Miscellaneous questions about the Beatles | Page 21 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Ahhh Girl said
Do we know of any fans of The Beatles who quit following them and wouldn’t ever buy their records because of Pete Best’s sacking?

You know some of those “Ringo never. Pete Best forever.” fans.

  @Ahhh Girl ,I was going to answer Denny Flynn , but I stumbled on the following blog excerpt while researching the name. This would seem to bring doubt on my 50 years of disliking Denny (although now I have a whole different reason to dislike him).

Is it true that George was the one who campaigned to have Ringo join The Beatles as their drummer?

Here is George’s own comment on the subject, from The Beatles Anthology book:

“To me it was apparent: Pete kept being sick and not showing up for gigs so we would get Ringo to sit in with the band instead, and every time Ringo sat in, it seemed like ‘this is it’. Eventually we realised, ‘We should get Ringo in the band full time.’

I was quite responsible for stirring things up. I conspired to get Ringo in for good; I talked to Paul and John until they came round to the idea.”

Is it true that George received a black eye during the fan uproar about Pete Best being kicked out of the band in favor of August 1962?

George and Ringo both commented on it in The Beatles Anthology:

Ringo: “The first gig in the Cavern after I’d joined was pretty violent. There was a lot of fighting and shouting; half of them hated me, half of them loved me. George got a black eye, and I haven’t looked back.”

George: “Some of the fans – a couple of them – were shouting ‘Pete is best!’ and ‘Ringo never, Pete Best forever!’, but it was a small group and we ignored it. However, after about half an hour it was getting a bit tiring so I shouted to the audience. When we stepped out of the band room into the dark tunnel, some guy nodded me one, giving me a black eye. The things we have to do for Ringo!”

Ringo: “George fought for me.”

However, there are two theories to this:

In Spencer Leigh’s book The Beatles in Liverpool, he writes: “It is often said that some angry fan gave George a black eye, but this was really because a jealous boyfriend didn’t like the way his girl was looking at George.”

As ever, Mark Lewisohn’s research for The Beatles – All These Years: Tune In is meticulous – and here is what he has written: “It was also George who took a black eye for the pleasure of having Ringo in the group, or so the two of them readily believed. The Cavern (alcohol free 1957-70) was a friendly place; the few difficulties that arose were dealt with quietly and non-violently by one of the door staff – but at the lunchtime session on Friday 24 August, six days after Ringo joined, there was an altercation by the band room and George was smacked in the face. The result was a bruise across the bridge of his nose and around his left eye, one that stayed many day’s and went multiculoured. Several saw or heard the fracas but accounts differ in the key details. George himself said that he was hit after losing patience with a few people on the audience who were still calling out ‘Pete forever, Ringo never’; he told them to ‘bugger off’ (or two other words to that effect), and later, as he stepped out of the band room, someone dealt him head-butt, the popular Liverpool move that Paul once saw George himself deploy in the Institute playground. Others are doubtful. ‘George as bopped in the Cavern by some guy jealous for his girlfriend.’ Paul says, and at least one other person agrees. And it does seem that the assailant – 19-year-old Denny Flynn – hit out not for Pete but because he enjoyed it. One of the Cavern regulars, Dave Spain, is certain it had nothing to do with drummers: ‘Denny Flynn wasn’t a relative or friend or even a fan of Pete Beat, he probably just wanted to stretch his muscles. He was notorious in Liverpool as a hard-case.’ Yet while it’s unclear if George sticking up for Ringo did lead to someone sticking one on him, it didn’t matter to the two of them – they were certain of the connection and it became another of the thousands of layers in their kinship. ‘George fought for me!’ Ringo would say, proud and laughing.

In Lewisohn’s footnotes, there is a bit more information: “‘Bugger off’” from The Beatles Anthology TV series; Paul from author interview, 19 May 1987. Dedicated George fan Sue Houghton agrees: ‘I never thought his black eye was anything to do with Pete Best, it was someone’s jealous boyfriend.’ Mike Berry, who shared a Cavern bill with the Beatles in Sunday 26 August, remembers George saying he’d been ‘nutted’ by a man jealous because his girlfriend had taken a shine to him. Other witnesses claim, variously, that it was Paul, not George, who cussed at the hecklers in the audience; that John fought to protect George; that when George returned to the stage for the Beatles’ second lunchtime set John and Paul were in hysterics and kept calling him ‘Teddy Boy !’; or that when George didn’t return to the stage with them John announced it was because he was ‘feeling a little bit aye’. It’s Billy Kinsely who maintains the Beatles carried on as a trio – he says they played songs that didn’t need a lead guitar, including a number his group the Mersey Beats often did, I’ll Never Let You Go (Little Darlin’), one of Elvis’s great Sun records.”

Whatever the case may be, George and Ringo had a tight friendship that would last until George’s untimely passing.