W W INTERVIEW
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Photo courtesy of The Cavern Club
Photo courtesy of Roag Best
Photo courtesy of Roag Best
AN INTERVIEW WITH PETE BEST
Pete Best talks to Wirral Life about his time with The Beatles
and his forthcoming stage acting debut in Lennon’s Banjo.
The Beatles became the biggest music phenomenon of the
20th Century and from 1960-1962, Pete Best was the group’s
drummer. Pete joined the Silver Beatles in August 1960, just
prior to the group’s first venture abroad, taking up a residency
playing in Hamburg on the notorious Reeperbahn. It was there
they became The Beatles, dropping the ‘silver’ from their name.
He played over 1,000 live performances with them and recorded
27 songs as a Beatle for Polydor Records, BBC Sessions and
Decca Sessions. Tracks recorded for Parlophone-EMI included,
Love Me Do and PS-I Love You. Pete and the band played their
first show in Liverpool at the Casbah Coffee Club and made
over 200 appearances at the Cavern Club. He was a Beatle when
Beatlemania began, when they were first referred to as the Fab
Four, when Brian Epstein signed them, when they transitioned
from leathers to suits, quiffs to mop tops and officially recognised
as Liverpool’s No 1 group in the Mersey Beat Poll just prior to
signing to Parlophone Records by producer George Martin.
In August 1962, in what still remains a rock ‘n’ roll enigma, Pete
was dismissed from the group. Eight weeks later The Beatles
hit the record charts in Britain. No reason for his dismissal was
ever given. Pete has since recorded for Decca Records, Cameo
Records, Cherry Red Records, Splash Records and has completed
three world tours. His TV appearances range from Ready Steady
Go to Letterman and Oprah Winfrey. Of the three books he has
written, ‘The Beatles, The True Beginnings’, became a best seller.
A highlight of Pete’s career was having seven of the tracks he
recorded with the group included on the multi-platinum ‘Beatles
Anthology.’
Pete Best is one of only six people in the history of the world
who can say they were a Beatle. The group’s first drummer tells
us about life as John, Paul and George’s bandmate and how John
Lennon’s banjo brings him back to the Beatles story...
The story of The Beatles is legendary. How did you get involved
with them?
My mother, Mona, opened a club, The Casbah, in Liverpool in
1959 but the band booked to play the opening night had split up
a couple of weeks beforehand. Two of the members of that band,
Ken Brown and George Harrison, came down to tell my mother.
Ken said, don’t worry, George knows a couple of guys who might
be interested in taking over the spot. The next day, John Lennon
and Paul McCartney showed up. Mona showed them the Casbah
and put the deal to them which was a residency. They were to play
there every Saturday night and be paid the princely sum of £3 a
night. It was a lot of money then. I eventually got a phone call from
Macca asking if I wanted to join and that was the start of a whole
new adventure.
What was it like when you first went over to Germany?
That’s where we grew. I mean, eight hours a night, seven nights a
week. That cultivated us and turned us from a mediocre band into
a prolific powerhouse. John is on record as saying the best gigs The
Beatles ever played were in Hamburg.
How did the other British bands in Hamburg feel about you?
It was a bit of a role reversal. Derry and the Seniors were out there
before us playing the Kaiserkeller, the place we thought we were
going to play, but we ended up in The Indra. Then Rory Storm
and the Hurricanes and Gerry and the Pacemakers followed us out
there. To us, they were the leading bands in Liverpool at the time.
But in Hamburg, we had really learnt our stuff. When we went
back to Liverpool we crammed all the energy that we’d put into
eight hours in Hamburg into a one hour show. We took the city by
storm. The kids had never seen anything like it. Our first gig back
home was on December 17th 1960, at The Casbah, my mother’s
club. That was the birth of Beatlemania.
Weren’t you kicked out of Germany once for supposedly
starting a fire?
Well for a start it wasn’t a fire. All that happened was that we were
leaving the Bambakino, the club we had a residency with, to go
and play at another club down the road where they were offering
us a bit more money. Anyway, just as a little prank, Paul and I stuck
a condom to a wall in the corridor of the Bambakino and lit it. It
just left a tiny little scorch mark. (Laughs) It was taken to the enth
degree by the club manager as far as I’m concerned. He just didn’t
want us playing in a rival club.
Why didn’t you have a Beatle haircut like the rest of the band?
The simple a