Being fired by The Beatles

For half a century, ntury, Pete Best has been known as the unluckiest iest man in pop – the Beatle who wasn’t. His association ssociation with the band d dates back to 1959, , when his mother, Mo, launched The Casbah Coffee Club in the cellar ellar of their large Victorian house. George e Harrison, John Lennon and Paul Mccartney helped paint its walls, then performed there on its opening night (and often thereafter). Later, when The Beatles needed a drummer for their residency in Hamburg, they remembered that Pete (who’d also formed a band) owned a drum kit and invited him along. There, they improved hugely, and back in England they earned a devoted following. Then in 1962, just after EMI gave them a contract, Best was fired. Now 76, he accepts the decision. But what still rankles is that, rather than break the news to him themselves, his bandmates got their manager, Brian Epstein, to do it. “He said, ‘Pete, I don’t know how to tell you this. The boys want you out’ – those were the words.” Ringo Starr, deemed a better drummer, had been lined up to replace him. A year later, The Beatles were the biggest band in the world. Best hasn’t seen Mccartney since, but he says his door is always open. “We’re senior statesmen now,” he told James Hall in The Daily Telegraph. “How many years we’ve got left on the planet is really predictable. Let’s talk about things in general. Stick a bottle of Scotch on the table and let’s have a good old bash.”