Video: 'Beatles Decca Audition' (first 15 clips are from audition in the likely order performed)

(New Year’s Day, Monday, January 1, 1962, 11:00 a.m. GMT; during The Beatles’ Decca audition) — Liverpudlian rock and roll band The Beatles (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Pete Best) auditioned today for Mike Smith, an A&R manager at Decca Records, at Decca’s studios in Broadhurst Gardens, West Hampstead, north London.

They arrived in London after a ten-hour drive through stormy conditions on New Year’s Eve with the group and roadie Aspinall squashed into a van with all their equipment.

At the time, the standard procedure for a test of this type was to record between two and five songs and then quickly usher the artists out of the studio. However, the Beatles ended up recording fifteen songs, and the recording session was extended after a lunch break into the afternoon.

For the setlist, Epstein and the Beatles decided on a selection of songs that the Beatles had performed in various clubs over the years, along with three Lennon–McCartney originals.

About a month later, Decca Records rejected the Beatles. The executives felt that “guitar groups are on the way out” and “the Beatles have no future in show business.”

Decca instead chose Brian Poole and the Tremeloes who auditioned the same day as the Beatles, because they were local and would require lower travel expenses.