SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW THE BEATLES?

“GUITAR BANDS ARE ON THE WAY OUT, MR. EPSTEIN.” 

Those were the infamous words of Dick Rowe – the talent scout for Decca Records – to the Beatles’ manager after a nervous first audition in January 1962. The band had been invited to London on the strength of their live performances in Liverpool, arriving in the midst of a swirling snowstorm on New Year’s Day. But they failed to impress Rowe, who in rejecting them inadvertently became forever known as the man who turned down the most successful band in history. Rowe wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice though – he signed up the Rolling Stones later that year. 

THEY RECORDED THEIR DEBUT ALBUM IN A DAY. 

Having started out playing Liverpool’s famous Cavern Club and performing at various venues in Hamburg, the Beatles travelled to London in 1963 to record their first full-length album, Please Please Me. With four singles already released, the band faced the marathon task of recording ten new songs in just under thirteen hours. The result was an invigorating work of early rock-‘n’-roll that shot straight to the top of the charts. (By comparison, the later Beatles albums took several months to record – and the single “Strawberry Fields Forever” required 60 hours of mixing.)