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In the last few days I've come to the conclusion that Decca was NOT an artist test ie: to see if they were any good. It was a recording test [EDIT: correct term is "commercial test"], to see if they could get a decent sound out of them in the studio. Mike had seen them at the Cavern, so he knew what they sounded like and what their repertoire was. I don't think he actually cared what songs they played that day because it was the A&R man's job to find material for the group, not the other way around. In those days I find it difficult to grasp that any A&R guy would let a group waltz into the studio and have them and their manager dictate what they should release. When they went to EMI, George Martin disregarded the material they played him because he thought it was all corny. Like anyone else in that job, he set about finding them a song to record from professional songwriters. So I think Mike would have basically been ignoring the songs and concentrating instead on seeing if he could get a good sound out of them in the studio ie: a recording test. The biggest giveaway for me is that he's fiddling with the reverb levels all the time. I had never thought about this before until I started demixing it. Four or five songs start out more or less dry and then the reverb on the vocal increases, sometime drastically so. On other songs, he's cranked up the bass guitar to unheard of levels, perhaps in an effort to beef up the sound. The drums are sometimes mixed faintly and sometimes prominently. This all sounds to me like someone saying "play me a bunch of songs while we experiment with the sound." So basically I think they failed that test, not because Dick Rowe said so but because they did NOT work well inside a studio. The sound that came over well in a crowded club did not come over well when you shone a bright light on it in the studio. Pete's bass drum - the driving factor in their stage sound at that time - comes over as monotonous and overpowering. Paul's Elvis voice doesn't gel with the other two voices. George is straining all his vocals because he's used to shouting into a mic and has never heard his voice played back before. In short, they had a sound that worked live but had not ever heard their repertoire recorded professionally, so they had never had an opportunity to reflect on their style and adapt it. When they got to EMI they had exactly the same problem, because Love Me Do and Besame Mucho basically sound rubbish. Norman Smith said there was a discussion afterwards about their amps and how they had to be upgraded, but I think there was probably also a great deal of mentoring over the next few months from George Martin about how to adapt their style to the studio. He quickly identified the most obvious problem - the drummer - and rectified it in his own way by summarily dispensing with Pete. He then didn't like Ringo either and I think this probably rocked them to their core and a lot of practise and re-shaping their sound followed from this. It's no coincidence I think that their entire sound changed drastically at this juncture, almost entirely due to Ringo and George Martin in my opinion.
So, no, I don't think they were any good before that. They were a good bar band with an unusual stage presence and humour. But let's face it, their early songs were pretty average and the sound they made at Decca is underwhelming. They didn't sound any better on Here We Go either, but just had the benefit of kids clapping and screaming. If those first two BBC shows had been done in an empty studio and we had them in high quality, I think they would sound virtually identical to Decca. And therein lies the problem: you can't take your audience into the studio. You have to find a way of adapting your sound so that it still comes over as exciting in a sterile environment. That to me is what they learnt from GM in the last half of 1962. At Decca they had no clue about any of that stuff.
