10 Close Calls In Rock History

It's practically become a cliche giving the Beatles so many accolades over the past half a century of their existence. Despite people claiming that the group was a touch overrated back in the day, the endurance of these songs is enough to withstand pretty much anything else that has come down the pipeline since then. If Decca had had their way though, the Beatles would have just been a footnote in the history of Liverpool music.

During the early days of trying to get signed, the Fab Four were actually planning on signing with Decca, only to have the higher-up reject their initial audition tape because of what he perceived to be incompetence. In one of the greatest slipups in music history, the head of A&R at Decca actually took manager Brian Epstein aside to encourage him to look for teenage heartthrobs, since the groups with guitars would be on their way out soon enough.

Finding their label Parlophone shortly after, the Fabs made history in a matter of months with the success of albums like Please Please Me and A Hard Day's Night, signaling the British Invasion to come roaring across the world. Decca at least got a silver lining though, with George Harrison eventually turning them onto the Rolling Stones shortly after they started breaking on the scene. Although the music industry is an impossible thing to predict from one trend to the next, you really have to have limited taste if you can't see the potential in one of the greatest rock bands on Earth.