Pete Best Once Wished He ‘Never Set Eyes’ on The Beatles
Before Ringo Starr, The Beatles had Pete Best. The drummer was with the band in its earliest days, traveling with them to Hamburg for their residency and playing cramped shows at Liverpool clubs. Just before the band hit it big, though, they fired Best. He struggled with the abrupt end to his career with the band, particularly as Beatlemania began to sweep the country. Best said that for a time, he wished he’d never met his former bandmates.
Pete Best was the original drummer for The Beatles
Best joined The Beatles in 1960 and proved to be a solid addition to the band. He gave them a drummer, and his mother opened The Casbah, a venue where the band regularly performed. Best remained with the group until 1962 when they abruptly fired him. The band’s manager, Brian Epstein, called Best into his office and broke the news to him, as Best’s bandmates were afraid to tell him.
“He said, ‘I’ve got some bad news for you. The boys want you out and Ringo in,'” Best recalled, per The Beatles: The Authorized Biography by Hunter Davies. “It was a complete bombshell. I was stunned. I couldn’t say anything for two minutes.”
Even more frustrating, Best didn’t feel like there was any reason for the band to fire him.
“I started asking him why and I couldn’t get any definite reasons,” he said. “He said George Martin wasn’t too pleased with my playing. He said the boys thought I didn’t fit in. But there didn’t seem anything definite. At last I said if that’s the way it is, then that’s it. I went out and told Neil [Aspinall] who was waiting outside. I must have looked white. I told him I’d been booted out after two years with them. I didn’t know why. I said I couldn’t get a direct answer.”
Pete Best said he wished he’d never known the band
After The Beatles, Best played with other bands before giving up music in 1965. He passed up on lucrative opportunities to share his life story, wanting to separate himself from the band as much as possible.
“What good would that have done, apart from the money?” he asked. “It would just have seemed like sour grapes. I just wanted to try and get a life of my own, but it took a long time. What I dreaded most was people’s cruelty. When I met people, I knew what they were going to say or think. I was the bloke that was no good.”
He said that he always knew the band would be successful, which made his firing sting even more.
“That was what was really disappointing, knowing what I was going to miss,” he said. “I did regret everything at first. When they kicked me in the teeth I did wish I’d never set eyes on them. I’d have just had an ordinary job, perhaps teaching, and never known all this anxiety.”
He was justified in his feelings
Best’s anger and regret faded over the years, and he said he was grateful for his time with the band. Despite this, he would have been justified in holding onto his anger for longer than he did. The band fired him without giving him a straightforward reason why. They also avoided him afterward, even asking for protection against him at a show they were both playing. Davies also said that they didn’t seem to think about their former bandmate at all.
“As with all the interviews, I went back to see the Beatles in London and told them bits I had picked up on my travels,” he wrote. “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.”
Starr proved to be a good fit for the band, but there’s little justification for the way they treated Best. Though they no longer felt that he was the best drummer for the band, he helped them on their rise to success. He deserved more respect than they gave him.
