Simply the Best: Pete Best, the Happiest Beatle of all
When Pete Best was ousted as the Beatles drummer by Ringo, he attempted suicide - before finding happiness as a pin-striped civil servant. Now he's back with his own band, his own fans ... and finally getting his hands on some of the Fab Four's cash...
Paul, John, Pete Best and George: The Beatles
Pete Best, 1960, Hamburg, Germany Pete Best today
The drummer naturally assumed the meeting would be to talk about some business matter. After all, the group was on the cusp of stardom, a fame which was already starting to sweep across Merseyside. But when he arrived for the meeting with Epstein, Best quickly saw that the manager was nervous. Finally Epstein came to the point. The other Beatles had decided they no longer wanted him in their band. He was being sacked. Ringo Starr was to replace him. In a moment, all Best's dreams disappeared. He was cast out. In shock, he went home and cried. From that day, not one of the other Beatles ever contacted him again. Nor has he tried to contact them.
"We were cowards," Lennon would say many years later. "We got Epstein to do the dirty work for us.'"
For more than 40 years, the name Pete Best has been synonymous with the notion of the man who so nearly had it all. One day he was the drummer with The Beatles; the next he wasn't. On the very brink of fame, the other three band members ditched him. And he never saw it coming.
And yet there is not a trace of bitterness.
'What's the point in saying, "I should have been this", or "I could have been that?" ' he says simply. 'That's yesterday. Forty years ago. What's important is what's happening today and tomorrow. When you realize that, you get on with it.'
All of which, of course, is true. Understandably, however, it took him a little time to realize it and 'get on with it'. The moment Best's life changed was when, coming off stage at Liverpool's Cavern Club on the night of August 15, 1962, Beatles' manager Brian Epstein asked him to pop into his office the next morning.
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During the early years, Stuart Sutcliffe was the Beatles bassist and Pete Best was their drummer. Sutcliffe left the band in 1961 to pursue an art career but died the next year from a brain hemorrhage. Best continued with the band until August of 1962. To be pushed out of any job is painful. But this wasn't any job. Best then had to watch as The Beatles became the biggest show business attraction the world has ever known, while his career with his own new little group went in ever-decreasing circles.
By the mid-Sixties he was so low he tried to commit suicide by gassing himself, only to be saved by his mother and brother, Rory. 'They gave me the most sensible talking-to I've ever had in my life,' he remembers.
'They asked me what the hell I thought I was doing, saying that committing suicide was what people would expect me to do because of what had happened.
But I had a beautiful wife and daughter to consider. Was I going to leave
my daughter without a father?
'When I came to my senses, I wasn't ashamed of what I'd done, but realized only then what it would have done to my family. I vowed I'd never do anything like that again.'
Already the seeds of his life without The Beatles had been sown, not least by his wife, Kathy, whom he'd met at an early Beatles gig in Aintree.
From behind his drums he'd watched her dancing and admired her from afar. They got together at the first Beatles fan club party at the Cavern in 1962. That was, he says, the best day of his life. 'If she hadn't been the type of person I thought she was, she could have walked away from me when I wasn't a Beatle anymore,' he says.
'But she just said: "Pete, it's you I want. Not a Beatle."
His biggest surprise, though, must have been the release of The Beatles Anthology in 1995, when early demo recordings made by the group with Best on drums went on sale for the first time.
Suddenly, three decades on, he was eligible for royalties. Exactly how much he received he won't say. When asked if he's rich, he agrees. 'In many ways, but I had a comfortable life before that happened. I always provided and I brought up my family safe and secure.'
Today, the 67-year-old Best is a happy man - with good reason.
Today, of the three Beatles who sacked him, only Paul is still alive. Does he regret the decades of silence between them? "We're not getting any younger," he says. '"We know what we've done and we're not going to think any worse of each other if we had a chat now. God bless us, it was all 40 odd years ago.'
They married the following summer when She Loves You was topping the charts, and are still happily together nearly 44 years on with five grandchildren from their two daughters.
Shortly after his suicide attempt, Best decided to give up on his stumbling career in music. But although he'd got good O-levels, and had once considered becoming a teacher, he now found he couldn't get a job. 'Employers always thought that, once bitten by show business, I'd be off again when some manager with a big cigar and check book turned up. They wouldn't give me a chance.'
So, in 1968 (the year when The Beatles were dallying in the Himalayas with meditation and the Maharishi at the very peak of their fame), their former friend and drummer found himself doing shift work in a bread factory, filling vans with sliced bread.
'It didn't worry me in the least,' he chuckles. 'I wasn't at all ashamed. It was good, wholesome, manual work. I was providing for my family and their security. That was all that mattered.'
A year later, fancying a change, he went to the employment exchange and ended up being given a job in the employment exchange! 'When I got home, I told Kathy I was going to become a civil servant.'
'You'd better buy a suit then, hadn't you?' was her response.
He stayed a civil servant for 20 years, rising steadily through the system, doing a steady nine-to-five job. 'I was very proud of myself. I achieved success in a different way, helping people get jobs and then being in charge of retraining programs.'
All the time he stayed away from his drums.
One day, his daughters said: 'Dad, there's a girl at school who says you used to be a Beatle. Is that true?' Intent on living his new life, he'd never told his two daughters. This page was last updated: December 6, 2008
1960-62: Publicity Photos, The Beatles
1961: Cavern club with Pete on drums
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Fan Photos, autographed by Pete Best
