• Keeping up with the spirit, an interesting event apropos of the day:

    On New Year’s Day, 1962, the Beatles drove ten hours to London in a fierce snowstorm to audition for Decca Records and were rejected in what has gone down as one of the greatest mistakes in the history of the music industry.

    From Beatles historian Steve Bradley,

    Had they been signed by Decca they’d have an unsympathetic producer and recorded unsuitable material possibly at the expense of their own compositions. Recording their first album with Martin a year later they had a better drummer, more studio experience, another year of songwriting and gigging, and more Hamburg trips completed – they were a different band. When rejected by Decca they felt it was the worst thing to happen, but history shows it was one of their biggest lucky breaks.