Pete Best: why was he really kicked out? Was it fair? | Page 2 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Oudis said

Billy Rhythm said

…and no, this “anybody could have been in his (Ringo’s) place” notion is garbage…

Can’t you keep the conversation polite? No, it seems that you can’t.

It was a simple disagreement. I do not believe any disrespect was intended. Let’s move on and keep the conversation going as there is a lot of good input. Thanks.

Necko said
Pete Best was kicked out because he wasn’t a very good drummer.  Simple as that.  If you listen to the recordings that he did with the Beatles, he just does the same thing over and over.  He uses a similar beat and falls back on the same fill every single time.  Ringo was a huge improvement to the band’s sound and was part of what made them stand out over the other bands.

As far as whether it was fair, I don’t know.  Maybe, maybe not.  Either way, it was musically a good move.

Possibly unfair, but then much of life is unfair – especially business.  I think it was the best musical decision (no bad pun intended) from the small amount of musical evidence I have available to me and the testimony of those close to the events.

Linde said

Our Randolph Peter Best just fookin’ sucked. Simple as that.

Pretty much!

Sorry Pete.

A famous drummer, I think it might have been Phil Collins or Dave Grohl or something, once commented on Ringo’s drumming, saying that it looks easy, but when you’re trying to do it, it’s actually pretty hard and it just won’t sound the same. Ringo is a unique drummer, and often underrated. 

I feel like theres some cliche about those who can make complex, difficult tasks look simple… that was Ringo’s drumming! Amazing and hard to replicate even if one may think they can.

@meanmistermustard Thanks for posting all these isolated tracks!

Annadog40 said

Joe said

Nowadays it’d all be quantized and made perfect, and we’d be worse off for it.

Why would we be worse off if the music was made perfect? 

I think he was referring to today’s recording practices. If so, I agree. I hear much of today’s pop music and find it too perfect (drum beat machines, autotune, etc…) to the point of being boring and fake. For the most part, it seems soulless. To be fair, many musicians felt the same way about pop music back in the the early 60’s or even earlier when music was laid down on multiple tracks and edited together versus recording it “live” in the studio or on stage.

Sorry for the tangent away from your thread, @Oudis. I’ll slap myself with a

Firstly, a couple of points made previously by others that I’d like to correct.

@Linde said
(Ringo) was in a band that were doing better than the Beatles at that time.

Rory Storm & The Hurricanes were the top Liverpool band for a long time. The Beatles started to overtake them in 1961, and by the time Ringo joined them in August 1962, there was no doubt about them being the top band in Liverpool.

Mersey Beat had famously declared it in their first issue of 1962:

@C.R.A. said
When it was time to replace Best, they argued for the need to return to Liverpool to find a replacement. Why? They were already in London, if they were looking for just ‘a drummer,’ they could have looked locally. But they made a point of returning home.

The Beatles were still very much Liverpool-based in 1962, only going down to London to record. They didn’t start to have longer stays in London until 1963, and to begin with they were staying in hotels. It wasn’t until September 1963 that they got their first London home, when the four of them moved into a flat in Mayfair (John soon moving out once somewhere had been found for him, Cynthia and Julian; followed by Paul moving in with the Ashers).

Now, some thoughts on Pete’s sacking and its background.

The first thing to remember, in my opinion, is that as well as being a group of musicians, The Beatles were a gang. While Pete was a member of that group of musicians, he was never in the gang. More damningly for him, he never showed any desire to be in the gang – the points already made by others about him choosing not to spend much time with them off-stage. In that way, he signed his own death warrant. That made his sacking inevitable, even had he been the best drummer on Merseyside (which he wasn’t).

In many ways, the question is how he survived so long. After all, Brian was quickly made aware after becoming their manager that Pete was just filling the seat until someone better came along. They had already decided by the end of 1961 that, were they to take the next step, and Brian got them the recording contract he promised, Pete would not be part of it. They knew and liked Ringo, but he was yet to be the one.

So, why did they wait until August 1962?

One obstacle was Brian. Their relationship with him was relatively new, and he argued that he saw no need for the change, and would continue to argue that right up until the decision was made.

There were occasions when the change could have been sooner, but circumstance got in the way.

The first was at the end of 1961.

The Beatles, after a year of growing triumphs, were booked at The Cavern on 27 December, billed as The Beatles’ Christmas Party. Pete rang in sick, and rather than use a drummer from one of their support bands, they got in Ringo. And it felt right.

It is possible that that night put in their minds that Ringo was their drummer. If it did, Ringo scuppered the opportunity for it to get beyond John, Paul and George maybe discussing the possibility between themselves. He quit the Hurricanes three days later and disappeared abroad (in fact, to Hamburg and Tony Sheridan’s band). With Ringo not around, whatever thoughts they may have been having, it was soldier on with Pete.

Pete’s position was made clear following the Decca audition. John, Paul and George knew what was happening the moment it happened. Pete didn’t find out about the failure of the Decca audition until sometime in March, and then only from Brian, even though the others had known of its failure for weeks.

Ringo reappeared in Liverpool in February 1962. He was in no condition to be approached with the idea of joining The Beatles. His grandmother had died on the 7th, he hadn’t made it back for the funereal, and when he did get back found himself facing his father for the first time since a young child. Ringo was going through a period of depression.

Whatever discussions were going on, with Brian still firmly against sacking Pete, Ringo in no state to be approached, and a Hamburg contract signed by John, Paul, George and Pete, which may have been difficult to amend, another opportunity lost.

It was during that trip to Hamburg they got news of the Parlophone recording test/session. It was so soon after their return, it didn’t give them the chance to make a change.

Luckily for them, George Martin expressed his doubts over Pete as a recording drummer.

If a change was going to happen, it had to be then, and GM had given the final piece of ammunition they needed to still Brian arguments against. GM didn’t want to use him as the studio drummer. They didn’t like him as the stage drummer (look at pictures of them live, the three of them rocking out at the front of the stage, Pete sat at the back looking bored, or as the fans would have it, “moody”). And Paul and George just plain didn’t like him by the end.

He’d had his chance to be in the gang, but had chosen to remain a loner, while Ringo was in the gang even before he joined.

Pete sealed his own fate.

@mr. Sun king coming together (you have to learn how to use @’s) I’ve had 34 years reading and learning about The Beatles so I’m quite good for facts, and then putting on how I interpret the various sources.

Pete himself has spoken about how he was kept out of the loop on the Decca decision, in interviews and in his book Beatle!.

Much of the detail on Ringo came from Mark Lewisohn’s Tune In Extended Edition, some of which I already knew, some of which I didn’t.

I do believe that the sacking came as a genuine shock to Pete. There seems to have been an almost wilful ignorance on his part about what his increasing freezing-out actually meant, and maybe he didn’t see it as such big change since – by his own choice – he had always kept himself separate from the rest of the group.

If you take him being kept out of the loop on the Decca situation, for instance, instead of being furious about it, he seems to have just accepted the line that they didn’t tell him because they were worried he’d take the news badly, and that it would dishearten him.

He truly does seem to have convinced himself that his place in the group was not at threat, while ignoring the growing evidence that it was not-so-much a case of if he’d be replaced but when he’d be replaced.

As to Pete’s “audition” to join them in August 1960, audition is a generous description. He came into Liverpool on a Saturday evening, and set his drum kit in one of Allan Williams’ clubs. The Beatles were there, with the possible exception of George. Williams was in charge:

I didn’t know what made a good drummer, so I just asked him to do a drum roll and said, “OK, you’re in”.

The Beatles were leaving for Hamburg on the Monday, and they needed a drummer. Pete’s level of ability really had nothing to do with it. He was their last resort and so he was in, otherwise The Beatles were not going to Hamburg.