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Rock Art Rock
Jay Reatard
October 2008
Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY
By Andres Jauregui "Before I bought my DSLR (a present to myself the day I got axed from a shitty office job), I took pictures on a lowly point-and-shoot..."
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July 2009
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By Andres Jauregui "I shot this trippy double exposure on the front line of a particularly raucous, incredibly sweaty set that kicked off Thee Oh Sees' swing..."
R. Stevie Moore
November 2008
Cake Shop, New York, NY
By Andres Jauregui "Eli Moore (no relation) from LAKE turned me on to his mentor, R. Stevie Moore, during an interview for Crawdaddy!, so when LAKE opened for R. Stevie in November of 2008, I had to check him out..."
Say No! To Architecture
June 2009
Death By Audio, Brooklyn, NY
By Andres Jauregui "Allen Roizman's one-man-band blew me away at the otherwise sleepy inaugural Northside Festival this past June. Death By Audio is a hub for under-the-radar talent in Brooklyn..."
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The Original Drummer of the Beatles: Best, Not Bitter
Fired by the Beatles when they were on the brink of mega-stardom, Pete Best became a footnote in musical history. It took a long time, but today he’s okay with that, and he’s carving out his own success with his own band that bears his name.
Best turned 67 in November of 2008. He still lives in Liverpool, and still speaks in that adenoidal, throaty Northern accent called Scouse. His hair is whiter than it was when last the music world heard from him—if record producer Sir George Martin is to be given credence, Best is a much better drummer today, as he plies his trade with another trio of Liverpudlians, than he was when Martin, then a staff producer for Parlophone, told the Beatles he didn’t like Best’s playing. Today the Pete Best Band travels the world promoting their new CD, Haymans Green, released in September 2008, which Best calls a musical story of his life.
Their show digs into the set list Best performed with the Beatles on the Hamburg Reeperbahn. And if one closes one’s eyes, one can visualize the 19-year-old Beatles performing in those seedy clubs, their sound tightened to a razor-sharp edge by an exhausting regimen of week-in-week-out eight-hour sets. Their powerful renditions of such standards of the day as “Bésame Mucho” (back then a Paul McCartney “gets-off” song), the all-but-obscure Leiber/Stoller/Barrett club rocker “Some Other Guy”, and the seldom-heard Lennon/Harrison instrumental “Cry for a Shadow” easily conjure images of what it must have been like in those sweat-permeated clapboard clubs of 1960s Germany.
Recently, the Pete Best Band traveled to Benton, Illinois, a gone-to-seed coal mining town in the southern part of the state with a single claim to fame. Five months before the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, George Harrison took a two-week vacation there to visit his older sister Louise, who was married to mining engineer Gordon Caldwell. Lou Harrison’s old house was rescued from the wrecking ball and converted to a bed and breakfast honoring Pete Best’s old mate. Best appeared in the high school gym, a Quonset-hut-like affair with side bleachers and metal folding chairs for an audience of about 400. Best told me in a telephone interview that the venue didn’t matter to him—an audience of 25 or 25,000, the idea is for him and his band to have fun, and for them to bring fun to those they perform for.
They do that. What’s more important, it’s obvious that they are having fun as they run their list, an amalgamation of songs that surprise and delight with vicious energy and aplomb.
By August of 1962, Best had been with the Beatles for two years. He was recruited from the stage of the Casbah Coffee Club, which his mother had founded in the basement of their large home (and at which the Quarrymen—later the Beatles—often played drummerless). The group had a chance to go “over the water” to play a residency at a club in Hamburg, Germany’s “red light” district, but they couldn’t go without a drummer. Best had recently bought his blue Premiere drum kit and was playing with a group of guys called the Black Jacks. He continued to do that until McCartney came to the club and offered him the job in Hamburg—they were leaving the next day. Best acquiesced.
For two trips to Hamburg, Best was the “back line” of the Beatles, supplying the pounding rhythm that was typical of the so-called Mersey Sound, named for the river that flows through Liverpool, whose seaports were decimated by Nazi bombing. When they came back, after one ignominious end—deportation—Liverpool audiences were amazed at the sheer power of their performances. The nights at the grimy seaport clubs of Germany, stretching their songs to 20 minutes and more to eat up the eight-hour night, had honed them, strengthened them, and they had, by their own admission, improved immensely as musicians.
And so it was then that music store manager Brian Epstein took them under his wing, cleaning up their jeans-and-leather-jacket image, putting them into mohair suits. John Lennon was quoted at the time as saying, “Brian stopped us from eating and drinking and throwing up onstage.” Not as farfetched as it sounds, say witnesses, of their Hamburg depredations, people like photographer Astrid Kirchherr. She took the first professional pictures of the group, and is credited with helping to invent the famous Beatles hairdo.
9 Comments
Every band has had early members that were fired or left right before success hit. I wonder how John Mayall feels about all the “side men” that went on to greater success and popularity. Regardless of what folks think about Pete Best’s drumming (and I agree that Ringo’s was far superior), he played an important role in the path the group took. From the Casbah Club to Hamburg – it probably wouldn’t have happened without Pete, and then where would the Beatles be.
There is no mystery why The Beatles replaced Pete Best. They wanted the best drummer they could find in their group. In Liverpool, that was Ringo Starr. Plus they already knew Ringo, and thought he would fit in better with the group, personality-wise. They were right on both counts. And as John Lennon, once said, “We wren’t really The Beatles until Ringo joined.” He completed the group and made everything gel into the musical miracle we all know and love.
Pete Best’s drumming is as plain and bland now as it was in 1962. Being loud and solid enough for drunk Germans in a dive is not nearly good enough for the Beatles’ own material, and it never was … way too much creativity is called for. – Little Steven Van Zandt, in his syndicated Garage radio show, oohed and aahed way too much Fall 2008 over Best. I think that it’s just money talking that we hear, both in Pete’s renewed “interest” in music and from those who are publicizing same. My solution is to ignore him, and wish him the best as he returns to grandparenting or whatever else he does Best.
I have heard Pete play. Not alot, but I have heard ALL the recordings he made with the early Beatles. He wasn’t a great drummer then. It should be noted that George Martin simply told Brian Epstein that he wouldn’t use Pete for recording as his drumming wasn’t strong enough–but that Pete would be fine for live performances and that he ( Martin) wasn’t trying to restructure the band. I have always felt sorry for Pete, just missing the brass ring by mere inches. I met him at a record show in the early 80’s and found him to be a nice, pleasnat man. I’m VERY glad he finally made some money fome the Anthology series.
I have had the good fortune to hear Pete Best and The Pete Best Band and they are amazing. Pete’s drumming has both style and substance. The band’s new release “Haymans Green” is the best former Beatles’ album of 2008. Funny how history is distorted. People forget that Ringo WAS NOT the Bealtes’ first choice to replace Pete. And much of the intense drumming on Beatles tunes like those on Abbey Road were not Ringo, they were in fact Paul.
I’m glad Best finally got some big money…hopefully that cushions the blow he received so many, many years ago.
I mean, can you imagine what it must have been like for him….sitting on his couch, watching the band he put all that time into literally become the biggest thing in the world? I think it would have driven my crazy.
FWIW…I’d heard that Best tended to overplay, and that Ringo was preferrable because he “served the song”, as opposed to trying to “show off” on the drums. Just something I heard….
ringo was a better Beatle and a better drummer,then and now.
but i too am glad that Best got a nice chunk of change. i have heard the decca demo and although all of them were tired and sick from the snow-bound 12 hour journey by van from the ‘Pool to “the Smoke”,Best could barely keep tempo…not to mention his relative uncreative drumming style.
i will get Hayman’s Green someday…Best could do nothing BUT improve from 1962…’cos he sort of was inadequate…there is no way he could’ve kept pace with the Beatles as they grew and developed in the recording studio.
SoundQman, you provoke thought and consideration: Ringo was Liverpool’s finest drummer? Perhaps, but it certainly lends newfound respect for Redditch, Worcestershire, (Where in the hell is…?) home of John Bonham. Look, any percussionist will attest you don’t require Steve Gadd chops to play Beatles; however, there is no way in hell I can envision a “duck tail” in the Beatles. Ringo wins.
I saw the Pete Best Band in Newport Beach, Ca about eight to ten years ago and it was enjoyable even if not a spectacular show.
Best is a credible club band drummer, good but not great, but as another poster here said, he made a contribution to the Beatles early sound in their formative years and he deserves credit for that.