Original Beatles drummer Pete Best got the last laugh on social media with his response to a rhetorical question going viral over the past few days. On January 29th, the “Fab Four's” official social media platforms posed the question: “Who or what got you into The Beatles?” With thousands of fans providing their personal specifics, the next day Best simply tweeted: “Paul phoned me and asked me to join. That's what got me into The Beatles.”
On August 12th, 1960, Pete Best auditioned for the Beatles in his mother's Liverpool nightclub called the Casbah. Best was asked to join the group, which then included original bassist Stuart Sutcliffe, to begin a two-month residency in Hamburg, Germany.
We asked Pete Best if following the audition, he knew immediately that he had the job as the Beatles' drummer: “No. Not at that stage, because at the end of the day, yeah, I'd agreed to go to Hamburg, but the audition was there. I've always queried the fact of the audition. Because in those days people jumped ship from band-to-band so the audition factor was very much a case of like, 'You're making me audition?' But the type of material they were playing, I was playing with my own band as well. So when they turned around and said, 'Do you know this one?' — it's like, okay, bash that one off, 'Do you know this one?' — bash that one off.”
On August 16th, 1962 — just after two years and four days after first auditioning for the band — Best was fired from the group and replaced by Ringo Starr.
Pete Best told us that nearly six decades after being dumped by the Beatles, he's long moved past dwelling on missing out on being the drummer for the biggest band in the world: “I put it to bed many, many years ago. Don't get me wrong it wasn't a 24-hour situation, it took a while to adjust to. But you've got to wake up one morning and just go, 'Hang on. It's no good reflecting about yesteryear all the time,' it's very much about today and tomorrow. And there's loads of things in life which compensate for it. I've got a great family. Great family life. I've got four beautiful grandchildren, which I totally idolize and spoil. I think life's good for me.”