Original Beatles drummer Pete Best to headline fantasy rock camp in Manhattan
By Dean Balsamini
July 8, 2023
Original Beatles drummer Pete Best — best known for being replaced by Ringo Starr — believes the Fab Four wouldn’t have missed a beat if he had not been booted all those years ago.
“I still think it would have been The Beatles and I still think they would have been playing the same music and I still think the sound would have been very, very, very similar,” Best, 81, told The Post from his home in Liverpool.
“To this day I still don’t know why” he was dismissed, Best added.
Best — the Beatles’ drummer from 1960-1962 — is headlining a fantasy rock camp in Manhattan next week for some extra scratch.
Campers pay $6,000 for the privilege of jamming with him.
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Source: https://nypost.com/2023/07/08/ex-beatle-pete-is-living-his-best-life/
Pete knows exactly why they sacked him...he couldn't keep time like Ringo, never quite fit in with John, Paul, and George, and refused to change his look after Brian Epstein brought in the suits and moptop haircuts. And plus, his drumming wasn't as snappy as Ringo's and instead sounded more like a rolling surf beat.
With that said, like John admitted, they were cowards and had Epstein do the dirty work, and they dropped him like a rock as soon as Ringo signed on, even though they were still using Pete's mom's basement to rehearse and hang out. Paul apparently felt guilty for years afterward, and when the anthology album came out in the 1980s, made sure that Pete got millions in royalties from the early songs in which he performed.
John Lennon Admitted The Beatles Were ‘Cowards’ for How They Fired Drummer Pete Besthttps://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/john-lennon-admitted-beatles-cowards-fired-drummer-pete-best.html/John Lennon: 'I'm pretty sick of lousy Beatles member' - 'Always going to dump him'https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/music/1701567/john-lennon-the-beatles-drummer-pete-best-ringo-starrHeckuva thing to say about his Liverpool mate...
Pete was popular in Liverpool, especially with the ladies, and they didn't take his firing well. This was the Beatles first appearance at the Cavern afterward, with Ringo on drums, and you can feel how restless the crowd is, with somebody yelling out "Bring back Pete!" at the beginning of Take 2. George also got a black eye that night defending Ringo from a physical attack. Liverpool was a rough town back then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nisU8XDl-dMYou can hear it at the 4:15 mark.
Lennon later admitted that it was cowardly of them to have done this.
“We were cowards when we sacked him,” he said, per The Beatles: The Authorized Biography by Hunter Davies. “We made Brian do it. But if we told Pete to his face, that would have been much nastier than getting Brian to do it. It probably would have ended in a fight if we’d told him.”
