This Was Alan Freeman, Not the Alan Freeman the dj(fluff), but alan freeman the decca director.
He is a very nice humble man, he was the director of spark records when i met him, Everybody seemed to have a dig at him about the day he turned away the beatles so i couldnt resist it,
i asked him what really happened and after he told me i could understand why, he said that one day about 1961 or 1962, a man called brian epstein made an appointment to see him at decca, when he arrived, he had a badly recorded tape of a band playing live in germany,
alan said you could hardly hear the band for the sound of talking and klinking of glasses, the band was called the beatles but they sounded just like background music and he said he couldnt really hear them, so what could he do?, spend money on an unknown band, or spend it on his biggest artist johnny mathis,
so obviously he went for mathis, and the rest is history. But can anybody really blame him, he never really forgave himself but who would waste money on a band that couldnt be heard properly and were completely unknown.
What ashame that this should happen to a nice man like alan.
Jim.
