THE DECCA TAPES is a bootleg album consisting of fifteen recordings made by The Beatles at a London audition for Decca Records Ltd on the 1st January, 1962. The record, as ‘illegally’ available, has no connection whatsoever with the Decca Record Company of course. The historical significance of these tapes is vast: it illustrates where the Beatles were at this crucial juncture of their career. Less flatteringly, it illustrates how vastly they improved between the time of this audition and their first official album release, Please Please Me, 15 months later. It was the first audio document of any kind to capture a truly high-fidelity, professionally recorded performance of a group that had already been working for five years. As a fairly well-rounded sampling of their repertoire just half a year so before they finally clinched that much longed-for recording contract, it’s of enormous historical significance. For it not only reveals what the band sounded like, more or less, just before they first established themselves as recording artists - it also illustrates just how far they had to go before they cut their first chart single eight months later. It’s also by far the most comprehensive snapshot of how they sounded when Pete Best was still in the drummer’s chair, his ousting in favor of Ringo Starr still seven-and-a-half months down the road.
The story behind how the Beatles came to be auditioning for one of Britain’s largest record labels on New Year’s Day 1962 is a long and winding tale in itself. Though it had been less than a month since Brian Epstein offered his services as manager, he’d swung into action immediately after their first meeting, even before the first contract had been signed to formalize the agreement. As an entry in the previous chapter stated, he’d played an acetate of the Beatles performing live at the Cavern for Tony Barrow that helped lead him to Decca A&R man Mike Smith. Taking full advantage of his leverage as the manager of NEMS, one of the biggest record stores in Northern England, Epstein had gotten Smith up from London to watch the Beatles play live at the Cavern on December 13, 1961.
Smith seems to have been genuinely impressed by what he saw of the band on stage - albeit in front of a Liverpool audience, at the Beatles’ chief stomping ground, that was guaranteed to give them an enthusiastic reception. «The Beatles were tremendous,» he said about 40 years later when interviewed for the Pete Best DVD documentary "Best of the Beatles". «Not so much my own reaction, but the crowd’s reaction, was incredible.» Such was the speed at which things could move even at major labels in those days that he arranged an audition in Decca’s London studios for just a few weeks later.It was a big break, so they thought, and no doubt the Beatles were both excited about the opportunity and impressed that their new manager had set something up so quickly. However, the audition would not take place under optimum circumstances. There was the matter of the date scheduled, to begin with. It’s long puzzled some fans (particularly outside of the UK) why an audition would be scheduled for New Year’s Day (on a Monday morning, no less), but in the early 1960s it wasn’t yet a national holiday in Britain. It wasn’t a holiday week for the Beatles either, who had just played the Cavern on Friday and Saturday nights, and spent most of Sunday in a van with their equipment on a ten-hour drive through snowstorms to London. Driver and roadie Neil Aspinall even got lost at one point, and as if the journey weren’t enough to set them on edge, upon arrival a couple of seedy guys on the London streets tried to connive their way into using the van as a safe haven for smoking pot - still a highly exotic substance in 1961 and then, as now, illegal.
So Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Pete Best probably weren’t in the best of humor, or as well rested as they might have been, when they arrived at Decca Studios in West Hampstead in North London at around 11:00 a.m. the following morning. Brian Epstein (who’d traveled down separately by train) was there too, and all were nervous and slightly annoyed when Smith showed up late, having spent much of the previous night celebrating the New Year. Then Smith insisted that the Beatles use Decca’s amplifiers, rather than the ones they’d gone to so much trouble to schlep down from Liverpool - not without some justification, as the amps, not top-of-the-line to start with, had seen much wear and tear over the course of several hundred gigs or so.
In spite of their jitters, the Beatles managed to lay down 15 songs, on two-track mono tape with no overdubbing, in the relatively small time allotted to them. Having completed their recording session the Beatles returned to Liverpool and awaited Decca’s decision. Three months later, in March 1962, Brian Epstein received a reply from Decca – they had turned the Beatles down.
Although Decca turned the Beatles down, and the recordings on this album which come from those audition sessions were never intended for release, they are good. The complete 15 song tape of the session - including a dozen covers and three Lennon-McCartney originals - “Hello Little Girl”, “Like Dreamers Do” and “Love Of The Loved”, which they later gave away to other recording artists (The Fourmost, The Applejacks and Cilla Black, respectively), has been much bootlegged since the 1970s, and has periodically appeared on piecemeal semi-legal releases.
They were so poorly distributed (and packaged), however, that the vast majority of listeners from the general public still had not heard any of the Decca tapes before five of the tracks were included on Anthology 1, in 1995. Most Beatles fans still have yet to hear any of the other ten tracks, although they’re perennials on uncounted bootlegs to the present day. Anyone willing to look just a little bit further than conventional record stores can find all 15 cuts, to be frank. But as one of the very most important groups of unreleased Beatles recordings, as well as a crucial document of the early days of the best band there ever was, the Decca audition deserves official release, with the kind of historically minded packaging it merits.
Este bootleg, originariamente aparecido nos anos 70, é algo de histórico e irrepetível. Primeiro porque reúne os primeiros 15 temas gravados pelos Beatles (ainda com Pete Best à bateria) na audição realizada nos estúdios da editora Decca Records, em Londres, no dia 1 de Janeiro de 1962. Depois, porque ao contrário da esmagadora maioria dos bootlegs, que por regra apresentam um som deficiente, este “DECCA TAPES”, já nessa primeira “edição” em vinil tinha um som óptimo, muito parecido com o dos lançamentos legais.
Ao longo dos anos muitas foram as edições piratas que se fizeram deste album: algo de todo incompreensível, dada a qualidade do som e da importância histórica do disco. Apenas em 1995, quando do lançamento da primeira Antologia, é que cinco das faixas foram repescadas e finalmente legalmente editadas.
Voltando atrás, aos finais de 1961: já como empresário dos Beatles, Brian Epstein era muito conceituado no mundo dos discos, por ser dono de uma das melhores lojas do Norte de Inglaterra. O seu prestígio junto à gravadora Decca era dos melhores, tendo conseguido que um seu representante, Mike Smith, fosse enviado ao Cavern Club em Liverpool para ouvir os Beatles. Smith gostou tanto do que ouviu que de imediato ficou agendada uma deslocação à capital logo para o primeiro dia do novo ano. Para chegar a Londres, os Beatles utilizaram uma camioneta alugada por Neil Aspinall, levando instrumentos e amplificadores, mas que na hora da apresentação não valeram de nada, pois o pessoal da gravadora preferiu que fossem usados os disponíveis no estúdio.
O repertório foi selecionado por Epstein, para mostrar a performance do grupo, com 15 músicas num espaço de uma hora, diante dos representantes da Decca Records A&R, mas a apresentação não foi tão produtiva quanto esperavam. Como se sabe, os responsáveis da editora resolveram na altura assinar contrato com o grupo Brian Poole & The Tremeloes, preterindo os Beatles (se o arrependimento matasse esses mesmos responsáveis teriam caído fulminados apenas alguns meses depois). Entre outras coisas, alegaram que grupos de Rock com guitarra em breve estariam fora de moda. Epstein respondeu então «que estava completamente convencido de que aqueles garotos seriam maiores do que Elvis Presley». Com uma cópia da fita da sessão debaixo do braço, Brian Epstein rumou então a outras paragens, acabando por levar a fita a George Martin da EMI-Parlophone. O resto, como se diz, é história.
A grande ironia é que os estúdios da Decca em Hampstead ficam a menos de 3 kilómetros do Abbey Road Studios em St. John's Wood, estúdio onde os Beatles viriam a gravar os maiores sucessos da sua carreira.
