3 Ways The Beatles Mistreated Their Former Bandmates: ‘We Were Awful to Him’

Before they were the Fab Four, there were five Beatles. The Beatles’ former bandmates, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best, never saw the level of success the band enjoyed, only playing with them in the group’s earliest days. While they left for different reasons — Sutcliffe wanted a career change, and Best was fired — neither was treated particularly well by their former bandmates. Here are three ways that The Beatles treated their former bandmates poorly.

1. The Beatles made their former bandmate the butt of every joke

John Lennon was good friends with Sutcliffe, who played with The Beatles as a guitarist. Still, he often mistreated his friend.

“[Lennon] was a bit aggressive at first. If he found he could browbeat you then you were under his thumb,” a friend, Billy Harry, told The Guardian. “He used to treat Stuart [Sutcliffe] really badly at times, humiliate him in front of people.”

Still, Lennon said that he wasn’t the only one who was consistently rude to Sutcliffe. Lennon noted that everyone teased him, particularly Paul McCartney.

“We were awful to him sometimes,” Lennon said, per The Beatles: The Authorized Biography by Hunter Davies. “Especially Paul, always picking on him. I used to explain afterwards to him that we didn’t dislike him, really.”

Tensions between McCartney and Sutcliffe ran so high that they once got into a physical altercation onstage.

2. The Beatles were afraid to fire their former bandmate themselves

Sutcliffe eventually quit The Beatles, but Best would have remained with the group if he could have. His bandmates stunned him by firing him, though. They didn’t want to talk to Best about it themselves, so they had their manager, Brian Epstein, break the news to him.

“He said, ‘I’ve got some bad news for you. The boys want you out and Ringo in,'” Best recalled. “It was a complete bombshell. I was stunned. I couldn’t say anything for two minutes.”

No one could give Best a definite reason why he was fired, which frustrated him. It stung more that his former bandmates wouldn’t’ speak to him.

“I’m not saying I’d change the outcome, but at least give me the decency of being there and [letting me] confront them,” he told the Telegraph in 2018.

3. They asked for protection against Pete Best

Best said that he has not spoken to any of his former Beatles bandmates or his replacement, Starr, since they fired him. They played some of the same shows after his firing, and the Beatles steadfastly ignored Best when they saw him. They even wanted protection against him, asking concert promoter Sam Leach to safely escort them to the stage. 

“[McCartney] said, ‘Will you walk John and me onstage when they do the change?'” Leach said, per the book Paul McCartney: A Life by Peter Ames Carlin. “I asked why, and he said, ‘Pete might give us a smack.'”

Leach said that Best didn’t seem angry, just defeated.

“I knew Pete wouldn’t do anything, he’s a gentle guy,” Leach said. “And when they did pass in the hallway, Pete just put his head down. And I just felt rotten.”