Video will appear as you scroll through the story
The Beatles · S2 E4
Pete Best
The Casbah Coffee Club in West Derby, run by Mona Best. Her son Pete has a drum kit and is available. He joins two days before they leave for Hamburg
August 12, 1960, Liverpool. The Beatles are leaving for Hamburg in four days and they still don't have a drummer, so Paul McCartney walks into the Casbah Coffee Club and asks the owner's son if he wants to join the biggest band nobody has heard of yet.
Listen to the drums on "Ticket to Ride." Ringo plays a stumbling, tom-heavy groove that no conventional drummer would have chosen. Pete Best was a solid, dependable player. The Beatles eventually needed something stranger.
Ticket to Ride (1965)
John considered this one of the earliest heavy metal records, and he wasn't entirely wrong. The guitar riff is thick and droning, the tempo drags on purpose, and Ringo's drum part is genuinely revolutionary. Instead of a standard backbeat, he plays a lurching pattern across the toms that sounds like it might fall apart at any moment but never does. Paul came up with the drum pattern idea and showed it to Ringo, who made it something far more interesting.
The Casbah Coffee Club
8 Hayman's Green, West Derby, Liverpool. Mona Best's basement club where the Quarrymen became regulars. The original murals painted by John, Paul, and George are still on the walls.
TAP TO REVEAL: Which Beatle painted a star on the Casbah ceiling that's still there today?
“Pete was a very good drummer. He wasn't flashy, but he had a solid, powerful beat. The girls loved him.”
— Roag Best (Pete's half-brother), "The Beatles: The True Beginnings," 2003
Boys (The Beatles)
From Please Please Me (1963). This Shirelles cover was Pete Best's showcase number at the Cavern and in Hamburg. When Ringo replaced Pete, he inherited the song and the vocal. Every time Ringo sings "Boys" on the album, you're hearing the ghost of Pete Best's spot in the setlist.
Why did the Beatles urgently need a drummer in August 1960?
The Beatles have a drummer, a name, and a one-way ticket to Hamburg. But this isn't the first time they've tried to break out of Liverpool. Next: rewind to May 1960, when a London impresario named Larry Parnes came to town and the audition fell apart before it started.
0 XP earned this session