'Can't get no worse' for Pete Best

MANILA, Philippines - Probably it was just his way of reacting to the bitter truth he was no longer in the Beatles’ line-up. But Pete Best, supposed-to-be drummer to the world’s greatest band ever, once thought that his mates who reportedly pushed him out were not going to make it that big.

In a little chat with the man often labeled as the most famous of showbiz might-have-beens, Pete, referring to the success of his former group, noted “I didn’t think they would become as big as they became.”

The freshly released two-DVD package from MCA Music, featuring performances from the Fab Four’s four-date appearance in The Ed Sullivan Show can only be a reminder that Pete’s forecast was a far cry from what actually happened.

 The 4 Complete Ed Sullivan Shows Starring The Beatles takes fanatics to the classic performances that saw the quartet famously unleashing live 20 of their now-standard hits, including I Wanna Hold Your Hand, She Loves You, Help and Yesterday. The all-new designed package pays homage to the early Beatles, much like when Pete was still part of the equation.    

Interestingly, Pete’s favorite Beatle track I Saw Her Standing There was even performed on the show twice, on Feb. 9 and 16, 1964. The two other dates are Feb. 23 the same year and Sept. 12, 1965. 

Pete poignantly shared, “We all did the same things. It was just the media who came up with me being so different from them. Me and John Lennon were usually the last two guys standing in the bar after gigs. I was closest to him and I really liked his sense of humor.”

Too bad for Pete, by the time the band played in The Ed Sullivan Show, the names John, Paul, and George have found another drummer to fit into the bill: Ringo.

Pete confirmed he never talked to Ringo Starr even for once, seeing there was no point in doing so. He was insistent in declaring he’s no odd-man out in the Beatles camp that in the mid-’60s, he fashioned his hair moptop-style as popularized by his former bandmates. When he felt he already made his statement, he combed his hair back up and left music business in the late ’60s, about the same time The Beatles broke-up.

He would resurface two decades later, but as a kind of nostalgia act, obviously getting some attention for being that guy who could have been Ringo. In the ’90s, he finally earned from the Beatles catalogue via royalties incurred from his performances with the boys that made it to The Beatles Anthology 1 wherein earlier Beatles outtakes were depicted.   

He reflected on his time with The Beatles, “Those formative years were for me good memories. We were No. 1 in England and played some good gigs. Those were enough to sustain a life.”

Pete was officially sacked on Aug. 16, 1962. Three years earlier he began playing for Quarry Men (the pre-Beatles name), upon the suggestion of his friend George Harrison, at his mother Mona’s Casbah Club in England.

Beatles’ insider DJ Bob Wooler, as revealed via Keith Badman’s Off The Record book on the Fab Four, recalled that “Pete’s drumming ability was not favored by the recording studio and producer George Martin actually concluded that ‘it didn’t hold the group together.’”

When he visited the Philippines in September last year for a major performance at the Aliw Theater, Pete was with his half-brother Rogue, who is Mona’s son with Neil Aspinall, The Beatles’ road manager and one of their closest friends from their early days up to the very end.