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Pete Best

PETE BEST
 
 
Pete Best  (born 24 November 1941) is a British musician, principally known as the drummer for the Beatles in 1960–62.  The Beatles invited Best to join on 12 August 1960, on the eve of the group’s first Hamburg season of club dates.  Ringo Starr eventually replaced Best on 16 August 1962, when the group’s manager, Brian Epstein, dismissed Best under the direction of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison, following their first recording session at Abbey Road Studios.  After working in a number of commercially unsuccessful groups, Best gave up the music industry to work as a civil servant for 20 years, before starting the Pete Best Band.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
The closest that the Poppees ever came to covering a Beatles song is when they recorded “Love of the Loved”, an obscure Lennon/McCartney song that the Beatles never recorded.  (Actually, it turns out that this song was included among the 15 songs on their famed Decca Records audition tape; Pete Best was still drumming then, so it wasn’t really the Beatles that we all know at that point).
 
(December 2010)
 
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Never having been in a band, I can’t say for sure; but it seems to me that choosing just the right name has to be a major decision.  Many bands go through several names before settling down.  The Beatles, for instance, cycled through a long list of names beginning in March 1957, many totally unknown to their fans:  the Blackjacks, the Quarrymen, Johnny and the Moondogs, the Beatals, the Silver Beetles, the Silver Beatles, and finally the Beatles in mid-August 1960.  It was Stu Sutcliffe who, in January 1960, came up with the name “the Beatals” – as a tribute to the name of Buddy Holly’s band the Crickets – so he should rightly be credited with the name we all knew them by.  (Another British band was more direct in their honoring of Buddy, the Hollies).  By the way, Pete Best was hired as the permanent drummer for the Beatles on August 12, 1960 – within days of their starting to use the name without “Silver” – and Ringo Starr wouldn't be brought in for two more years.  
 
(June 2012)
 
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Ringo Starr is without a doubt the most under-appreciated member of the Beatles, so it is not surprising that, when us four Winfree kids divvied up the Fab Four among ourselves, I wound up with Ringo as my favorite Beatle.  
Ringo Starr (real name:  Richard Starkey, Jr.) was the final addition to the classic line-up when he was brought in as the band’s drummer, replacing Pete Best.  He is the oldest of the Beatles (all of 23 when they hit the big time), having been born three months before John Lennon. 
 
(September 2014)