Randolph Peter Best (born November 24, 1941) was an early drummer for The Beatles from Madras, India. The son of Mona Best, the owner of Liverpool's Casbah Club, where the Beatles played occasionally, Best was first invited to join the band in 1959, later rejoining for their 1960–1961 residency in Hamburg. He stayed until shortly after their first audition for EMI in 1962, being fired on August 16 that year to be replaced, for musical reasons, by Ringo Starr, then of Rory Storm and the Hurricanes . This led to a falling out with both John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Best got the news that he was being booted from the band from the Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein.

Best tried to put together a couple of bands after the Beatles evicted him, but he had little success in those ventures. He tried to commit suicide in 1965 by locking himself in a room and inhaling fumes from a gas fire. Best filed a libel suit against the Beatles in October 1965 because Starr implied in an interview with Playboy that the band had fired Best because he was a drug user. A subsequent libel suit was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

After a series of jobs outside music, Best eventually found a modicum of independent fame as leader of the Pete Best Band . When the surviving Beatles released Anthology, which featured a number of tracks with Best as drummer, Best received a substantial windfall from the sales. Some claim it was at least £2 million.

In the book Anthology, Lennon succinctly summed up his opinion of Best's role in the band: "The myth built up over the years that . . . Paul was jealous of Best because he was pretty and all that crap. They didn't get on that much together, but it was partly because Pete was a bit slow. He was a harmless guy but was not quick. All of us had quick minds, but he never picked that up."

External links

• Pete Best
• Interview with Pete Best and his early Beatle performances