When They Were Boys (47 page)

As the group started taking off, so did the legend of the Casbah, home to other groups as well, including Gerry and the Pacemakers and the Searchers. Mona's cozy Casbah was significant to the boys. She was proud of all of them, but Pete was a budding superstar. No one, no journalist or historian, can ever challenge that. Unfortunately, his celebrity, coupled with his mom's strong hand, may have begun to hurt him. The Pete legend, fueled by the girls who adored him and the admiring boys, was in real life a “movement.” Movements have a flow that can succeed one moment and fade in another.

“Pete was loved,” Freda Kelly says, “but mostly by the fans, and not enamored of inside the group. He was and is a lovely young man, and a wonderful
adult man, husband, father, grandfather. In the beginning, though, things got a bit rough.”

Kelly is too nice to say what “rough” was. No doubt part of “rough” was raw jealousy, matched with a ton of resentment toward the mother and the son.

Paul McCartney was and is a charmer, but in the beginning, the animal attraction, the magnetism surrounding the early boys, was almost all Pete.
Mersey Beat
described him as “Mean, Moody and Magnificent.” He wasn't mean. He could be moody. But he definitely was magnificent to his fans.

Too magnificent, at least on March 7, 1962, at the “live” concert in the Manchester Playhouse for the radio show
Teenager's Turn
. Years later, Roag Best would say that that performance, and what happened around it, was a lightning rod in the turn against Pete, especially for George, who didn't especially like Pete, and most especially for Paul and his usually mild-mannered father.

The appearance was marked by trouble from the start. Bill Harry remembers fans cutting out Pete's picture from concert posters, and others running to the stage trying to push John and Paul's legs aside to get a look at Pete. This onstage antic embarrassed the other members of the band. But what happened after the concert may have been even worse. The group had arrived in Manchester with members of their family aboard a motor coach. It was a pleasurable trip arranged by Brian Epstein to celebrate the rising profile, and the plan was for them to leave in the same coach, triumphant. But it didn't end on a pleasant note.

Bill Harry recalls the show: “When writing about the show in
Mersey Beat
, I commented, ‘John, Paul, and George made their entrance on stage to cheers and applause, but when Pete walked on—the fans went wild! The girls screamed. In Manchester his popularity was assured by his looks alone.' After the show we all boarded the coach, but Pete was missing. We waited, but there was no sign of him; the coach went round the block.”

What happened in those few minutes was frightening.

Because of security concerns, members of the playhouse staff tried to sneak Pete out of the theater in a large bin designed to carry laundry. The motor coach's driver had to circle around the area while everyone waited for Pete.
As the girls surrounded the exits, the staff quickly carried out the bin with Pete inside. In the desperation of the crowd, one fan tried to get a piece of Pete's shirt, and in the process, penetrated his skin with a pair of scissors. He was cut and bleeding when he finally trudged into the coach. The mood was icy. Paul's affable dad, Jim, went right up to Pete and said, “Are you happy with yourself?” According to Roag's account of the night, passed on to him as an adult, Pete was bleeding and terrified after the wild exit. And he was shocked and despondent about what happened next. There was silence on the trip back—a lack of concern for Pete, and what appeared to be a simmering jealousy.

Bill Harry says he and girlfriend Virginia Sowry, also invited on the trip and riding back in the chartered bus, were stunned.

“When [Pete] got aboard, Jim McCartney was furious and accused him of trying to upstage the other members of the band,” Harry recalls.

O
F COURSE
, P
ETE HADN'T DONE THIS
. T
HERE WAS NO DOUBT AT THE TIME THAT HE WAS THE MOST POPULAR MEMBER OF THE
B
EATLES
. P
AT
D
ELANEY, THE
C
AVERN DOORMAN, TOLD ME
, “P
ETE WAS INCLINED TO BE MORE POPULAR WITH THE GIRLS THAN ANY OTHER MEMBER OF THE GROUP
.” L
OCAL PROMOTER
R
ON
A
PPLEBY COMMENTED
, “H
E WAS DEFINITELY THE BIG ATTRACTION WITH THE GROUP AND DID MUCH TO ESTABLISH THEIR POPULARITY DURING THEIR EARLY CAREER
.” W
HEN
B
OB
W
OOLER WROTE HIS FAMOUS ARTICLE ABOUT THE
B
EATLES, THE ONLY ONE HE MENTIONED BY NAME WAS
P
ETE, WHO HE CALLED “MEAN, MOODY, AND MAGNIFICENT,” AND WHEN
B
RIAN
E
PSTEIN SENT ME THE TELEGRAM SAYING THE
B
EATLES WERE TO BE SIGNED BY
EMI, I
MADE IT THE COVER STORY—BUT ONLY USED A PHOTO OF
P
ETE ON THE COVER—IRONIC
!

There was extreme jealousy among his bandmates that Pete was getting all the attention, but it was a fact, chronicled in
Mersey Beat
and other publications. The legend of girls sleeping in his backyard to get close to Pete is true. It's also true that there was an overwhelming outcry by the Beatles' female fans when Pete was released by the band in favor of Richie Starkey. In the aftermath of his departure in the summer of 1962, on the cusp of extraordinary success, it is hard to reconcile what an impact Pete had on the band and easy to forget the momentum he gave them.

So what
really
led to Pete's departure and history's lost chance to view the band as John, Paul, George, and Pete? As it is in most of the seminal moments in Beatles history, it may all depend on whom you talk to. But there are some absolute truths to consider, the first being that Pete never accentuated his good looks and drumming talent with an outgoing personality—and by all accounts, he didn't. Would his supposed lack of personality have stopped the Beatles' rise? Perhaps not—especially when you consider that Ringo's sometimes sullen demeanor didn't bring the band down. But Pete's personality
was
used as a reason by the two people who wanted him out—both of whom had an agenda. It all began in late 1960, just before the Beatles' historic appearance at Litherland Town Hall, and it ended with immaculate timing.

Mona Best was a strong woman with a big heart, a bad marriage to her husband, John, and an unbroken and always forgiving love for her first two sons, Pete and Rory. She was also the de facto early business leader of the Beatles. On the evening of a scheduled Litherland appearance, Mona found George, apparently a bit intoxicated, slumped over. Outraged, she told him that he was “out of the band.” George eventually was awakened with some hot, black coffee administered by John, and quickly driven to the concert. George never forgot the episode, and neither did a very angry Paul McCartney. Even John, growing close to Pete, was deeply upset.

Joe Flannery, Brian Epstein's friend and confidante, remembers that John had complained to Epstein that Mona was “quite bossy.” Flannery, who talks of a close relationship with the Best family, remembers spending some time with John as the Beatles' bandleader dreamed of performing in America. Flannery told Professor Michael Brocken of Liverpool Hope University that John confided in him, “Joe, I'm not going to let Mona get in the way.” The angst about Mona was further complicated after Epstein took over and, during a coffee with Beatles family and close friends, asserted that he was in control of their fates and fortune.

Flannery insists that Mona was fuming, angry that control of the group was being wrested away.

All this happened in the same period that Mona became pregnant in her
quiet relationship with Neil Aspinall. Neil, seventeen years younger than Mona, had rented a room in the Best home. He became very close to Pete, and eventually closer to Mona, who was separated from her husband. Mona and Neil's baby, Vincent Roag Best, was born in July 1962. It was a joyful time for Mona and Neil and the Bests.

But not for long. The combination of Mona's power grab and the growing role of Brian Epstein in the boys' lives set the stage for what came next. Paul and George lobbied Epstein to get Pete out of the band, and the hammer dropped when Epstein called Pete to his office. Epstein told Pete, “The boys want you out.” And on August 16, almost three weeks after Roag's birth, Pete was fired.

Pete, who is notoriously shy and unpretentious, told my colleagues, filmmakers John Rose and Tony Guma, that Epstein also told him, “George Martin wanted you out.” Both Pete and Mona Best didn't believe that for one moment. When Mona confronted George Martin, Pete says his reply was, “Mrs. Best, I never said that. What I said was that, because his drumming sound was so big, we might have to bring in a session drummer. But I never asked that Pete leave the band.”

Whatever the reasons, the moment that Pete discovered his firing, he was devastated.

As Pete left Epstein's office and navigated down the stairway, Epstein, tears flowing from his eyes, stood on the landing and watched Pete exit the building. John later described Paul and George as “cowards,” but the deed was done. John respected Pete, and his ouster was a seminal moment—an aggressive action led by Paul, with George's consent, that would begin an era where Paul would begin to chip away at John's prior dominance. John, as it would turn out, remained the most loyal Beatle in the years ahead, helping his childhood friend Pete Shotten become a millionaire, and paying his respects always to the suddenly lonely roadie Mal Evans in the early seventies. It was also an irony, but not unexpected, that John, in his thirties, mentored Pete Best's replacement. Ringo, like John, dealt with alcohol and drug issues in the years after the Beatles' breakup. John stood by him like no other friend did.

Pete, who rarely socialized with the boys in Hamburg and Liverpool, was never really a confidante. But his sudden departure, and replacement by Ringo, left him crestfallen.

Billy Kinsley was walking into Brian Epstein's office on the day of the firing.

“Pete, being escorted out by Neil, looked at me with an empty look,” Kinsley remembers. “He looked pale. I couldn't imagine what was going on.”

Pete and Aspinall walked to the Grapes, the legendary early Beatles bar on Mathew Street, where Pete gave Aspinall the news, a play-by-play of the sad and grim meeting. In an act of enormous unselfishness, Pete urged Aspinall to stay on. Aspinall protested. He was so close to the family and insisted he would quit. But Pete told him, “Don't go. Stay with it. They are going to be very big.”

That meeting sealed the fate of Neil Aspinall as road manager, confidante, and eventual heir to Brian Epstein as the guardian of the Beatles' interests through the rest of the century and into the next.

Mona tried unsuccessfully to get Epstein to change his mind. Epstein later wrote in his autobiography that John, Paul, and George thought Pete was “too conventional to be a Beatle, and though he was friendly with John, he was not liked by George and Paul.”

The news broke in a flash. The fans were angry. Future Beatles press secretary Derek Taylor remembers the moment. He told me in August 1964, “People in Liverpool were devastated, you know. Brian insisted that Ringo was a great drummer, and Pete knew, in his mind,
he
was up to the task. It was a mystifying moment to the fans at the Cavern. But change was coming, and Ringo's fate was sealed. In the long run, the Ringo connection, a different look, another person to idolize out of the four, was magic.”

But in that moment, the departure was problematic. Tony Bramwell, who had joined Epstein in the inner circle, was not surprised by the fan reaction. Pete was popular. Today, Bramwell philosophizes, “America had Elvis; Britain had Pete Best.”

The timeline of these developments is amazing. The sacking of Pete Best came exactly two years and two days before the beginning of the boys'
historic North American summer tour of 1964. I've often thought that it could have been Pete Best sitting there on the sofa at the San Francisco Hilton on August 18, 1964, during my first extensive interview session with the boys.

But it was not meant to be. Pete Best's life went into a tailspin. Although he did go on to work for twenty years in municipal government, and made a decent living, Pete often became depressed. In the eighties, mother Mona inspired him to get back into show business. The Pete Best Band was formed in 1988, and to this day he still travels around the world, brother Rory by his side, and with Roag a constant companion and super business manager, a composite of mother Mona and his dad, Neil Aspinall.

One of the first members of Pete's new band was Billy Kinsley. During their very first performance, he noticed Mona Best in the audience. “She was sitting there smiling broadly, happy that he was back on stage, but tears were streaming down her face,” Kinsley says. “Three days later, after a lengthy illness, she died after suffering a heart attack. It was a sad time in Liverpool, where Pete and his family were and are still revered.”

It was also an irony that Kinsley joined Pete's new band, because in the aftermath of Pete's firing, Epstein had urged Pete to join Kinsley's band, the Merseybeats. So, it took more than a quarter of a century, but Kinsley and Pete were eventually united in song.

And then there is the carefully woven story of Neil Aspinall. He never forgot his roots with the Best family. Of course, there was his son, Roag. That was always there. But the friendship endured with Pete, as well. In the beginning of this century, Aspinall, Apple's director, rewarded Pete and the family he loved with a lucrative contract to help prepare the book and video
The Beatles Anthology
, which included music with Pete on the drums, although in the Beatles' carefully crafted version of their lives, Pete is hardly given the due he deserves.