31. You Took the Tremeloes Over Who?!
Signing Brian Poole and the Tremeloes was not a bad decision in itself. The band had some success in the United Kingdom, and in 1963, they entered the UK charts with a cover of the Isley Brothers’ Twist and Shout. They followed it up with a UK chart-topping cover of the Contours’ Do You Love Me. A year later, they did a cover of Roy Orbison’s Candy Man that pleased the Brits, and a cover of the Crickets’ Someone, Someone, which made it to number 2 on the UK charts.
The bad decision was rejecting and declining to sign the other band that had auditioned the same day as the Tremeloes: The Silver Beatles, soon to shorten their name to The Beatles. Oops. The decision to pass on The Beatles in favor of Brian Rowe and the Tremeloes would make Dick Rowe and Decca Records synonymous with bad decisions and catastrophic commercial misjudgments.