Ex-Beatles drummer is still pursuing career, enjoying life

Monday, August 21, 2006 Pete Best was never told why he was booted from the legendary quartet. COLONIE, N.Y. (AP) — As the live beat of Beatles classics begins bouncing off the walls of the Elks Lodge, a man with a gray mustache stands before his drum set and speaks up in a Liverpool lilt. "Let's take you back," he tells the crowd, "to the days when I used to play with a bunch of guys by the names of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison ..." Ringo Starr's playing the Elks club? No. Meet Pete Best, the drummer booted from the band just before Beatlemania exploded. John, Paul, George and new guy Ringo went on to become voices of a generation, musical and cultural history. Best became a civil servant. If there was bitterness — and Best says there was not — he doesn't show it. In fact, the 64-year-old drummer immerses himself in his Beatles past. He regularly bangs out the same beats he played as a young man in the seamy clubs of Hamburg and the crammed confines of the Cavern in Liverpool. Only now he plays with his self-named band in clubs and parks and places like this lodge in suburban Albany, N.Y. "I was strong enough to put it behind me," Best says. "You wake up one morning and say 'What's that use of crying over spilled milk?'" The Pete Best Band is a six-piece outfit that rips through chestnuts like "Roll Over Beethoven" and "P.S. I Love You." Sets center around music the Beatles cut their teeth on from 1960-62, when the band featured Best, whose mother owned a Liverpool club called the Casbah. Just like the old days, Best leaves the singing and harmonizing to his bandmates, content now to split drumming duties with his brother Roag. He also stages more intimate shows in which he tells anecdotes from the old days and takes questions from the audience. The most common, of course: Why were you replaced? Answers "A mystery," Best says during an interview. His mates never told him, he says, and they left the unpleasant deed to the group's manager, Brian Epstein, who called him into his office and "that was that." The consensus among Beatleologists is that the other three and the band's new producer George Martin felt Best's drumming was simply not up to snuff. Personality issues may have played a part, too. Best was reserved and displayed little of the trademark Beatles cheekiness. He never got a mop top. Maybe worse, he was very popular with the Liverpool girls. As Bob Spitz recounts in his exhaustive 2005 book "The Beatles," Paul in particular noticed the "orgasm of shrieks" when Best was introduced on stage. Best shrugs off reasons offered over the years as "conspiracy theories," though he insists the criticism of his drumming "doesn't hold water," since he had a crackerjack reputation in Liverpool. Best is grayer and a tad heavier than the leather-clad looker in old Beatles pictures, but he retains the unassuming manner ascribed to him as a young man. At the Elks Lodge show, he slips back behind his drum set after his introductory remarks and spends the set knocking out a beat with his head bowed down. If he had stayed a Beatle, he would have given George a run for his money for the "quiet one" tag. After his sacking, Best landed a gig playing with another Liverpool band, Lee Curtis and the All Stars. He saw his old mates when the All Stars played on the same bill as the Beatles, but they never spoke. "We passed like ships in the night," he says. He quit show business in 1968 for a job with Britain's civil service and worked his way up to training manager, a job in which — ironically — he prepared workers for new jobs. He returned to the stage around the end of his government career in 1988 for what he thought would be a "one-off concert" and pretty much has been going ever since with his own band. Good life He could be excused for brooding over the life Ringo has led — the riches, the Bond-girl wife, touring with all-star bands. But Best stresses his blessings. He's been married for going on 44 years, with children and grandchildren. Women still scoot near his drum set to take his picture. His band has an album of original material coming out next year. "In hindsight, that was my karma," he says," he says. "I still have my health, I have a beautiful wife, a family, a band." "I'm the happy one, no matter what happened." Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.