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72.5.239.5
Sung to the tune of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
If you listen to the recordings the Beatles made with Best...they were right to fire him. There are 3 versions of "Love Me Do" - one with Best, one with Ringo, and one with the studio drummmer. Best is lame, as he was on the earlier recordings made for Decca. If you read his book, the other Beatles fired him because he was the most popular. He said the Liverpool fans started calling them "Pete Best and the Beatles"...I think this was a sign that the fans didn't really consider him to be a member. Ringo had sat in with the Beatles before....they felt the band just came alive with Ringo on drums. With Ringo finally available, the choice was easy.
During 1964, George didn't want to continue the tour when Ringo fell sick; indicating that they weren't the Beatles without him. None of them ever felt that way about Pete Best.
Follow Ups:
...was considered the best drummer in up and coming English bands like the Beatles.
So they had to have him to take it to the next level.
Pete Best was ok but couldn't perform at the level they needed.
So they recruited Ringo and he surprisingly came over - so Best had to go.
Seemed like he never really fit in.
According to the Beatles Biography by Bob Spitz - considered the definitve word on them.
I remember seeing a movie on television on Pete Best about twenty years ago or so. According to that film, Pete Best was a great drummer, and the best musician in the group, and consequently drew the most attention and adoration, to the extent that he was eclipsing the other members. The other three then decided that it best he go. At least according to that movie, though I don't know the source.
Whatever the reasons were for firing him, the fact remains that when George Martin heard Pete Best in the studio in 1962, he told the other Beatles they needed to get a better drummer for recording sessions. Martin himself says this in a documentary about the Beatles, and I doubt he was lying.
That very well may be true. My point was simply that there are different versions of the same story, and which one is true likely depends on the person telling the story. Of course, I respect George Martin, but no doubt he is very protective of the Beatles and their history, and so I very much doubt he would say, even if true, that Best was a great drummer and we dumped him because he was more popular at the time than John and Paul, and they were afraid he would be the dominant personality in the band going forward, so we hired a drummer with a big nose and who was a bit of a goofball.
The irony is, Ringo turned out to be arguably the most charismatic Beatle, and the others were quick to appreciate and take advantage of that charisma. My earliest strong impression of them came from the movie A Hard Day's Night, in which Ringo is the real star.
But Ringo had a low-key kind of charisma and achieved his stardom without making it seem like he was trying to upstage the others.
My research indicates you're right. The other Beatles were never thrilled with Pete Best, and when George Martin told them they needed a better drummer for recording, out he went, to Martin's surprise.
He assumed they would keep Best for live shows, since he was good-looking and popular with the audience, especially the girls.
What surprises me is that not only did they have Brian Epstein fire him, none of them ever spoke a word to him again. At least Epstein set him up with another band, which was only mildly successful. Finally, they included 10 tracks with him in the Beatles Anthology, and that earned him a nice chunk of change. But despite being treated so badly up to then, he always seemed to deal with it in a classy, dignified way.
That is the biggest thing - that they never talked to him again, not once, after going through a lot. One wonders.
I imagine they felt guilty. In fact, I think they've expressed regret for the way it was handled -- though it wouldn't have been easy to deal with under any circumstances.
Sorry, but I think you are a bit off track as to Pete really being a bad drummer. I hardly think that they would have reached the popularity they did if he was. Being bad for the group as a whole, maybe, but not so much for the band. Being a bad drummer and being bad for the group are two completely separate things, and that really was the issue with Pete. Yes, he was extremely popular, and unfortunately, just didn't fit in as one of the guys, so to speak. That happens. That can affect the music overall as well. I give him a lot more credit for how he has handled it over the years, than for how the other three have. None of it lies on Ringo's shoulders.
So long, and thanks for all the fish! :-)
The accounts I've read of Pete's drumming are in line with TGR's description. He was apparently an uninspired drummer who couldn't learn new beats and, worse, couldn't maintain a solid rhythm for the group. In fact, the firing occurred because George Martin wouldn't use him for recordings -- he said he wasn't good enough and that he was going to bring in a session drummer. Martin didn't expect that they'd fire Pete, who was at the time the most popular member of the group, but continue to use him for live performances. But the band decided to replace him. It's hard to see how they could have decided otherwise but they did come to regret the manner in which they'd done it, delegating the task to Brian Epstein rather than easing him out themselves.
I've seen a documentary in which George Martin discusses the firing of Pete Best, and that is exactly what he says. IMO, the other three Beatles were not top technical virtuosos as instrumentalists either, as that was never their main focus, but they correctly saw the need for a better drummer.
What they were, I think, were the perfect ensemble players. Their playing always served the music, rather than the other way around. But more than that, when they came together, the band itself became an instrument that was better than any virtuoso soloist could possibly be. Ringo fit this model perfectly. John famously quipped that he wasn't even the best drummer in the Beatles, but he was good enough to support the band -- the best drummer in Liverpool at the time, as one of them (Paul?) put it. And his philosophy was to support the band, rather than to strike out on his own as a virtuoso. That made his playing an ideal match to the ensemble-oriented playing of the others.
Listen to the tracks with Pete Best on Beatles Anthology 1 - bland, characterless drumming out of touch with what is going on in the music.
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