When They Were Boys

by Larry Kane

  Bill Harry says he and girlfriend Virginia Sowry, also invited on the trip and riding back in the chartered bus, were stunned.

  “When [Pete] got aboard, Jim McCartney was furious and accused him of trying to upstage the other members of the band,” Harry recalls.

  OF COURSE, PETE HADN’T DONE THIS. THERE WAS NO DOUBT AT THE TIME THAT HE WAS THE MOST POPULAR MEMBER OF THE BEATLES. PAT DELANEY, THE CAVERN DOORMAN, TOLD ME, “PETE WAS INCLINED TO BE MORE POPULAR WITH THE GIRLS THAN ANY OTHER MEMBER OF THE GROUP.” LOCAL PROMOTER RON APPLEBY COMMENTED, “HE WAS DEFINITELY THE BIG ATTRACTION WITH THE GROUP AND DID MUCH TO ESTABLISH THEIR POPULARITY DURING THEIR EARLY CAREER.” WHEN BOB WOOLER WROTE HIS FAMOUS ARTICLE ABOUT THE BEATLES, THE ONLY ONE HE MENTIONED BY NAME WAS PETE, WHO HE CALLED “MEAN, MOODY, AND MAGNIFICENT,” AND WHEN BRIAN EPSTEIN SENT ME THE TELEGRAM SAYING THE BEATLES WERE TO BE SIGNED BY EMI, I MADE IT THE COVER STORY—BUT ONLY USED A PHOTO OF PETE ON THE COVER—IRONIC!

  There was extreme jealousy among his bandmates that Pete was getting all the attention, but it was a fact, chronicled in Mersey Beat and other publications. The legend of girls sleeping in his backyard to get close to Pete is true. It’s also true that there was an overwhelming outcry by the Beatles’ female fans when Pete was released by the band in favor of Richie Starkey. In the aftermath of his departure in the summer of 1962, on the cusp of extraordinary success, it is hard to reconcile what an impact Pete had on the band and easy to forget the momentum he gave them.

  So what really led to Pete’s departure and history’s lost chance to view the band as John, Paul, George, and Pete? As it is in most of the seminal moments in Beatles history, it may all depend on whom you talk to. But there are some absolute truths to consider, the first being that Pete never accentuated his good looks and drumming talent with an outgoing personality—and by all accounts, he didn’t. Would his supposed lack of personality have stopped the Beatles’ rise? Perhaps not—especially when you consider that Ringo’s sometimes sullen demeanor didn’t bring the band down. But Pete’s personality was used as a reason by the two people who wanted him out—both of whom had an agenda. It all began in late 1960, just before the Beatles’ historic appearance at Litherland Town Hall, and it ended with immaculate timing.

  Mona Best was a strong woman with a big heart, a bad marriage to her husband, John, and an unbroken and always forgiving love for her first two sons, Pete and Rory. She was also the de facto early business leader of the Beatles. On the evening of a scheduled Litherland appearance, Mona found George, apparently a bit intoxicated, slumped over. Outraged, she told him that he was “out of the band.” George eventually was awakened with some hot, black coffee administered by John, and quickly driven to the concert. George never forgot the episode, and neither did a very angry Paul McCartney. Even John, growing close to Pete, was deeply upset.

  Joe Flannery, Brian Epstein’s friend and confidante, remembers that John had complained to Epstein that Mona was “quite bossy.” Flannery, who talks of a close relationship with the Best family, remembers spending some time with John as the Beatles’ bandleader dreamed of performing in America. Flannery told Professor Michael Brocken of Liverpool Hope University that John confided in him, “Joe, I’m not going to let Mona get in the way.” The angst about Mona was further complicated after Epstein took over and, during a coffee with Beatles family and close friends, asserted that he was in control of their fates and fortune.

  Flannery insists that Mona was fuming, angry that control of the group was being wrested away.

  All this happened in the same period that Mona became pregnant in her quiet relationship with Neil Aspinall. Neil, seventeen years younger than Mona, had rented a room in the Best home. He became very close to Pete, and eventually closer to Mona, who was separated from her husband. Mona and Neil’s baby, Vincent Roag Best, was born in July 1962. It was a joyful time for Mona and Neil and the Bests.

  But not for long. The combination of Mona’s power grab and the growing role of Brian Epstein in the boys’ lives set the stage for what came next. Paul and George lobbied Epstein to get Pete out of the band, and the hammer dropped when Epstein called Pete to his office. Epstein told Pete, “The boys want you out.” And on August 16, almost three weeks after Roag’s birth, Pete was fired.

  Pete, who is notoriously shy and unpretentious, told my colleagues, filmmakers John Rose and Tony Guma, that Epstein also told him, “George Martin wanted you out.” Both Pete and Mona Best didn’t believe that for one moment. When Mona confronted George Martin, Pete says his reply was, “Mrs. Best, I never said that. What I said was that, because his drumming sound was so big, we might have to bring in a session drummer. But I never asked that Pete leave the band.”

  Whatever the reasons, the moment that Pete discovered his firing, he was devastated.

  As Pete left Epstein’s office and navigated down the stairway, Epstein, tears flowing from his eyes, stood on the landing and watched Pete exit the building. John later described Paul and George as “cowards,” but the deed was done. John respected Pete, and his ouster was a seminal moment—an aggressive action led by Paul, with George’s consent, that would begin an era where Paul would begin to chip away at John’s prior dominance. John, as it would turn out, remained the most loyal Beatle in the years ahead, helping his childhood friend Pete Shotten become a millionaire, and paying his respects always to the suddenly lonely roadie Mal Evans in the early seventies. It was also an irony, but not unexpected, that John, in his thirties, mentored Pete Best’s replacement. Ringo, like John, dealt with alcohol and drug issues in the years after the Beatles’ breakup. John stood by him like no other friend did.

  Pete, who rarely socialized with the boys in Hamburg and Liverpool, was never really a confidante. But his sudden departure, and replacement by Ringo, left him crestfallen.

  Billy Kinsley was walking into Brian Epstein’s office on the day of the firing.

  “Pete, being escorted out by Neil, looked at me with an empty look,” Kinsley remembers. “He looked pale. I couldn’t imagine what was going on.”

  Pete and Aspinall walked to the Grapes, the legendary early Beatles bar on Mathew Street, where Pete gave Aspinall the news, a play-by-play of the sad and grim meeting. In an act of enormous unselfishness, Pete urged Aspinall to stay on. Aspinall protested. He was so close to the family and insisted he would quit. But Pete told him, “Don’t go. Stay with it. They are going to be very big.”

  That meeting sealed the fate of Neil Aspinall as road manager, confidante, and eventual heir to Brian Epstein as the guardian of the Beatles’ interests through the rest of the century and into the next.

  Mona tried unsuccessfully to get Epstein to change his mind. Epstein later wrote in his autobiography that John, Paul, and George thought Pete was “too conventional to be a Beatle, and though he was friendly with John, he was not liked by George and Paul.”

  The news broke in a flash. The fans were angry. Future Beatles press secretary Derek Taylor remembers the moment. He told me in August 1964, “People in Liverpool were devastated, you know. Brian insisted that Ringo was a great drummer, and Pete knew, in his mind, he was up to the task. It was a mystifying moment to the fans at the Cavern. But change was coming, and Ringo’s fate was sealed. In the long run, the Ringo connection, a different look, another person to idolize out of the four, was magic.”

  But in that moment, the departure was problematic. Tony Bramwell, who had joined Epstein in the inner circle, was not surprised by the fan reaction. Pete was popular. Today, Bramwell philosophizes, “America had Elvis; Britain had Pete Best.”

  The timeline of these developments is amazing. The sacking of Pete Best came exactly two years and two days before the beginning of the boys’ historic North American summer tour of 1964. I’ve often thought that it could have been Pete Best sitting there on the sofa at the San Francisco Hilton on August 18, 1964, during my first extensive interview session with the boys.

  But it was not meant to be. Pete Best’
s life went into a tailspin. Although he did go on to work for twenty years in municipal government, and made a decent living, Pete often became depressed. In the eighties, mother Mona inspired him to get back into show business. The Pete Best Band was formed in 1988, and to this day he still travels around the world, brother Rory by his side, and with Roag a constant companion and super business manager, a composite of mother Mona and his dad, Neil Aspinall.

  One of the first members of Pete’s new band was Billy Kinsley. During their very first performance, he noticed Mona Best in the audience. “She was sitting there smiling broadly, happy that he was back on stage, but tears were streaming down her face,” Kinsley says. “Three days later, after a lengthy illness, she died after suffering a heart attack. It was a sad time in Liverpool, where Pete and his family were and are still revered.”

  It was also an irony that Kinsley joined Pete’s new band, because in the aftermath of Pete’s firing, Epstein had urged Pete to join Kinsley’s band, the Merseybeats. So, it took more than a quarter of a century, but Kinsley and Pete were eventually united in song.

  And then there is the carefully woven story of Neil Aspinall. He never forgot his roots with the Best family. Of course, there was his son, Roag. That was always there. But the friendship endured with Pete, as well. In the beginning of this century, Aspinall, Apple’s director, rewarded Pete and the family he loved with a lucrative contract to help prepare the book and video The Beatles Anthology, which included music with Pete on the drums, although in the Beatles’ carefully crafted version of their lives, Pete is hardly given the due he deserves.

  When Pete talks about his mother, who died in 1988, tears well up in his eyes. She was an amazing inspiration. Both she and Pete helped shape the band. The Fab Four rarely acknowledged that, but the facts are there.

  Still, the nagging questions remain, as does the search for the whole truth.

  Theories still abound that Mona Best’s staunch control over the band’s early activity prompted Epstein to fire her son. There is a major hole in that story. If Epstein was so intent on getting Mona out of the way by sacking Pete, why did Epstein work so hard to keep Best in his stable of boy bands? Besides, when Pete was sacked, Mona was the mother of a newborn, Vincent Roag, and was very busy with that special assignment.

  The other theory for his abrupt departure was the music. But that also is apparently bogus. The genius producer George Martin had brought in a different drummer for one recording session. Session drummers were routinely brought in for purposes of more finite recordings, because of their expertise in understanding sound and recording techniques. In fact, when the newly anointed Ringo Starr arrived at EMI studios on September 11, 1962, he found himself replaced on the drums by Andy White, a session drummer. The session drummer was called after Ringo’s performance on a September 4, 1962, session, a month after he joined the band. He has, on more than one occasion in his career, suggested that the group members were pulling a “Pete Best” on him.

  Another rarely reported quote stands out, and sheds some light. In a 2002 interview in his Wingspan DVD, Paul McCartney discussed a change of drummers in Wings, and also mentioned the Beatles’ drummer situation. He said, “In the Beatles, we had Pete Best, who was a really good drummer . . . wasn’t quite like the rest of us . . . fine line between what is exactly in, and what is nearly in. . . . So he left the band, so we were looking for someone who would fit.”

  So there, in Paul’s own words, is a clear rebuke of the theory that Pete was not a good drummer.

  Michael Brocken reinforces doubts about one popular theory. In person, he appears very analytical. The professor is a man with no personal agendas, only obsessed with the truth: “Larry, there are so many agendas, but the facts are the facts.” Brocken writes in his book, Other Voices.

  THE EVIDENCE IS THAT PETE BEST WAS A DAMN GOOD DRUMMER. . . . THERE REMAINS VERY LITTLE EVIDENCE THAT PETE BEST WAS INFERIOR AS A PERCUSSIONIST. . . . IN FACT, BILL HARRY RECORDS THAT ONE OF THE BEST DRUMMERS IN THE LIVERPOOL ROCK SCENE AT THIS TIME, JOHNNY HUTCHINSON (A.K.A. JOHNNY HUTCH), CONSIDERED BEST TO BE AN EXCELLENT DRUMMER. BILLY J. KRAMER WAS ALSO TO COMMENT, ACCORDING TO HARRY, THAT HE “DIDN’T THINK THE BEATLES WERE ANY BETTER WITH RINGO STARR. I NEVER DOUBTED HIS ABILITY AS A DRUMMER BUT I THOUGHT THEY WERE A LOT MORE RAUCOUS AND RAW WITH PETE.”

  Perhaps no one has spent more time researching Pete’s story than Dave Bedford, the author of Liddypool, one of my favorite books on Liverpool and the Beatles, and his good friend Ed Jackson, from Buffalo, New York, who has assisted Pete Best on some of his recent US tours.

  Jackson thinks, in general, that “it may [have] been all about Pete’s being a fan favorite. After all, we all know now that Pete’s drumming talents are considerable.”

  So, with Pete’s ability, then and now, rarely questioned, why was he let go? Was it underlying jealousy, or something else?

  Bedford’s theory:

  THE BEATLES WANTED TO SPREAD THE EARLY PROFITS THREE WAYS. IT WAS ABOUT MONEY, LARRY, AND RINGO WAS BEING HIRED ON A PROBATIONARY CONDITION, AND WOULD NOT BECOME A FULL-SHARE PARTNER UNTIL THE FOLLOWING YEAR.

  WHILE I BELIEVE THERE ARE MANY CONTRIBUTORY FACTORS TO PETE’S DISMISSAL, THIS ALL CAME TO A HEAD WHEN GEORGE MARTIN TOLD BRIAN THAT PETE WOULDN’T BE DRUMMING ON THE RECORD. I BELIEVE THAT JOHN, PAUL, AND GEORGE MUST HAVE WONDERED WHY THEY SHOULD PAY PETE A QUARTER SHARE OF THE RECORD PROCEEDS WHEN HE WOULDN’T HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THE RECORDING. IT WOULD THEREFORE BE BETTER TO GET RID OF PETE, HIRE A SESSION DRUMMER ON A FIXED WAGE UNTIL THEY KNEW IF THEIR RECORDS WOULD BE A SUCCESS. RINGO WAS THAT MAN, WHO JOINED FOR A FLAT FEE OF £25 PER WEEK, ON PROBATION, AND DIDN’T FULLY JOIN THE BEATLES UNTIL MAY 1963.

  Bedford adds, “It wasn’t just Ringo who was approached to replace Pete, as some have claimed.”

  According to Spencer Leigh’s book, Drummed Out, John met former Quarrymen banjo player Rod Davis in March 1962. Davis told John that he had made a record and played guitar, banjo, fiddle, and other stringed instruments. John said, “You don’t play drums, do you? We need a drummer to head back to Hamburg.” Davis, who left Liverpool earlier for a distinguished academic record in higher education, admitted it may have been his second bad career move. Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas’ drummer, Tony Mansfield, recalled that Epstein also approached the band’s manager, Rick Dixon, to ask about his availability.

  Jackson and Bedford, close friends of Pete’s, are sleuths who continue to look for clues, but in the background, Pete Best has proved his worthiness in another way.

  In one area, Pete Best can always claim success. He has been married for over forty-six years. His wife’s name is Kathy, and they have two daughters and four grandchildren.

  Freda Kelly, the sensitive and respectful confidante, the girl who kept the “boys on track,” reflects on Pete with a smile and sparkle in her eyes. “Maybe, maybe, in the end, he is the one who is enjoying the most stable and happiest of lives.”

  She adds, with a loving grin, “maybe.”

  About one aspect of post-Beatles life, there is also a question from most Beatle insiders: Why has there never been contact between the Beatles and their former drummer? In all the years since Pete Best left the band, now over fifty years, the late John and George, and the surviving Paul and Ringo, have not seen Pete Best. It would be pleasant and poignant to think that they would have tried, would have planned some sort of reunion, or at least reached out. Certainly there was a wonderful opportunity when funeral services were held for their most consistent and longest-serving friend and business leader, Neil Aspinall, on April 8, 2008, at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Twickenham, southwest London. Paul, who was said to have visited Aspinall a few weeks earlier at a New York Hospital, was out of the country. Ringo, who had paid his respects earlier, did not attend. In their places were Stella McCartney, Paul’s fashion designer daughter, and his son, James. Ringo’s wife, Barbara Bach, was there, along with John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono. The musical legend and architect o
f the Beatle’s musical success, George Martin, attended.

  The Best family was represented well. Pete, Aspinall’s best friend, was there, along with his half-brother and Aspinall’s son, Roag. Despite the lack of any reunion with Pete, the surviving Beatles had a thread to Pete through Neil and his son Roag.

  If any occasion was appropriate for a reunion of the boys and the former Beatle who helped propel them to success, the farewell to Neil Aspinall was it—the seminal moment when the survivors could have looked him in the eye and embraced a man who was so influential to their real beginnings.

  The revisionist historians, and some of the Beatles’ friends, will continue to say that Pete Best was severed from the group because he lacked a sense of connection with the boys. There may be some truth to that, but it was never the stated reason.

  The real history, the clippings, the memories of fans, the recorded music, and all the facts, will show that the young drummer was, in the early going, the most popular Beatle, and, along with his astonishing mother, had a potent and clear impact on the success of the group that he, sometimes painfully, witnessed climbing to the top only months after his unceremonious departure.

  And what about the bottom line: the impact of the change from Pete Best to Ringo Starr?

  “Technically it was a good move, but a part of the real Beatles sound was lost,” Tony Crane, cofounder of the Merseybeats, explains, quite forcefully. The original sound, the powerful sound of raw drumming was really not there after the change was made. . . . They seemed to lose a lot of the sound. The feel wasn’t as good, no better [in] the long run.”