Meeting a Beatle

The Pete Best Band Comes To NH

I met Pete Best!

I wasn’t sure, exactly, what to expect from former Beatles drummer Pete Best. His Liverpool five piece, The Pete Best Band, rolled into New Hampshire Saturday with very little PR or advertising about the show. In fact, there wasn’t even a listing on Best’s own website, The Pete Best Band.

But at song three, as the band of crack studio musicians exploded into their version of One After 909, and the former Beatle bashed away the beat to one of my favorite songs, I knew everything was going to be fine.

There I was, listening to Pete Best play One After 909, one of the first songs John Lennon ever wrote - supposedly at the age of 17 - and played by the Beatles even before they were the Beatles.

So, yeah, Pete Best knew this song. Chills! I recorded a bit, give it a listen!

Best’s appearance at Tupelo Music Hall on Saturday heralded a whole microcosm of Fab Four sub-culture to Derry, New Hampshire.

The whole group of front-of-stage tables appeared to be filled with regional Beatles celebrities, introduced by none other than Boston’s own Cha-Chi Loprete of Breakfast with the Beatles fame. Beatles magician John Duke Logan served as co-host as well.

There was the owner of Octopuses Garden Zine, a guy at a front row table wearing a pirate hat with a giant pile of old Beatles vinyl to get signed, another fellow wearing a Yoko One shirt, and incredibly, Cha-Chi introduced someone in the audience who recently had bought George Harrison’s childhood home in Liverpool.

Ian Motha and Shelley Rego warmed up the crowd with a medley of Beatles and 60s hits. Ian is a local Boston area staple, a singer song-writer that sounds and looks a lot like Paul McCartney. Ian and Shelley’s harmonies were fabulous. Ian told me after that he and Shelley met just playing in the New England Beatles scene and decided to team up for some music. They made a fantastic duo, belting out the classics from She Loves You to Can’t Buy Me Love. Shelley took lead on Blackbird as well, with Ian’s gentle strumming giving the song a wistful feel.

Good stuff. Here’s a link to Ian Motha’s website. Give them a listen: Ian Motha Website

Pete Best is introduced to his fans

By the time Cha-Chi got back up on stage and shouted, “Can you believe there’s a Beatle in Derry, New Hampshire?!” the crowd was eager for some classics.

This is the part where I’d normally talk a bit about the band, but the only member I know is Roag Best, Pete’s little brother who shares drumming duties in the band. Again, their social media for the band itself isn’t great so I’m not sure who they are.

The band itself appears to have been together since 1988, however, so they were relaxed and tight and funny on stage, teasing each other and working the crowd as they ripped through a series of classics from the early 60s.

From Rock and Roll Music which opened the show to Twist and Shout which closed it, this group knows what it’s doing. Nothing fancy, no drawn out solos, not even a set list that I could tell. They know this music inside and out.

The strongest part of the show, I thought, was a middle section that had the boys tear into Chuck Berry’s Memphis, Tennessee, BB King’s Lucille and the Beatles’ I Saw Her Standing There, in a row! Five British dudes in black suit jackets that have been playing classic 60s rock for nearly 40 years just ripping it up.

Pete’s not a singer but he came out from behind the drum kit a couple times to address the crowd and he was met with loud cheers and applause. He even introduced the encore song, Twist and Shout, with a “So, do you all want to hear one more?”

“Yesssss!” screamed the crowd.

“Well, ok then,” Pete said and that was that.

Later, dozens of fans stayed behind to meet the legend who was once again greeted with applause as he took a seat behind the signing booth.

The Pete Best Band tears it up at Tupelo Music Hall in Derry

When I fell into the Beatles rabbit hole, in late middle and early high school, all that early rock and roll meant something to me. It wasn’t just the music, it was learning about them - how they started, how they got to where they did and why. Discovering the history of that band and British rock in general became almost a hobby, something of an obsession for me in those days, to help me through otherwise difficult times. The Beatles were always there for me and I knew of Pete Best from the very beginning.

Look, so much of legacy music and musicians these days is about nostalgia and on it’s own, that’s fine. But there’s something else as well. Guys like Pete Best were there creating rock and roll’s Golden Age, pounding it out in the dirty clubs and bars and molding the sound we all know so well today.

I won’t get into why The Beatles let him go, but it wasn’t pretty and that’s water under the bridge. I’ve known this guy since I was a kid, and it’s been a while since I was that nervous in a meet and greet line.

But he was kind and fine, even after I told him it was my honor to meet him.

“Come on around,” he said, and I walked to his side of the table and he put his arm around me and an aide took a shot. And that was that. I met a Beatle!

I’ll leave you today with one of the weirdest songs the Beatles recorded in those early days, but one of my favorites, the Spanish Besame Mucho. (I’ll do a whole post on hat song one day.) They recorded it for their failed Decca audition in early 1961 and then rerecorded this studio version a few months later. It wasn’t released to the general public until 1995. I want you to hear it for two reasons - one, because young Paul McCartney’s voice here is smooth as butter, and two because that’s Pete Best playing drums! Cha-Cha-Boom!

(Sidenote: You know it never occurred to me until this very moment that the Beatles anthology album this song is one, which was released in 1995, has that famous picture of the Beatles with Pete Best in the cover, but they tore out Pete’s face and papered over it with Ringo!)