While not particularly explicit, his recollections are certainly colourful and engrossing.
#Black beatles cover acoustic pure barre full#
The relatively inexperienced young Scousers ( totally inexperienced, in George’s case) were suddenly thrust into a playground of endless carnal delights and ever-ready “birds” and, according to Pete, they took full advantage.
Best talks about the gangsters and (literally) murderous thugs they rubbed shoulders with, but really warms to his theme when discussing the band’s sexual exploits. His memories of John’s German-baiting antics, fearlessness and willingness to do anything for a laugh, onstage or off, are especially amusing, and makes you wonder how Lennon survived their stays there without getting a good hiding from someone among the dangerous clientele which frequented the area. He also charts the development of their stagecraft in the clubs, the need to mach schau (make show) and pull in bigger crowds inspiring them to not only broaden their repertoire but also deliver increasingly frenzied, mapcap performances which earned them a unique reputation. By not moving quickly enough, Pete and Macca ended up with the worst of the two rooms on offer, a cramped, chilly, windowless storeroom which didn’t even have a light (they wrote letters home by the light of pocket torches strapped to their foreheads, like coal miners). We get a first-hand account of their arrival, their wide-eyed reaction to the decadence and debauchery around them in the notorious St Pauli area, and their shock at their appalling living conditions next to the toilets in a cheap cinema. Pete at The Casbah club, where he first met The BeatlesĪnd it’s in Hamburg where the book really shines. By the end of the first chapter, we’re already in Hamburg. But very quickly Pete is playing drums with his own band, The Blackjacks, before a fateful phone call from Paul McCartney in August 1960 sees him abandon a planned teacher training course and throw his lot in with The Beatles. And, again, I would have liked to hear much more about her memories of running The Casbah and her early (sometimes feisty) encounters with Lennon, McCartney and Harrison.
Surely a few more pages wouldn’t have hurt? There is also a curiously clinical tone to the quotes attributed to Mona Best, as if they’ve been lifted from elsewhere rather than recounted for the purposes of this story. I guess it’s understandable the focus has to be on his time with John, Paul and George, but it’s a pity we get such meagre information on his back story, not least so we can get to know him as a person a little better.
But within just a few pages we are onto The Casbah, the rock ‘n’ roll youth club run by his mother Mona in the basement of the family home in Liverpool, and the first appearance of some young scruffs called The Quarrymen. The 192-page book begins with a bit of Best family history and a (very brief) recounting of Pete’s childhood and adolescent years. Pete has given numerous interviews about his time with the band since then, of course, but this still stands as an interesting read – though it’s perhaps as illuminating for what it lacks as for what it actually contains. He had “finally broken his 20-year silence”, the back cover screamed. It wasn’t even in the first flood of books which came out in the wake of John’s death, but did finally emerge in 1985 as Beatle! The Pete Best Story, co-written with journalist Patrick Doncaster. And considering he completely missed out on the huge wealth which came the band’s way (at least until he accrued some serious royalties from the Anthology project in the 1990s), the temptation to spill his guts must’ve been considerable. I’m surprised such a tome took as long to emerge as it did, as there would surely have been publishers offering huge sums to Pete for his recollections (or just salacious tittle tattle) from at least 1963 onwards. After all, the guy was a bona fide Beatle for two years, and you can’t get much more ‘insider’ than that (much like Pierce Brosnan once said about actors who have officially played James Bond on the big screen, more men have walked on the moon than have been members of The Beatles). Of all the ‘insider’ memoirs about the Fab Four, surely one from Pete Best would have been among the most anticipated.
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