and that’s why they didnt sign them. So what did thet do? Sign The Tremeloes. A guitar group!
    Thank god for all of us they failed the audition.

  9. Really interesting show. I had a few thoughts. First off, I think there’s a sort of rhetorical “where’s the atom beat” question thrown out there by one of you and, although Pete is clearly not up to the challenge in general, the atom beat is there, it’s just buried in the mix, a case of something that worked well in a boomy live setting not cutting it in the studio.

    My second thought delves into the big question, the should-they-have-signed-them question. Although I certainly heard these tracks in the 80s (via those Deccagone singles), I hadn’t heard more than a snippet or two until I was in Concerto Records in Amsterdam last summer, when they were actually playing it in the shop. For a split second, I thought “huh, sounds like the Beatles but with a different drummer,” and then realized what it was. But I did listen as I shopped and then bought a copy for further investigation.

    Of course I agree that the drumming is mostly terrible. And both John and Paul disappoint with many of their lead vocals. But George sings really well and the backup vox throughout are not only nicely conceptualized, but they’re well-executed, too. And, as Lewisohn speaks about in Tune In, rock groups singing with harmony where not exactly a common thing at that moment in time. Aside from Pete, they mostly play really well. But the question I found myself asking while listening to your show was whether or not there was enough material for a single, because that’s what they would’ve been signed up for. And my answer is that yes, there’s definitely – at minimum – a single here, something Decca could have pushed. Of course, they’d have to pull an “Andy White,” but I think there’s no question that the Beatles – at that point in time – could have made a completely competent 45. And, assuming that Decca’s rejection was solely about quality, that’s where they blew it. But that assumption is probably a flawed one, as the mythologizing about this day began pretty quickly and so it’s impossible to know what exactly was going on that day.

    So who really knows? Were they really only going to sign one band that day? How big a role did the fact that they weren’t local play? Was the audition only a favor to an important retailer? Did they know Epstein would order however many copies he later said he would have? Interesting.

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