I arrived at Pete Best’s old house in Hayman’s Green on the evening of day four of the annual Beatles Week. The basement recreated the old Casbah Club. A very basementy basement, dank, dark and sweaty, it was bursting at the seams with men in their seventies who looked like Bernie Sanders or Bernard Manning. Most wore Beatles T-shirts. A tribute band was tuning up in an authentically sixties manner, saying ‘One-two, one-two’ over and over again, with no indication that they would ever make it to three.
The Casbah is less a shrine to the Beatles than to Pete Best. Ringo is the great unmentionable. At the entrance, photographs of the Beatles – John, Paul, George and Pete, all autographed by Pete – were on sale for £15. A newspaper cutting with the headline ‘10,000 SUPPORTING PETE BEST STREET BID’ was pinned to a red baize board. It posed an urgent question. In Liverpool, there’s a Paul McCartney Way and a John Lennon Drive. So why not a Pete Best Avenue?
Out in the garden, a tribute band from Indonesia, the Indonesian Beat Club, composed of five ‘die-hard Beatles lovers’, were playing a spirited version of ‘My Bonnie’, just like Pete and the rest of his band used to do, back in the day. Queuing for a drink, I heard someone mention a Pete Best Fan Club. It is centred around Twitter, where it boasts fifty-three followers. Tweets include ‘PETE is the BEST’, ‘I WANT PETE BEST SO BAAAAAD IT’S DRIVING ME MAD’, ‘Happiness Is Pete Best!’ and the poignant ‘MY PETE BEST GENTLY WEEEEEPSSS’.
Flyers near the entrance advertised The Magical Beatles Museum, run by Pete’s half-brother Roag, the son of Mona Best and Neil Aspinall. Its collection includes Pete’s Premier drum kit. History in the museum stops in June 1962: it is as though Ringo had never lived. Visitors are greeted by signs saying ‘PETE, JOHN, PAUL, GEORGE, STUART’. Roag bills it as ‘not just Liverpool’s most authentic Beatles museum, but the world’s most authentic Beatles museum. My oldest brother Pete Best was the original Beatles drummer with the Beatles from 1960 to 1962. He performed over 1,000 shows and recorded 27 tracks as a Beatle.’
Pete Best’s own website announces that ‘When not undertaking a variety of celebrity duties, Pete has a busy schedule touring with the Pete Best Band. The Pete Best Band captures the sound of the Beatles in their formative years – the early years for many “was” the Beatles.’