The Real Reason the Beatles Fired Their Original Drummer: ‘We Were Sick of Him’
‘We’d trained him to keep a stick going up and down,’ John Lennon said of the group’s original drummer. ‘He couldn’t do much else.’
Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing drums for The Beatles except for Ringo Starr.
While Starr may not have been in the band’s original lineup when the group was first starting off, he nevertheless lived up to his position within the Fab Four, pairing remarkable well to the musical talents of John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.
Yet to this day, most music fans can’t help but wonder what history might have been like if Starr’s predecessor, Pete Best, had remained in The Beatles as the group achieved increasing popularity the world over.
Among the founding members of The Beatles, Best served as the band’s drummer from 1960 to 1962. Though a decent enough performer, Best’s fellow bandmates apparently viewed Best’s abilities as a drummer with indifference, believing he lacked the proper talent to be a member of The Beatles.
Over the years, many hypothesized that The Beatles’ firing of Best owed largely due to his female fanbase, with some claiming Paul McCartney was “jealous” of Best’s natural good lucks and remarkable connection to their audiences.
“Pete had been an extremely popular Beatle, despite his ex-band mates’ misgivings about his drumming ability and his personality,” Starr recalled in Ringo: With a Little Help (via Far Out Magazine). “The group’s female fans, in particular, dug Pete’s brooding good looks.”
In spite of these rumors, John Lennon maintained that the reason behind Best’s termination was simply because “he was a lousy drummer,” with Best only invited to join the group due to the lack of finding a proper drummer.
“By then we were pretty sick of Pete Best too because he was a lousy drummer, you know?” Lennon explained. “He never improved and there was always this myth being built up over the years that he was great and Paul was jealous of him because he was pretty and all that crap. The only reason he got in the group in the first place was because the only way we could get to Hamberg was he had to have a drummer.”
“We were always gonna dump him when we could find a decent drummer,” the late musician continued. “By the time we’d got back from Germany, we’d trained him to keep a stick going up and down. He couldn’t do much else.”
