The Beatles went through their share of turmoil in their time. Their first significant upheaval might have been when they fired their first drummer Pete Best to make room for Ringo Starr.
In hindsight, getting Ringo on board seems like it was meant to happen. Only die-hard Beatle fans still think of the Pete Best era from a drumming perspective. Or at all.
At the time, though, the immediate backlash from firing Pete Best was huge.
When discussions about firing Best began, it was George Harrison who lobbied for Ringo. “To me it was apparent,” he said in the 1995 Anthology documentary. “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 realized, ‘We should get Ringo in the band full time.'”
The Beatles had become the first rock band from Liverpool to get a recording contract, but they were nonetheless in awe of Starr, who was the drummer for Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He had first met them back in 1959, and had indeed sat in with them, albeit only once – on 5 February 1962, when Pete was ill. But they kept their eye on him, was well aware of what he was capable of, and liked him as a person.
“We really started to think we needed ‘the greatest drummer in Liverpool,'” Paul McCartney said, also in Anthology. “And the greatest drummer in our eyes was a guy, Ringo Starr, who had changed his name before any of us, who had a beard and was grown up and was known to have a Zephyr Zodiac.”
The decision to sack Pete was not a sudden one. It had been claimed that Paul and George had been overheard talking to their friend Bob Wooler (compère and DJ at the Cavern Club) in the local bar Grapes about sacking Pete, once they had John’s approval. John came around, with the final motivation being producer George Martin’s decision to use a session drummer rather than Best after hearing them audition.
Their next step after that was to approach Epstein and tell him. Epstein got the job of informing their departing drummer, but only after securing the services of the new one. Brian Epstein called Ringo on 14 August 1962 to offer him the job as the new drummer of the Beatles.
How does Ringo remember being asked to join the Beatles?
On the Howard Stern Show, Ringo Starr bemusedly recalled getting the historic phone call from Brian Epstein. “I got a phone call from Brian Epstein on a Wednesday, asking me if I’d join The Beatles.”
“I said ‘Sure, when?’ And he said, ‘it has to be today.’ I told him, ‘I can’t join today. I’m in another band, I just can’t pick up and leave. They deserve some notice.’”
After some thought, he gave Epstein what he felt was a good compromise:
“I’ll join The Beatles on Saturday.”
Pete Best was called to Epstein’s office for a meeting on 16 August, on the morning after what would be Best’s final gig with the Beatles (at the Cavern Club). The meeting was short and to the point. He was given the merciless message that he was out, and Best was so stunned by the news that he had no questions. Best later recalled, “He said ‘I’ve got some bad news for you. The boys want you out and Ringo in.’ He said [Beatles producer] George Martin wasn’t too pleased with my playing [and] the boys thought I didn’t fit in.”
The band were probably never happier that they had a manager on hand, as this meant they didn’t have to deliver the message themselves. While it was not unheard of that this type of messaging would fall within the remit of managers, there is still something uncomfortable and undignified about this on a personal level. Best had given them two years of his life, gotten them countless of gigs, taken care of most practicalities around gig set-up, organised transportation, lived and played with them in Hamburg, convinced his mother to feed the band for long periods of time, and been an active and well liked fan ambassador for the band. They not only bailed out of having to talk to him about their decision – they decided they would prefer never having to face him again. They couldn’t or wouldn’t look him in the eye, and so they didn’t. It was the single most cowardly thing they ever did.
Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison all later stated that they regretted the manner in which Best was sacked. Lennon admitted that “we were cowards when we sacked him. We made Brian do it.” McCartney stated: “I do feel sorry for him because of what he could have been on to.” Harrison said: “We weren’t very good at telling Pete he had to go”, and “historically, it may look like we did something nasty to Pete and it may have been that we could have handled it better.”
Pete Best never fully reconciled with the other members of The Beatles. While there were no public feuds, there also weren’t any significant efforts at reconciliation. The closest he came to a form of acknowledgement was when The Beatles included some of his drumming on the Anthology 1 album released in 1995, for which he received royalties. Despite the lack of personal reconciliation, Pete Best has often spoken positively about his time with the band and has moved on with his own musical career and personal life.
Returning to 1962, Ringo Starr reported for duty as the Beatles’ new drummer on 18 August – a Saturday, as agreed! – for the first time. According to the online resource Beatles Bible, the very first thing the Beatles did as a band with Ringo was a two-hour rehearsal, after which they performed at a dance sponsored by the local horticultural society. The concert took place at Hulme Hall in Birkenhead – a ferry ‘cross the Mersey away from Liverpool.
The gig went off without incident, but it surprised a lot of the crowd when they announced Ringo as the new drummer. By the next day, news of Pete Best’s firing had made its way through the city. This was NOT welcome news. Best was – incredible as it may seem from today’s vantage point – the most popular member of the band.
The interesting thing is that on that very same day, the band had a Sunday evening slot booked at the Cavern Club, which was as close to home turf as The Beatles got. The 19 August gig was to be Ringo’s official Cavern debut as a Beatle – and the Best Army planned to be out in force. This ended up making up about half the crowd, all of whom objected to the decision and wasted no time in making it known.
“I was there the day that everyone was going ‘We want Pete,'” recalled Dave Dover, harmonica player with R&B group The Cordes. “Ringo was looking sheepish and McCartney was doing his usual, hands in the air, sorry, but trying to be diplomatic. Lennon couldn’t care less but George Harrison was being sarcastic, so he got thumped by Mickey Flynn.”
There are a few differing sources as to who punched George. Several sources amongst the fans who were there simply say that the aggressor went by the name of Bruno. In any case, the scuffles were happening to a solid backdrop of fans chanting “Pete for ever, Ringo never” and “Pete is Best.”
George would remember that “a few people shouted ‘Ringo never, Pete Best forever,’ and after about half an hour I said, ‘Oh, bugger off’ or something… The Cavern had three tunnels, and we stepped out of the dressing room into what was this dark tunnel and some guy just like butted me right in the eye. That was a bad day.”
Things got even worse for George, as he added, ”…and then I walked under a bus – got hit by a double decker bus.”
Ringo never forgot that day, and later always acknowledged, “George fought for me.”
For a short while, things were so heated that Epstein needed to have a bodyguard as he went around town. The bodyguard was present that first night at the Cavern, but obviously not able to cover Epstein as well as four band members at the same time. He was also not able to prevent Epstein’s car being trashed.
The Mersey Beat magazine reported at the time that the Beatles stated: “Pete left the group by mutual agreement. There were no arguments or difficulties, and this has been an entirely amicable decision.”
This was clearly incorrect, which was exposed in the same story when the magazine also got a comment from Best: “This official Beatles’ comment, issued by Brian Epstein, was false. Pete was to tell Mersey Beat: ‘The news came as a big surprise to me as I had had no hint that it could happen and didn’t even have the opportunity of discussing it with the rest of the group.”
Local fans went wild with fury and hundreds of letters and petitions of protest were sent to Mersey Beat. However, the protests eventually died down. It was not as if the fans could force the band to take back Best, and they knew it. They simply needed to vent their frustrations – and for a while, they certainly did!
Over time, discussions have been ongoing about the reasons for Best’s sacking. At the time, Epstein attempted to soften the harshness of the group’s decision by implying that Pete wasn’t a good enough drummer. Fellow Merseyside musicians have always disputed this, as have fans who heard him play. He genuinely contributed to the Beatles’ success, both musically and as a personality, and was an integral part of them as they established themselves as the #1 band on Merseyside.
In 1984, Geoff Nugent of the Undertakers was to tell Spencer Leigh: “Pete Best put the Beatles on the map. You’d see two or three girls around Paul and George and John, but you’d see fifty around Pete. I very rarely saw him smile and yet he was always pleasant. If you look at any of the Beatles photographs with Pete Best, the first face you’re drawn to is Pete’s. I don’t care if you’re a man or woman.”
Interestingly, George Harrison also touched on one of these aspects when he wrote to a fan about it not too long after it happened: “Ringo is a much better drummer and he can smile – which is a bit more than Pete could do. It will seem different for a few weeks, but I think that the majority of our fans will soon be taking Ringo for granted.”
The ‘lack of smile’ comments from both Nugent and Harrison may be closer to the most important reason, as was Epstein’s comment to Best when he was sacked about not fitting in. He was said to be a bit of a loner – when the other three did things together, Best wandered off on his own. He did not have the same sense of humour, refused to adapt the same hairstyle (very important back then!), and he was the most popular with the girls. A band is also a close-knit social unit – a gang – that needs to be able to hang together. The band seemed to prefer Ringo as their ‘gang member’.
The turmoil and controversy soon died down. During their lunchtime gig at the Cavern just three days later on 22 August, the Beatles were filmed by Granada Television performing Some Other Guy for their Know the North program. The video has become the go-to clip as far as representing The Beatles during their early days at The Cavern. It shows no dissent, apart from the lone guy shouting “We want Pete” at the song’s end.
When the Beatles went into the studio to record their first single Love Me Do about two weeks later, on 4 September 1962, one of the engineers was a very young Geoff Emerick. He had very distinct memories of his first impressions of The Beatles? Lennon was described as fidgety and quite funny, calling an EMI employee named Norman ‘Normal.’ McCartney was affable. Starr was short and dejected (having been told by producer George Martin that his services weren’t needed, as Martin intended to use a session drummer). Harrison, however, was described as an ‘almost emaciated’ and very young man, who notably sported a black eye.
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