Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Listen to comments about Pete's ouster.....

http://www.beatlesagain.com/bpete.html

http://www.beatlesagain.com/bsounds/john3.mp3

John is clearly being too harsh and vindictive. It is true that that the other 3 enlisted Pete as an emergency fill-in so that they could go to Hamburg. And I believe John when he says that they were always of the mind to give him the boot if they found a better drummer. Yes, perhaps the were always looking for an opportunity to dump Pete as Pete was CERTAINLY NOT the drummer that Ringo is and also that Pete never became one of the yup-em-up close comrades with the other three..... .... but to say that Pete was always a "lousy drummer" and that they "trained him to keep a stick going up and down" as if Pete was some monkey circus act is SIMPLY TOO MUCH. It is Lennon's cruel side on display and doesn't reflect well on John that he needed to still be so mean after all those years.

Sure, George Martin says that Pete "couldn't play drums very well, couldn't keep time very well".... but still... Pete's drumming was apparently good enough to back the the group from their early days in Hamburg to becoming the most popular group in the North, if not all of England at the time. And clearly the recorded evidence is there that Pete's drumming with the early Beatles was good enough to make for some GREAT GREAT sounds. Some people even say that "you never heard the Beatles until you heard Pete's ATOMIC BEAT". Pete got in synch with Paul's bass to make for a truly fantastic backing.

Was Pete's drumming nuanced? hardly. Was it as good as Ringo's certainly not. Should they have dumped him in favor of Ringo at that late date when they still had a chance? Yes, as history has proved it was the right move.... although the way they did it was shameful.

Put it this way... most of us would take a young Pete Best into our band in a heartbeat.... I know I would.

Long live Pete.



..> Then again, there are these remakes which probably are pretty funny and likely not too far from the truth.

I'm amazed that I've never heard this alternate "Cry For A Shadow" with the different beginning.... is this legit? It sure sounds like The Beatles with Paul's voice in the beginning.... but the rest sounds suspiciously like the recording we all know. Is this just a mash-up of two different tracks?

Video of the presentation of George's second 12-string:

Note John's comment when the 14 year old asks about starting to play drums.... "By the time he learns, they'll have a machine doing it"

brammy wrote:
most of us would take a young Pete Best into our band in a heartbeat

I've been in bands with a few Pete Best's before - you're always looking over his shoulder for the Next Guy to come along and make everything sound better. Unfortunately, life isn't always like it is in the movies (ha) and the band just falls apart instead.

I think Pete Best is a bit of an emblem for people who like to play a kind of fantasy football with the Beatles and contemplate 'what could have been'. For what it's worth, I've never heard a recording of Pete Best that sounded any good. Half the time you barely know he's there. On the other hand, people who speak in his favour are usually going from increasingly old and unreliable recollection - any band is going to make a better impression on you when you're in a dark, noisy and humid hole in the ground.

None of this is to hate on Pete Best, but there's a reason he is who he is in the Beatle story.

brammy wrote:... most of us would take a young Pete Best into our band in a heartbeat.... I know I would.

Nope, not here. We auditioned a Pete Best the same evening we auditioned our current drummer. The difference was most apparent.
JimK

Actually, in hindsight I know what you mean..... in an old band we actually threw a Pete Best out of the band only to get him back when we couldn't find a better drummer who could be counted on. A great drummer can be such huge asset to a band..... just as any member of Blondie.

I dont think Pete was all that bad a drummer for the very early Beatles, but I can see that by mid-62 John Paul and George had grown well beyond Pete's abilities. Ringo was the right choice on a number of levels. One of the sad things to see is that Pete still thinks it was "jealousy" that got him kicked out. That may have been a contributing factor (as Pete definitely was the favorite of the girls) but in reality it was his drumming ability and (perhaps equally important) his restrained humorless personality which was never in synch with the others.

In hindsight, Pete was lucky to have been with the Beatles at all:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/musi ... eatle.html

Go Yankees...

Didn't know the band was into golf!

They look like real experts...

The Fab Four's love of golf is legendary....
here we see them watching Arnold Palmer
tee off during the 1963 US Open:

Someone said this around 1965 during the filming of Help. It was a jam with the hotel's house band.