16. Remember Brian Poole and the Tremoloes?
On New Year’s Day, 1962, two bands auditioned for Decca Records in London. The company was looking for a new act which would appeal to younger audiences. After evaluating the auditions, the executives chose the second group to have auditioned, Brian Poole and the Tremeloes. They notified the first group’s manager of their decision, informing him that his band was too reliant on guitars and that in their opinion, “guitar groups were on the way out”. The manager, Brian Epstein, continued a search for a record label for his group, an act from Liverpool known as The Beatles. Another factor in the decision not made public at the time was that the Tremeloes were from the London area, which reduced travel costs in an England still economically crippled from World War II.
The audition the Beatles performed had been taped, and Epstein used the tapes to try to generate interest in the band he called “his boys”. He received rejection after rejection until they were heard by George Martin, a trained classical musician who at the time was working for EMI, producing comedy records for the Parlophone label. After the band played for him live he offered Epstein a recording contract, and in 1963 Beatlemania exploded. The band Decca rejected went on to sell over 800 million records and became one of the most influential and popular acts in the history of music. The man who rejected the Beatles at Decca, Dick Rowe, overcame his embarrassment by later signing The Rolling Stones to the label after George Harrison told him of the band during a mutual appearance on the television show Juke Box Jury.