Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Once Upon a Time There Was a Cavern

Dick Rowe has become famous as the Decca record executive who told Brian Epstein, "Groups with guitars are on the way out." But it was even worse than that. After having dismissed the Beatles' prospects so brusquely, Rowe decided to give them one more chance. Epstein ran a group of record stores in the north of England, which made the record companies a bit more inclined to do favors for him (or, rather, disinclined to cheese him off). So, on February 3, 1962, Rowe went up to Liverpool to see if the Beatles were all Epstein had cracked them up to be.

The crowd at the Cavern Club, as usual, was massive that Saturday night, and Rowe was stuck out in the rain waiting for a chance to get in. Finally, he said to himself, "Oh, sod it," and walked away without entering.

"Sod it" is apparently a British phrase meaning "I'll pass on the greatest opportunity in the history of pop music."

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