Randolph Peter Best is an English musician known as the drummer of the English rock band the Beatles who was dismissed immediately prior to the band achieving worldwide fame.
53 Facts About Pete Best
2.
Pete Best later joined and started many bands over the years.
3.
Pete Best is one of several people who have been referred to as a fifth Beatle.
4.
The Beatles invited Pete Best to join the band on 12 August 1960, on the eve of the group's first Hamburg season of club dates.
5.
Over 30 years later, Pete Best received a major monetary payout for his work with the Beatles after the release of their 1995 compilation of their early recordings on Anthology 1; Pete Best played the drums on ten of the album's tracks, including the Decca auditions.
6.
Pete Best's mother, Mona Pete Best, was born in Delhi, India, the daughter of Thomas and Mary Shaw.
7.
Pete Best, her first child, was born on 24 November 1941 in Madras, then part of British India.
8.
Pete Best's mother was training to become a doctor in the service of the Red Cross when she met Johnny Pete Best, who came from a family of sports promoters in Liverpool who ran Liverpool Stadium, a boxing arena.
9.
In 1945, the Pete Best family sailed for four weeks to Liverpool on the Georgic, the last troop ship to leave India, carrying single and married soldiers who had previously been a part of General Sir William Slim's forces in south-east Asia.
10.
Pete Best's family lived for a short time at the family home, "Ellerslie" in West Derby until Pete Best's mother fell out with her sister-in-law, Edna, who resented her brother's choice of wife.
11.
Mona bought him a drum kit from Blackler's music store and Pete Best formed his own band, the Black Jacks.
12.
In 1957, Rory Pete Best saw a large Victorian house for sale at 8 Hayman's Green and told Mona about it.
13.
Pete Best had been seen playing in the Casbah with his own group, the Black Jacks, and it was observed that he played the bass drum on all four beats in the bar, which pushed the rhythm.
14.
Pete Best had an audition in the Jacaranda Club, which Williams owned, and travelled to Hamburg the next day.
15.
Williams later said that the audition with Pete Best was unnecessary, as the group had not found any other drummer willing to travel to Hamburg, but did not tell Pete Best in case he asked for more money.
16.
Pete Best initially preferred to play in cooler short sleeves on stage, and so did not match the sartorial style of the group, even though he was later photographed wearing a leather jacket and jeans.
17.
Pete Best was shocked at the vast improvement in their playing and singing, and remembered Best's drumming to be very powerful, which pushed the group to play harder and louder.
18.
Pete Best agreed to sign the Beatles on a recording contract, based on listening to the Decca audition tape, without having met them or having seen them perform live.
19.
The Beatles were not new to studio recording and Pete Best's drumming had been found acceptable by Polydor in Hamburg, but Martin was alerted to Pete Best's unsuitability for British studio work.
20.
Epstein asked Liverpool DJ Bob Wooler, who knew the Beatles intimately for advice, to which Wooler replied that it was not a good idea, as Pete Best was very popular with the fans.
21.
Part of the dilemma for Epstein that arose at that time, was that Pete Best was an asset at gigs, popular with the girl fans, and put on a good show, ensuring venues would have a solid audience.
22.
Pete Best says that Epstein revealed at the dismissal meeting that Ringo would become the new drummer.
23.
Pete Best had been good friends with Neil Aspinall since 1961, when Aspinall had rented a room in the house where Pete Best lived with his parents.
24.
Pete Best was unfamiliar with Starr and wanted to avoid any risk of his drumming not being up to par.
25.
John Lennon said that Pete Best was recruited only because they needed a drummer to go to Hamburg.
26.
Critic Richie Unterberger described Pete Best's drumming at the Decca audition as "thinly textured and rather unimaginative", adding that Pete Best "pushes the beat a little too fast for comfort".
27.
Kaempfert suggested Pete Best not play his bass drum because he used to get too fast; the tempo was a problem.
28.
Still, Martin claimed to be surprised to learn that Pete Best had been fired from stage shows, hearing the news from Mona via telephone.
29.
Pete Best seemed to be the most saleable commodity as far as looks went.
30.
Epstein claimed in his autobiography that Lennon, McCartney and Harrison thought that Pete Best was "too conventional to be a Beatle" and added that "though he was friendly with John, he was not liked by George and Paul".
31.
Dot Rhone, McCartney's then-girlfriend who later visited Hamburg, described Pete Best as being very quiet and never taking part in conversations with the group.
32.
Pete Best was the first one who really got the nerve to get the Brylcreem out of his hair, and asking me to cut his hair for him.
33.
Pete Best has really curly hair, and it wouldn't work.
34.
Pete Best was a really good drummer, but there just was something, he wasn't quite like the rest of us, we had like a sense of humour in common and he was nearly in with it all, but it's a fine line, you know, as to what is exactly in and what is nearly in.
35.
We were the wacky trio and Pete Best was perhaps a little more sensible; he was slightly different from us, he wasn't quite as artsy as we were.
36.
Pete Best often met them while visiting Neil Aspinall at his London home.
37.
Pete Best had contractual ties to the band which made it difficult to dismiss Pete, by breaking the group it would nullify any contract Mona held.
38.
Radio Merseyside presenter Spencer Leigh wrote a book chronicling Pete Best's firing, suggesting that the other members, McCartney in particular, were jealous.
39.
In 1963 on British television, Mona, with Pete Best present, said of his dismissal:.
40.
Pete Best later moved to the United States along with songwriters Wayne Bickerton and Tony Waddington.
41.
Pete Best decided to leave show business, and by the time of Hunter Davies' authorised Beatles biography in 1968, he was not willing to talk about his Beatles association.
42.
In 1963, Pete Best married Kathy, a Woolworth's sales clerk whom he met at an early Beatles show; they have remained married and have two daughters and four grandchildren.
43.
Pete Best found a modicum of independent fame, and has admitted to being a fan of his former band's music and owning their records.
44.
However, Pete Best asserts that it was Neil Aspinall and not McCartney who phoned him.
45.
Pete Best appeared in an advertisement for Carlsberg lager that was broadcast during the first commercial break of the first episode of the Anthology TV series on ITV in November 1995.
46.
In 1988, after twenty years of turning down all requests to play drums in public, Pete Best finally relented, appearing at a Beatles convention in Liverpool.
47.
On 6 July 2007, Pete Best was inducted into the All You Need Is Liverpool Music Hall of Fame as the debut Charter Member.
48.
Pete Best was presented with a framed certificate before his band performed.
49.
Liverpool further honoured Best with the announcement, on 25 July 2011, that two new streets in the city would be named Pete Best Drive and Casbah Close.
50.
In both the 1994 film Backbeat and in the 2000 television biopic In His Life: The John Lennon Story, Pete Best is played by Liverpool native Scot Williams.
51.
In 2021, filming began on Midas Man which is about the life of Brian Epstein; Pete Best is played by Adam Lawrence.
52.
The play, which was mainly fiction, showed a scenario where after Pete Best's sacking, he went on to become a world-famous rock superstar while his ex-group struggled as one hit wonders.
53.
Pete Best is a main character in David Harrower's 2001 play Presence, premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, dramatising The Beatles' time in Hamburg.