The Beatles: turned down after London audition in 1962
This week in 1962, The Beatles travelled in a van from Liverpool to a London audition with inauspicious results.
The band, dressed in leather and scruffy to boot - according to the website On This Day - travelled 220 miles for the famous recording audition.
A&R man Dick Rowe was ready and waiting at the Decca studios. His assistant, Mike Smith, had been to see the Beatles perform in Liverpool at what was to become the Cavern Club and had suggested the audition to their manager, Brian Epstein.
The session lasted approximately an hour and the Beatles - John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney and the group's first drummer Pete Best - performed 15 songs.
The boys were nervous, according to Ray Setterfield writing in On This Day. The session was not as good as it might have been. Smith, however, told the Liverpudlian lads that he "saw no problems" and they would hear what Decca would decide "in a few weeks."
Source: rte.ie
