Best of the Beatles

by Spencer Leigh

  I’ve no idea how they obtained this money but my guess would be that Johnny Best, who ran the boxing bouts at Liverpool Stadium, had a portfolio of fighters who could be hired for security work or perhaps even bare knuckle contests – a Liverpool version of The Fight Club – who knows? I certainly don’t but I do know that it would be money earned away from the Inland Revenue’s prying eyes and this could have been used to purchase the property. I don’t say it was: I just say that the family story seems unlikely.

  And another fact which may be pertinent. Johnny Best Senior, who managed the Liverpool Stadium before his son, died in 1956. He lived round the corner from Hayman’s Green and had a boxing ring in his back garden. What went on there? On the face of it, he did not leave a huge sum but who knows what was under the floorboards? It’s not for me to besmirch their reputations but there is something very odd going on here and it is not resolved in any of Pete Best’s books.

  By the early 60s, Johnny and Mona Best no longer lived together and so he didn’t know the young beat musicians. A pity as there could have been some profitable exhibition bouts with Kingsize Taylor and Johnny Hutch. Kingsize overturned a whole bar in Hamburg and it took several policemen to arrest him – real Clint Eastwood stuff.

  One further point before we move on: there were no high street bookmakers in the UK in 1954 so how did Mona Best place her large bet? It had to be placed at the course with someone who was prepared to accept a bet of this size (perhaps £500). Did she or Johnny Best know someone who would do this for her and, in any event, it seems highly unlikely that both a husband and a wife would think that this was a sensible thing to be doing. Surely Johnny would have tried to talk Mona out of it.

  Pete Best has continued to make records and as the Pete Best Band. He recorded an album of rock ’n’ roll standards with Liverpool musicians called Casbah Coffee Club which was issued in 1999. The backing band is really Liverpool Express and Brian Jones of the Undertakes on saxophone and Beryl Marsden adding backing vocals. This was followed by Haymans Green in 2008, which marked Pete Best’s debut as a songwriter, admittedly writing with the rest of his band. As you might expect there is nothing very revealing in the songs and the album sounds like a collection of ELO outtakes.

  As he has passed retirement age and has no need to work, Ringo Starr has been industrious, often playing with his All-Starr Band and a new version of ‘Boys’ was released in 2004, recorded live at Casino Rama, Canada. Ringo’s new albums feature original material and so do not affect the Pete Best/Ringo Starr discography but, intriguingly, he writes at least one song about Liverpool on every new album: nothing about Pete Best yet.

  That Pete/Ringo discography often referred to an Italian CD, Pop Goes The Radio, and those songs have now found their way, in better sound quality, onto the official release On Air, Live At The BBC Volume 2, issued in 2013.

  In recent years, Roag Best’s daughter, Leanne, has become one of the UK’s most promising actresses. She has appeared in such TV productions as Ripper Street and Lucan and been on stage at the Liverpool Playhouse and the National Theatre. Even leading actors have to face rejection as they are not seen as suitable for certain roles or because somebody else has the edge on them. Hopefully, Leanne will have picked up some tips from observing Uncle Pete.

  In the years 2003–2005, the Liverpool record company, Viper, released three volumes of Unearthed Merseybeat. Historically, these are invaluable collections of outtakes, demos, practice sessions and live recordings by Liverpool musicians. Four tracks that Gerry and the Pacemakers recorded with Lambda Records in Crosby in 1961 are included including an original song ‘Why Oh Why’ and a rocked-up version of Nat ‘King’ Cole’s ‘Pretend’. They reveal that Gerry and the Pacemakers had it all together before they had even been signed by Brian Epstein or gone to EMI.

  However, the big find of recent years has been a complete set by Rory Storm and the Hurricanes from the Jive Hive in Crosby on 5 March 1960, now issued by Rockstar Records. Ringo Starr was their regular drummer at the time but the drumming on this recording is rather wayward and suggests someone was filling in or perhaps Ringo was feeling ill. We know from Johnny Guitar’s diaries that Ringo had influenza a few days earlier. Either way, it doesn’t matter as this CD gives you a real feel of what Merseybeat was like back in 1960. Alan Caldwell as Rory Storm doesn’t stutter on stage and even performs a narration, ‘All American Boy’, complete with local references. If you want to know more about the Rory Storm band, I have put an annotated version of Johnny Guitar’s diaries on my website (www.spencerleigh.co.uk) where there is also a full account of my somewhat tortuous dealings with Tony Sheridan. One reviewer of Drummed Out! said that I had used the book to settle old scores with Sheridan. Not true: I was glad to have witnessed his erratic behaviour and I was giving you a sense of what he could be like.

  Allan Williams wrote a second memoir, The Fool on the Hill (Barge Pole, 2003) with Lew Baxter but strangely his memories of the Beatles were less informative than in his first volume. Allan now says that he doesn’t mind missing out on the riches as he is ‘a millionaire of memories’, and if you believe that…

  Some commentators have dismissed Allan Williams’ contribution to the Merseybeat scene and I can see why. By his own admission, he does have a Del Boy personality and it is easy to assume that it is all pretence. I was therefore gratified to find that his place in Merseybeat history is so firmly affirmed by Mark Lewisohn in the first volume of his biography of the Beatles, Tune In (2013). I’ve no idea what the single volume version is like as I haven’t even looked inside but the two volume edition (of the first volume, if you see what I mean) covers 1,700 pages and there is something intriguing on every page.

  Mark’s book makes it clear, and it is backed up by documentation, that the Beatles’ first EMI session on 6 June 1962 was not an audition as they already had a contract with the Parlophone label, which had come via EMI’s publishing arm, Ardmore and Beechwood. All the sadder then that Pete played so poorly that day.

  When it comes to Pete Best’s sacking, Mark Lewisohn, in a chapter called ‘The Undesirable Member’, makes it abundantly clear that Pete had to go because they didn’t think he was good enough. There were other factors but to Mark, that is the overriding one.

  Mark’s book does confirm that there was a drum kit in the McCartney household and the fact that he is not sure where it came from suggests it was a knock-off. However, it is fanciful for Mike McCartney to claim that he was a contender for the Beatles’ drum seat. According to Mark, Mike had fractured his arm at scout camp in 1957 and despite extensive physiotherapy, it had not fully healed.

  Mark may well have solved the discrepancies over how Ringo came to join the Beatles. He says that Paul had recently passed his driving test and he took John with him in a borrowed car to Butlin’s holiday camp in Skegness in late July 1962. So, some 2 weeks before Pete was sacked, they knew he was interested in joining them. Then on August 14, Brian Epstein rang Butlin’s and the receptionist called Ringo over the tannoy. He confirmed that he would join the band but that he could not come straight away, hence the Beatles used Johnny Hutch for a few nights.

  Around the same time as the publication of Mark Lewisohn’s book, David Bedford’s second book, The Fab One Hundred and Four – The Evolution of the Beatles (2013) came out. This lavish coffee-table book includes, for the first time in a Beatles book, photographs of Janice the Stripper. Perhaps she will now come forward, although she will be over seventy by now.

  The Cavern DJ Bob Wooler used to describe Liverpool as Pinocchioville and say that it should be full of people with very long noses. There was an example of that in Drummed Out! In the book, I quoted Alistair Taylor claiming to be Raymond Jones, that he had put the name in the order book so that he could obtain ‘My Bonnie’. Sam Leach tells a similar story: he ordered ‘My Bonnie’ but he couldn’t have given his real name to NEMS as he didn’t get on with Brian Epstein.

  However, I have since tracked down Raymond Jone
s. He owned a printing works in Burscough, Lancashire and has now retired to Spain. He had seen the Beatles on several occasions and loved their music, and when he heard about their single, he ordered it from NEMS. Although he plays a small but significant role in the Beatles’ story, he has never wanted to appear at Beatle Conventions, hence the invasion of the imposters. Raymond Jones does exist, I promise you.

  I have also spoken to Bill Barlow and Chas Newby, who had both been with Pete Best in the Blackjacks, and still play with him every year. Bill says, “We had decided to form our own group and we told Pete he could drum. He said that he couldn’t play but his mum bought him a drum kit and the Blackjacks was formed. He took to it extremely quickly and I thought he was terrific.”

  When the Beatles came back from Hamburg without Stuart in December 1960, Pete asked Chas Newby to play bass for them and he was on stage at that historic gig at Litherland Town Hall on 27 December 1960. Chas Newby says, “I had played with them at the Casbah and the reception had been really good. Then we had been to the Grosvenor Ballroom in Liscard with the Litherland Town Hall gig being the third. There was no inkling that it was going to be any different from the others when we started. Bob Wooler was on the microphone and the curtains were drawn on the stage. He was on the middle microphone and he said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Direct from Hamburg, the fabulous…’ and he was about to say ‘Beatles’ when Paul nudged him out of the way and screamed into ‘Long Tall Sally’. The audience, who were used to dancing, were suddenly confronted by this group in cowboy boots and leather trousers and jackets, stomping on the floor and singing classic rock ’n’ roll. Everyone shouted, ‘Yeah’ at the end of ‘Long Tall Sally’ and we just carried on. We finished with ‘What’d I Say’ and the response was great. There was no jealousy on my part. I was going to college on January 4 and I thought Stuart was coming back. There were no recording studios or music publishers in Liverpool and for them to penetrate the music business was amazing.”

  And what did Chas remember most about the evening: “The fact they wore cowboy boots and they were stomping around the stage. I had normal shoes on but I had to copy them. I felt as though I’d been crippled when I came home.”

  So that’s it, the story of the sacking of Pete Best. Maybe there’s no mystery at all. Maybe he wasn’t a good enough drummer for the Beatles. That’s what Brian Epstein told him and that may be all there is to it. However, I don’t believe that Pete Best was dismissed from the Beatles for one overriding reason, namely, that he wasn’t good enough, especially in the recording studio. At the outset I said that this was like an Inspector Morse mystery but it is more like Murder on the Orient Express where everybody is sticking the knife into Pete Best but for a whole host of different reasons.

  I’d hazard a guess that the Beatles’ story is now as well known as the Nativity and I hope this book has thrown a little light on to a grey area.

  Spencer Leigh

  March 2015

  Discography 1: the Pete Best sessions

  * * *

  Up to the 1980s, very few performances of the Beatles with Pete Best were available. The following, with one possible noted exception, are now known to exist:

  First Session

  Tony Sheridan and the Beatles with Pete Best

  In June 1961, Tony Sheridan and the Beatles with Pete Best, George Harrison, John Lennon and Paul McCartney recorded at the Friedrich Ebert Halle, Hamburg (not at an official recording studio but on location in a school hall). At first, the records were credited to Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers. Produced by Bert Kaempfert, the recordings were:

  ‘My Bonnie’

  (Traditional, arranged by Tony Sheridan)

  ‘My Bonnie’ is about a claimant to the throne, Bonnie Prince Charles, who landed in Scotland in 1745 to start a rebellion. His troops were overwhelmed at Culloden and he spent 40 years as a fugitive in Europe. Ray Charles gave ‘My Bonnie’ an R&B treatment in 1958 and Duane Eddy recorded the instrumental ‘Bonnie Came Back’ in 1960, a UK Top 20 hit.

  Sheridan recorded two versions of ‘My Bonnie’, one with a slow introduction in German and another with one in English. Often the record is issued without either introduction. In a new variation, Paul McCartney talks over the English introduction on Anthology 1.

  ‘Nobody’s Child’

  (Cy Coben/Mel Foree)

  In 1948, Mel Foree, a song-plugger for Acuff-Rose had the unenviable task of trying to stop Hank Williams from drinking. Around that time, he wrote the country weepie, ‘Nobody’s Child’, which was recorded by Hank Snow in 1949. Lonnie Donegan recorded the song in 1956 for his ‘Lonnie Donegan Showcase’ album. His slow, bluesy treatment was Sheridan’s template, although Sheridan omitted his narration.

  In the main, Tony Sheridan was a wild rock ’n’ roller, but John McNally of the Searchers recalls him at the Star-Club: “Sheridan was always best late at night when he’d got a few drinks inside him. He’d become very melancholy and do the blues. He was the best guitarist around and I’d watch him every night. He did a great version of ‘Nobody’s Child’ which was very slow and dynamic.”

  Perhaps the Beatles should have brought ‘Nobody’s Child’ back to Liverpool. Lonnie Donegan: “I find the people in the North of England are much more emotional than in the South. I can bring people in Liverpool to tears with ‘Nobody’s Child’ and I couldn’t do that in London where they are more cynical.”

  Although only two verses and choruses, the original recording by Tony Sheridan and the Beatles lasts 3 minutes 45 seconds, and their version has been truncated on some compilations. Accompanying himself on guitar, Sheridan recorded a 6-minute version in 1964. George Harrison encouraged the Traveling Wilburys to record the song for a charity single in 1990.

  ‘The Saints’

  (Traditional, arranged by Tony Sheridan)

  ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’ was a favourite with jazz bands and was taken up by some rock ’n’ rollers – Bill Haley and His Comets (1955), Fats Domino (1958), Jerry Lee Lewis (1958) and the Isley Brothers (1959). Bill Haley’s version is usually quoted as the source for Sheridan’s version, which is unlikely as Haley changes the worlds to showcase his band, e.g. ‘When ol’ Rudy begins to play.’ Because the Comets’ drummer is given a solo, I wish Sheridan had followed Haley’s arrangement.

  Normally, the song is repetitive with a slight change for each verse – Fats Domino, with a walloping bass drum, sings, ‘When the Saints go marching in’ four times and ‘When the sun refuse to shine’ once. Jerry Lee Lewis offers a variant with a different melody and gospel-styled verses about Paul and Silas. Sheridan sings, ‘When the Saints go marching in’ three times, ‘When the sun begin (not ‘refuse’) to shine’ twice and ‘When the ol’ Lord calls me there’ once and this places his version closer to the Isley Brothers.

  One of Sheridan’s early groups was called the Saints and so he was very familiar with the work. On the recording, Tony Sheridan sounds very like Conway Twitty, but this impersonation is of his own doing as Twitty never recorded ‘The Saints’.

  In 1963, the Searchers revived ‘The Saints’ as ‘Saints and Searchers’ for the B-side of their second hit, ‘Sugar and Spice’.

  ‘Take Out Some Insurance On Me Baby’ (Sometimes shown as Charles Singleton/Waldenese Hall, but more likely Jesse Stone, who was also known as Charles Calhoun. Confused? You should be.)

  The blues guitarist Jimmy Reed introduced many songs into the beat groups’ repertoire: ‘Ain’t That Lovin’ You Baby’, ‘Bright Lights Big City’, ‘Baby What You Want Me To Do’ and ‘Big Boss Man’. He recorded ‘Take Out Some Insurance On Me Baby’, which is also known as ‘If You Love Me Baby’ after its first line, in Chicago in March 1959.

  Tony Sheridan gives a creditable performance but his reference to “goddamned insurance” has been removed on a doctored version, which adds guitar, drums and harmonica.

  ‘Why (Can’t You Love Me Again)’

  (Tony Sheridan/Bill Crompton)

&n
bsp; Tony Sheridan wrote this song with the British rock ’n’ roll performer Bill Crompton in 1958. Crompton recorded for Fontana and had considerable airplay on ‘A Hoot and a Holler’. Crompton also wrote a Top 20 instrumental, ‘The Stranger,’ for the Shadows. The clumsily-titled ‘Why (Can’t You Love Me Again)’ is an echo-drenched doowop ballad with a forceful middle-eight that sounds as though it belongs in another song.

  Gerry Marsden: “I thought ‘Why’ was a nice song and I wanted to record it, but Tony said, ‘Hang on, I’ve got a better one’ and gave me ‘Please Let Them Be’, which I recorded some years later. It was one of the biggest flops in the history of records, but it was a lovely song.”

  The Beatles with Pete Best

  Line up as previous, but without Tony Sheridan.

  ‘Ain’t She Sweet’

  (Jack Yellen/Milton Ager)

  Jack Yellen and Milton Ager were a successful pre-war songwriting partnership, their most enduring songs being “Happy Days Are Here Again’ and ‘Ain’t She Sweet’. The lyricist Jack Yellen had emigrated from Poland and this 1927 success was daring for its time as it used American slang (‘ain’t’) in its title. Umpteen recordings of the song have been made with no one version predominating.