Credit: Far Out / Decca Records
October 25th, 2026 · 9:30pm GMT
There was no record label as sore as Decca back in 1962.
You gotta feel for ‘em. Nobody was expecting Merseybeat to travel any great distance beyond England’s North West; The Beatles were a respectable live outfit, counting hundreds of live shows under their belt, enjoying a fervent Hamburg following owing to their repeated club residencies in the German city, and beloved as Liverpool’s premier beat group.
Yet, according to Decca, “guitar groups are on the way out” and “the Beatles have no future in show business”. That was the response the band and manager Brian Epstein received from the label bigwigs after an audition at their London studios on New Year’s Day 1962. Driven down to West Hampstead by road manager Neil Aspinall, the Beatles, with Pete Best still on drums, performed a test run of songs selected by Epstein, Fab Four historian Mark Lewisohn positing that the setlist included cuts by Buddy Holly, The Coasters, Chuck Berry, and even a few numbers from their Silver Beetles days.
There’s been much speculation regarding Decca’s rejection, from the simple fact that the Beatles just weren’t especially remarkable on that day, or failing to capture that Cavern Club energy that won them the invite down to the label’s in-house studio. Decca’s spectacularly wrong prediction that guitars had no future in the charts was reinforced by the artists packing their roster, business largely concerned with classical LPs, easy listening, and a select handful of teen idols like Billy Fury.
Such a quip has also been suspected as a white lie. Decca were absolutely on the hunt for “guitar groups,” signing up local lads Brian Poole and the Tremeloes after showing the Beatles the door. The Tremeloes won Decca a few Top Tens, but it wasn’t exactly Beatlemania.
Decca were hurt. The Beatles were well on their way to conquering the nation; their second single, ‘Please Please Me’, nabbed number two, and the ‘From Me To You’ follow-up smashed the top spot. Loose talks had been had with Parlophone before even the Decca audition, but the Beatles’ first proper session with EMI arrived in June 1962 with George Martin in the producer’s chair, and their dazzling run of albums followed.
They weren’t gonna make the same mistake again. When another “guitar group” by the name of The Rolling Stones sought a record contract, Decca nearly took their arm off. It was a sweet deal. Off the bat, the Stones were given the OK for high royalty rates, artistic control, ownership of the master tapes, and the luxury of recording outside the Decca Studio. While they missed out on the Fab Four, they won a more than respectable near decade’s worth of smash singles and mammoth LPs with the Stones before the 1970s arrived.
Further reading: From The Vault
Decca then went on a mad rush to sign any rock band they could, grabbing The Moody Blues, Small Faces, and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, and later forming the progressive sub-label Deram Records, scooping up Cat Stevens, Procol Harum and an early David Bowie.
Lesson well and truly learned. The original Decca Beatles sessions would eventually resurface: ‘Searchin’’, ‘Three Cool Cats’, ‘The Sheik of Araby’, and John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s ‘Like Dreamers Do’ and ‘Hello Little Girl’ seeing the official light of day on 1995’s Anthology 1 compilation.
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