On Monday, January 29, Brian takes the band to Beno Dorn, his tailor in Birkenhead, where the senior tailor tsks over the Beatles’ insistence that “the lapels had to be narrow and they wanted their trousers extremely narrow.” But the boys enjoy the whole experience enormously and leave the shopgirls swooning.

(The irony of John choosing—if unwillingly—to wear a suit and tie onstage delights Mimi. “Ha-ha, John Lennon, no more scruffs for you,” she cackles.)

A week later, Brian heads to London to meet with Decca execs, alone. He is taken to the executive dining room, where he’s greeted by Dick Rowe, the head of A&R, sales manager Steve Beecher-Stevens, and Arthur Kelland, one of his assistants. Having all these important men here is certainly a good sign, he assumes.

Not exactly.

Rowe speaks first. “Not to mince words, Mr. Epstein, we don’t like your boys’ sound. Groups of four guitarists are on the way out.”

Brian is gutted, but he quickly recovers. “You must be out of your mind,” he tells them. “These boys are going to explode. I am confident that one day they will be bigger than Elvis Presley.” He shows the execs a copy of Mersey Beat with the headline that reads BEATLES TOP POLL!

“The boys won’t go, Mr. Epstein. We know these things. You have a good record business in Liverpool. Stick to that.”

The insult—and the condescending delivery—is all about London snobbery. Brian’s sure of it.

He pushes back at them. Hard. He goes through a detailed list of why Decca is making a major mistake.

“How about this,” Rowe says. “Do you know Tony Meehan?”

“The former drummer for the Shadows?”

“That’s him. He’s with Decca A&R now. He has firsthand experience of what the teenagers want.”

Brian takes the meeting, but when he returns to his office on Saturday, February 10, he fires off a letter declining the offer of Mr. Meehan’s producing services, boasting that “since I saw you last the Group have received an offer of a recording Contract from another Company.”

This is an outright lie, but Brian is determined, with all his soul, to make Decca regret its decision.

Decca could have signed the boys for what it cost them to take me to lunch.

As Tony Meehan himself will say years later, “It was just a complete mess, as things generally are—a dreadful corporate blunder.”

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Got to pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues…

—“It Don’t Come Easy”

The boys sit together at a pub, stunned by Decca’s rejection.

“He’ll be kicking himself,” says Paul of Dick Rowe.

“I hope he kicks himself to death,” says John.

“I think Decca expected us to be all polished,” John later reflects. “We were just doing a demo. They should have seen our potential. I think a lot of halfwits were looking after it.”