Pete Best’s favorite Beatles song is “I Saw Her Standing There.”
The original drummer of the Fab Four isn’t referring to the recorded version from the Beatles’ debut “Please Please Me,” but the live version the band had worked up before Ringo Starr joined the group.
“It lost a little energy (on record),” Best said, stopping by the Herald video studio. “I don’t mean that disparagingly. You have to realize that you can’t get the sound of the clubs on record.”
Best — who appears at the Pop Culture Expo at the Shriners Auditorium in Wilmington this weekend — was only with the Beatles for two years. But it was an important two years.
John, Paul, George and Pete, along with Stu Sutcliffe, spent a huge chunk of the early ’60s in Hamburg playing packed clubs among the rubble of the post-war city. It was in Germany that they honed their craft and found their sound.
“When we went to Hamburg we were par for the course,” he said. “We weren’t any different from these other bands. In fact we were pretty crap to be quite honest. But the grind, six, seven days a week, six, seven hours a night, turned us into the prolific rock ’n’ roll band that the world knows today.”
“If we hadn’t gotten kicked out maybe we would still be there,” he added. “(Our engagements) got extended and extended because of the success we had out there. The promoters were watching the clubs fill up night after night, watching the audience reaction, and it was common sense to keep us there.”
After George Harrison was deported for being underage — he was just 17 while working at the clubs — the band went back to Liverpool. It didn’t take long for rock fans and the music industry to take notice of their fresh chops.
The German bars were so loud and so rotten, a band had to be really powerful to get through to the crowd. Best added more bass drum, lots of tom tom work and heavy fills to his playing.
“I took that style back to Liverpool and thought I was doing nothing different from any other drummers and, God almighty, I started a whole new style of playing drums. It was nicknamed the ‘Atom Beat’ and people said I was responsible for the big drum sound that came out of Liverpool.”
A combination of personality conflicts and the record label wanting to use a session drummer for the first album paved the way for Best’s exit from the Beatles.
Best says he didn’t miss drumming, but after 20 years of fans (and promoters) requests to play, he began gigging again as the Pete Best Band.
“I got some old mates who knew how to play real rock ’n’ roll and that’s what we did,” he said.
The original drummer of the Fab Four isn’t referring to the recorded version from the Beatles’ debut “Please Please Me,” but the live version the band had worked up before Ringo Starr joined the group.
“It lost a little energy (on record),” Best said, stopping by the Herald video studio. “I don’t mean that disparagingly. You have to realize that you can’t get the sound of the clubs on record.”
Best — who appears at the Pop Culture Expo at the Shriners Auditorium in Wilmington this weekend — was only with the Beatles for two years. But it was an important two years.
John, Paul, George and Pete, along with Stu Sutcliffe, spent a huge chunk of the early ’60s in Hamburg playing packed clubs among the rubble of the post-war city. It was in Germany that they honed their craft and found their sound.
“When we went to Hamburg we were par for the course,” he said. “We weren’t any different from these other bands. In fact we were pretty crap to be quite honest. But the grind, six, seven days a week, six, seven hours a night, turned us into the prolific rock ’n’ roll band that the world knows today.”
“If we hadn’t gotten kicked out maybe we would still be there,” he added. “(Our engagements) got extended and extended because of the success we had out there. The promoters were watching the clubs fill up night after night, watching the audience reaction, and it was common sense to keep us there.”
After George Harrison was deported for being underage — he was just 17 while working at the clubs — the band went back to Liverpool. It didn’t take long for rock fans and the music industry to take notice of their fresh chops.
The German bars were so loud and so rotten, a band had to be really powerful to get through to the crowd. Best added more bass drum, lots of tom tom work and heavy fills to his playing.
“I took that style back to Liverpool and thought I was doing nothing different from any other drummers and, God almighty, I started a whole new style of playing drums. It was nicknamed the ‘Atom Beat’ and people said I was responsible for the big drum sound that came out of Liverpool.”
A combination of personality conflicts and the record label wanting to use a session drummer for the first album paved the way for Best’s exit from the Beatles.
Best says he didn’t miss drumming, but after 20 years of fans (and promoters) requests to play, he began gigging again as the Pete Best Band.
“I got some old mates who knew how to play real rock ’n’ roll and that’s what we did,” he said.
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