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| "Mersey Beat" 31 May, 1962. |
At the EMI A&R meeting for the July releases, George Martin announced that he had a new group called The Beatles. He was met with laughter. Then after he had played "Love Me Do", he was met with criticism, especially about the drumming.
Martin decided against releasing the Beatles record. He called Brian Epstein and this is the phone call where Brian started crying and begging Martin to reconsider.
Brian made a deal to purchase the minimum amount of discs EMI would press for the initial release.
Martin agreed, but wanted to re-record the songs. In early August 1962, Brian had to explain to The Beatles what had happened to their July release. That set the wheels in motion to get rid of Pete Best.
It would also eliminate Mona Best and her involvement in managing The Beatles with Brian. That's why the record came out in October instead of July.
The original June 1962 EMI contract was with John, Paul, George, and Pete. Brian always held Pete's share in escrow and only paid Ringo a salary, because he knew Pete could sue and win 25% of the Beatles' EMI income from the original 4 year deal.
This theory was posted by the founding editor of "Mersey Beat", Bill Harry on his Facebook page, but it came to him as a message from James Scroggins. So, what do you think? It kind of makes a bit of sense. Liverpudlians seem to forever have claimed that the rumours of Epstein buying up huge quantities of "Love Me Do" to make an impressions on the charts was nonsense. Maybe so, but perhaps he had to buy a substantial amount of the first pressing just to close the deal with Martin & EMI? And this theory also takes care of the question about why Pete Best was sacked.