19

Halfway through June 1962, Joe Flannery, the manager of Lee Curtis and the All Stars, drops by.

‘When are you going to join us, Pete?’ he asks.

Pete Best smiles. ‘You must be joking. Why would I want to quit the Beatles when we’re about to get our big break?’

Flannery stalls. ‘Maybe I’ve jumped the gun. It’s just a rumour going the rounds.’

‘Why would anyone start a rumour like that?’

Pete is mystified. He has no intention of leaving the Beatles, not after drumming with them these past two years.

Michael Ochs Archives/Handout

The conversation preys on his mind. What rumour? In mid-July he broaches the subject with Mr Epstein. Mr Epstein blushes and stammers. Pete cuts to the chase.

‘Look, Brian. Are there any plans to replace me in the Beatles?’

Mr Epstein brushes away his fears. ‘I’m telling you, as manager, there are no plans to replace you, Pete.’

That’s good enough for Pete. Nothing more is said. Things carry on as usual: each morning, Pete and their road manager, Neil Aspinall, set off in Neil’s van with all the Beatles’ gear, which is still kept at Pete’s mum’s huge house in Hayman’s Green. They pick up the other Beatles – John, Paul and George – along the way.

On 15 August the group plays two gigs at the Cavern, one at lunchtime, the other in the evening. ‘Pick you up tomorrow, John!’ calls Pete as he is leaving. ‘No,’ replies John. ‘I’ve got other arrangements.’

They are to be the last words ever spoken to Pete by any member of the Beatles.

Before Pete leaves the Cavern that night, Mr Epstein says he’d like to see him in his office at ten o’clock the next morning. Nothing odd about that: they often meet to discuss arrangements. Neil drives him in, and drops him off at the NEMS1 office. Mr Epstein seems uneasy, blathering away about nothing at all. He asks Pete how he thinks the group is doing. Pete says, ‘Fab,’ a word not as fashionable as it will shortly become. He senses that something is on Mr Epstein’s mind. Who can blame Epstein for his prevarication? He is still only twenty-seven years old, with a background in furniture sales.

Out of nowhere, Mr Epstein blurts out, ‘I’ve got some bad news for you. The boys and myself have decided that they don’t want you in the group any more, and that Ringo is replacing you.’

Pete finds it hard to speak. ‘Why?’

‘They don’t think you’re a good enough drummer, Pete,’ he says. Then he adds: ‘And George Martin doesn’t think you’re a good enough drummer.’ George Martin is the producer from Parlophone who auditioned the Beatles. When Pete was out of earshot, he told Brian Epstein that Pete couldn’t keep time, and that he planned on using a session drummer for the actual recording.

Pete says he thinks he’s just as good as Ringo, if not better. ‘Does Ringo know about this yet?’ Ringo is a good friend.

‘He’s joining on Sunday.’

Mr Epstein continues, briskly, with business. The phone rings. Mr Epstein picks up the receiver, and listens.

‘I’m still with him at the moment,’ he says, putting the receiver back down. He returns to their conversation. He says that while Pete is still under contract, he’ll pay him his current wage – £50 or £60 a week – and he’ll also put him in another group, and make him leader of it.

‘There are still a couple of venues left before Ringo joins,’ he adds, almost as an afterthought. ‘Will you play?’

Pete doesn’t know what to say, so he says yes. Then he leaves.

As Mr Epstein remembers it, the meeting lasted two hours. Pete thinks it lasted ten minutes.

Neil Aspinall is waiting for him downstairs. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,’ he says. ‘They’ve kicked me out!’ says Pete. Neil, who is going out with Pete’s mum, says in that case he’ll quit too. Pete talks him out of it. ‘Don’t be a fool – the Beatles are going places.’

Neil drops him home. The minute Pete closes the door, he bursts into tears. He feels like putting a stone round his neck and jumping off Pier Head. He can’t face playing another two gigs with the Beatles, and doesn’t turn up at the Riverpark Ballroom in Chester that night. ‘I had been betrayed, and sitting up there onstage with the three people who had done it would be like having salt rubbed into a very deep wound.’

Only later does he discover that the Beatles were offered a contract with Parlophone a fortnight ago. No one told him about it.

His forthright mother Mona, who helped manage the group before Brian came on the scene, and always calls them ‘Pete’s group’, immediately phones George Martin in London. The charming record producer assures her that, though he had wanted a different drummer for the recording session, it wasn’t up to him whether or not the Beatles kept Pete.

Mona berates Brian Epstein: ‘It’s jealousy, Brian, jealousy all the way, because Peter is the one who has the terrific following – he has built up the following in Liverpool for the Beatles!’ She is sure they got rid of Peter to stop him being the focus of attention, ‘with the others just props’.

Whodunnit? As so often with the Beatles, everyone has a different story. In The Beatles Anthology – which is, in Biblical terms, the Authorised Version – Paul recalls that after their audition at Abbey Road, George Martin took the other three to one side and said, ‘I’m really unhappy with the drummer. Would you consider changing him?’ ‘We said, “No! We can’t!” It was one of those terrible things you go through as kids. Can we betray him? No. But our career was on the line. Maybe they were going to cancel our contract.’

Yet George Martin always claimed to have been baffled by Pete’s sacking. He was unimpressed by his drumming, and he had certainly noticed that he was out on a limb from the other three, who all liked larking around. ‘But I never thought that Brian Epstein would let him go. He seemed to be the most saleable commodity as far as looks went. It was a surprise when later I learned that they had dropped Pete Best. The drums were important to me for a record, but they didn’t matter much otherwise. Fans don’t pay particular attention to the quality of drumming.’

But Pete Best always maintained that during his two years as a Beatle, not one of them ever complained about the quality of his drumming: ‘Right to the end we were still drinking together and seemingly the best of friends.’

As time went by, John grew increasingly outspoken on this issue, as on so many others.

‘We were pretty sick of Pete Best,’ he said in 1967. ‘He was a lousy drummer. He never improved. There was always this myth built up around him that he was great and Paul was jealous of him because he was pretty and all that crap … The only reason he was in the group in the first place was because the only way we could get to Hamburg, we had to have a drummer … we were always going to dump him when we could find a decent drummer.’

Ringo, too, showed his steel. Thirty years on, he was asked if he ever felt sorry for Pete. ‘No. Why should I? I was a better player than him. That’s how I got the job. It wasn’t on my personality. It was that I was a better drummer, and I got the phone call. I never felt sorry for him. A lot of people have made careers out of knowing the Beatles.’

As in the dénouement of an Agatha Christie, it was the least likely suspect who finally confessed. Many years later, George – quiet, thoughtful young George – came clean. Pete kept calling in sick, he said, so they used to ask Ringo to take his place, ‘and every time Ringo sat in, it seemed like “This is it.” Eventually we realised, “We should get Ringo in the band full time.” I was quite responsible for stirring things up. I conspired to get Ringo in for good. I talked to John until they came round to the idea … We weren’t very good at telling Pete he had to go. But when it comes down to it, how do you tell somebody? … Brian Epstein was the manager so it was his job, and I don’t think he could do it very well either. But that’s the way it was and the way it is.’

BEATLES CHANGE DRUMMER!

Ringo Starr (former drummer with Rory Storm & the Hurricanes) has joined the Beatles, replacing Pete Best on drums. Ringo has admired the Beatles for years and is delighted with his new arrangement. Naturally he is tremendously excited about the future.

The Beatles comment, ‘Pete left the group by mutual agreement. There were no arguments or difficulties, and this has been an entirely amicable decision.’

On Tuesday September 4th, the Beatles will fly to London to make recordings at EMI Studios. They will be recording numbers that have been specially written for the group.

Mersey Beat front page, 23 August 1962

When the news gets out, Mersey Beat receives a petition for Pete Best’s reinstatement, signed by hundreds of fans. They descend on his family’s home. Mo Best remembers her sitting room ‘bulging with fans, sighing and sobbing’. These fans also picket Mr Epstein’s offices in Whitechapel. The owner of the Cavern, Ray McFall, provides him with a bodyguard. Ringo receives a poison-pen letter.

The Beatles’ next concert at the Cavern is a rocky affair. Pete’s fans heckle them, chanting ‘Pete is Best!’ and ‘Ringo never, Pete Best forever!’ After half an hour of this, George loses his temper and snaps back. In reply, an aggrieved fan punches George, giving him a black eye. A Pete Best fan called Jenny writes a letter of complaint to George, who answers bullishly, ‘Ringo is a much better drummer, and he can smile – which is a bit more than Pete could do. It will seem different for a few weeks, but I think that the majority of our fans will soon be taking Ringo for granted … lots of love from George.’

In time, George is proved right. Fans are fickle. ‘I used to love Pete and was heartbroken when they sacked him,’ one of them, Elsa Breden, tells the Beatles’ biographer Mark Lewisohn over forty years later. ‘But it soon passed and it was as if he’d never been there. They were much better with Ringo, without a doubt. He gave them that solid backbeat – he’s a great rock’n’roll drummer – and he fitted in brilliantly.’

Just six days after Pete’s dismissal, John, Paul, George and Ringo are filmed by Granada TV at a lunchtime concert in the Cavern. Pete goes along to watch them. On the way out, Paul’s father Jim spots him and exclaims triumphantly, ‘Great, isn’t it? They’re on TV!’

‘Sorry, Mr McCartney,’ replies Pete. ‘I’m not the right person to ask.’

Over the next two years, the Beatles collectively gross £17 million.

For his part, Pete Best joins Lee Curtis and the All Stars. When Lee Curtis goes solo, they change their name to the Pete Best All-Stars. Then one of them leaves, and they become the Pete Best Four. Another leaves, and they become the Pete Best Combo. As the fame of the Beatles grows, interest in Pete fades. ‘There was little or no revenue coming in, barely enough to pay my bills, and I reached the stage where I found myself scratching around for enough money to buy a packet of cigarettes. I just couldn’t sit back and ignore the fact that I should have shared in the Beatles’ success, which I considered to be part of my heritage.’

Pete’s wife Kathy works on the biscuit counter at Woolworths. One day in 1967 he waits until she has left for work, goes up to the bedroom, locks the door, blocks any air gaps, places a pillow on the floor in front of the gas fire, and turns on the gas. He is fading away when his brother Rory arrives, smells gas, batters the door down and, screaming ‘Bloody idiot!’ saves his life.

That same year, Hunter Davies is finishing his pioneering biography of the Beatles. He often tells them tales from his travels, and they are always keen to know what old friends are up to. ‘They were mostly interested to hear what had happened, except when the subject of Pete Best came up. They seemed to cut off, as if he had never touched their lives. They showed little reaction when I said he was now slicing bread for £18 a week, though Paul did make a face. John asked a few more questions, but then forgot about it, and they all went back to the song they were recording.’

In 1969 Pete embarks on a career as a civil servant, working in an employment office. For many years his two daughters, Beba and Bonita, have no idea that their dad was once a Beatle.

He is now retired, and, aged seventy-eight, fronts the Pete Best Band. His website, www.petebest.com, promises ‘Right from the first beat, you’ll be immersed in nostalgia, listening to “the best years” of the Beatles, 1960–62.’ The website’s tagline is ‘The Man Who Put the Beat in Beatles’.

In 2019 the Sunday Times estimates Ringo Starr’s wealth at £240 million, which makes him the eighth-richest musician in the world. He is a knight of the realm, maintains homes in London, Los Angeles and Monte Carlo, and is married to Barbara Bach, a former Bond girl. Pete Best’s old drum kit can be seen in Liverpool’s The Beatles Story museum, sad and lonesome, a monument to loss; the tomb of the unknown drummer. On the audio guide, George Martin explains: ‘He was probably the best-looking, but he didn’t say much and he didn’t have the charisma the others had. More importantly, his drumming was OK but it wasn’t top-notch, in my opinion. I didn’t realise that the boys were thinking much the same thing, and so they took that as the final word, a catalyst, and poor Pete got the boot. I’ve always felt a bit guilty about that. But I guess he survived.’

1 North East Music Stores, owned at that stage by Brian Epstein’s father.