Which Beatles songs did Pete Best play drums on?
From their humble origins as a teenage skiffle outfit in Liverpool, The Beatles didn’t waste much time in achieving their plans for global domination. By the mid-1960s, the band were being mobbed everywhere from Tokyo to Tranmere, and they certainly had the musical quality to back up the hype. That monumental rise to prominence was punctuated by the percussion stylings of ‘peace and love’ advocate Ringo Starr, providing original drummer Pete Best with one of the greatest ‘what-if’ stories in all of rock and roll.
Best had been recruited to The Beatles in 1960 ahead of the band’s extensive residency in Hamburg. At that time, the drummer was performing with his own group, The Black Jacks, who had successfully earned the attention of Paul McCartney. At that time, The Beatles had no permanent drummer to complete the planned shows in Hamburg, so when The Black Jacks went their separate ways, Macca quickly poached Best for their trip to Germany.
While performing in Hamburg, Best’s powerful drumming style accelerated the development of The Beatles, pushing the band to turn-up their onstage energy and put on a show for the crowds of sailors and gangsters in Hamburg. In addition to the importance of his powerful playing style, Best also helped to raise the profile of the group. He was popular with the band’s small but ever-growing fanbase, both in Hamburg and back home in Liverpool, where he was famed for his dark and moody persona.
Despite this, Best’s position within the band was placed in jeopardy during the early days of their recording career. During their first sessions for EMI, George Martin cast doubt upon Best’s drumming ability, declaring that he simply wasn’t up to scratch for recording, regardless of how essential he was to the band’s live performances. So, ten weeks after those first recording sessions, Pete Best was sacked by band manager Brian Epstein, to be replaced by Ringo Starr, who the band had crossed paths with back in Hamburg.
The sacking that changed Beatles history forever
That dismissal took place in August 1962 and, only two months later, in October, The Beatles released their groundbreaking debut single, ‘Love Me Do’. This was the single that set the band on a path to world domination, capturing their universal appeal and typifying the teeny-bopper sounds of their early years, and it was Ringo Starr behind the sticks on that single.
So, if the band’s debut single featured Starr rather than Best, did the original drummer get to appear on any official Beatles recordings at all? Prior to recording ‘Love Me Do’, The Beatles had recorded a single alongside Tony Sheridan for Polydor in Germany. The song, ‘My Bonnie’, was a rock and roll rendering of a traditional folk song, with Sheridan taking the lead and The Beatles providing the backing music, though they were credited as the Beat Brothers.
‘My Bonnie’, along with its B-side, a version of ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’, became the only official Beatles release to feature Best during his short time with the band. However, the original drummer was also present for the band’s infamous failed audition for Decca Records. Out of the 15 tracks the group performed during that taped audition, five were later released on Anthology 1 in 1995.
The Anthology 1 release also featured recordings of ‘Ain’t She Sweet,’ ‘Cry for a Shadow,’ ‘Bésame Mucho,’ and ‘Love Me Do’, which all featured Best. Some of these recordings had been made with Sheridan back in Hamburg, while others were taken from the band’s first recording sessions for EMI at Abbey Road, when Martin declared that Best wasn’t good enough for the group to continue.
Following on from Best’s dismissal from the band, the drummer recorded a single as Pete Best and the All-Stars, before forming The Pete Best Combo, neither of which were particularly successful in a commercial sense. For many years, beginning in the late 1960s when The Beatles were at their peak, both creatively and commercially, Best refused to perform at all, although he eventually relented in the late 1980s to perform at a Beatles convention.
Although Ringo Starr’s distinctive drumming style was essential to the sound of The Beatles, the rest of the group routinely expressed regret over their treatment of Pete Best during his dismissal back in 1962, which lost him a place in the greatest band to ever grace the airwaves.
The Beatles songs Pete Best played drums on:
- ‘My Bonnie’
- ‘The Saints’
- ‘Searchin’’
- ‘Three Cool Cats’
- ‘The Sheik of Araby’
- ‘Like Dreamers Do’
- ‘Hello Little Girl’
- ‘Ain’t She Sweet’
- ‘Cry for a Shadow’
- ‘Bésame Mucho’
- ‘Love Me Do’
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