The Beatles were invited down to London for a recording test at Decca Studios sixty years ago today, on New Years Day 1962. (In those days New Years Day wasn’t a bank holiday so the studio would have been working.)
This was meant to be the band’s big break. Decca had indicated that they liked the group and wanted to see how they got on in a studio before signing them. The Beatles were Hamburg battle-hardened, tight as a drum, tough as teak, progressing at warp speed. Their smart new manager Brian Epstein had delivered this opportunity within weeks of coming on board & they knew they were going to knock it out of the ground….weren’t they?
They spent most of New Years Eve travelling down in a van from Liverpool. The weather was icy cold and much of the country was covered in snow making the journey slow and hazardous. They left Liverpool after 11am but it wasn’t until 10pm that they arrived at their hotel – The Royal, now replaced by a more modern hotel version, The Royal National – on Southampton Row. Not the ideal preparation.
What to do that night?
Stay in and rehearse ahead of the following day’s big audition?
Sod that for a game of soldiers.
They went out, of course. It was New Years Eve after all! And they were in their teens / early 20’s, for heavens sake.
Brian had worked in a book and record shop on Charing Cross Road when he’d previously briefly lived in The Smoke so they jumped in the van and headed out to that area looking for action. The shop, Ascroft and Daw, was at 83 Charing Cross Road.
60 years later I followed them to see what is left of the London the Beatles encountered all those years ago.
It didn’t start well.
Ascroft and Daw is long gone. Much of Charing Cross Road is now modern buildings including where Number 83 would have stood. A glass and steel non-entity occupies the site looking across Cambridge Circus. Charing Cross Road was always famous as a street of book shops but sadly they are few and far between today. I could only find a couple of book shops still standing as I walked along it.
Back in 1961, the Beatles waited in a pub whilst Neil Aspinall parked the van. Which pub it was is unknown but there is a fair chance it could have been in either The Spice Of Life or The Cambridge, both nearby and long established tourist pubs. They also went to a cafe to buy food but were gobsmacked at the prices and gobby with the cafe owner who kicked them out.
Still there was always nearby Trafalgar Square, the traditional hub of Londons new year celebrations, to see in the New Year. Perhaps they’d always planned to be be there at midnight?
Even these proved a damp squib. The weather was so unwelcoming that Trafalgar Square attracted the smallest crowd in decades. The boys stayed past midnight and then Neil drove them back to the Royal Hotel. What did they dare to dream as they waited for sleep to descend? Were they going to be successful at the recording test? Was 1962 going to be their year? Of course, of course…
The Decca Studios, where they were due the following morning, were located in Broadhurst Gardens by West Hampstead tube station. Although closed as a studio in 1980, the building remains and is occupied by the English National Opera as a reheasal space. It is not in the best nick. A homeless person had been using the front door as a place to sleep. And the area in front of the building was litter strewn. Interestingly the only plaque on the building is not Beatles related but rather marks the studio as the place where Lonnie Donnegan recorded “Rock Island Line” to kickstart the skiffle craze, although this did inspire John Lennon to form his band.
I went round the back to see if there was more to the building. A rather cute little mews with some pretty houses led to a sparse red brick facade.
This part of the building looked as though it may have been altereded sine 1962. It was likely that Neil Aspinall would have parked the van at the rear and the boys would have carried their instruments and amps through the back door into one of the studios to record.
The far side of the building is quite run down.
When I was taking photos a woman approached me. We started chatting. Her name was Liz. She had lived in a flat backing onto the studios for all of her 70 years. Her parents had moved to the place in 1945 and she had been born there in 1951.
Liz was very happy to talk. She complained of the lack of care of the building taken by the ENO and pointed out several bits of basic maintenance that were long overdue.
“Do you have memories of when it was a recording studio?”
“I do,” she replied. “especially the days Tommy Steele came and there’d be loads of young people waiting round the front for him.”
She didn’t remember the Beatles visit, though why should she, they were not famous then.
“I didn’t even like the Beatles at the time. I preferred The Honeycombs!” she stated. “Though I changed my mind about them when I grew up a bit.”
She said it used to be lovely when the ENO were fully using the building but that it seemed a lot quieter now.
“See those rooms on the first floor,” she pointed upwards. “That’s where the costume department was. I used to chat to the ladies when they came outside for a cup of tea or a smoke. Look, there are still some mannequins up there.” As indeed there were.
So it was good to see the old studio still had some life left in it, even though I had to agree with Liz that it looked very run down. Another homeless person was asleep in the rear doorway. What looked like human excrement was on the ground. And Liz poined out used needles along the side of the building. It really could do with some money and love being spent on it.
And how did the Beatles get on that day back in January 1962?
Not well if the truth be told.
I’m writing this at 5pm on New Year’s Day 2022. Exactly 60 years ago at the same time of day, the Beatles would have been in their cold uncomfortable van making the long journey back up north and would surely have known that it hadn’t gone as well as they’d hoped. They all knew that they’d been really nervous. They may even have admitted to being intimidated by the studio and its professional engineers. They certainly hadn’t played well (the recordings are widely available and not impressive). Whatever hope they had of being offered a contract by Decca evaporated when Brian received a letter from them in the following days. It was a no, thank you. 1962 wasn’t going to be the Beatles’ year. They weren’t quite ready.
They needed more time. More gigs. Two more trips to Hamburg would follow. They needed a new drummer. Ringo joined them in the summer and they suddenly swung.
They’d keep working. And when opportunity next knocked, they would be ready….
Decca’s big rivals EMI came calling.
John, Paul, George and now Ringo would be back in the van heading to London. This time they would go to EMI’s studios in Abbey Road. George Martin offered them a contract on his Parlophone label.
I think of how deflated they must have felt going hom on New Year’s Day 1962.
But don’t worry boys, 1963 would be your year. And what a year that would be!
