Paul McCartney Said 1 of the Most 'Difficult' Things The Beatles Ever Did Happened at the ...
Paul McCartney said The Beatles faced a major problem at the start of their careers. He shared how they decided to handle it.
Before Ringo Starr joined The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison worked with a different drummer. Pete Best traveled to Germany with The Beatles when they played in Hamburg. Best never reaped the prolific benefits of the band’s success, though. They fired him just before hitting it big, which McCartney described as one of the most difficult things they ever had to do.
In 1962, The Beatles auditioned for producer George Martin. While Martin saw potential in the band, he didn’t see a path forward for them with Best. He asked them to consider finding a new drummer.
“He agreed to audition us, and we had a not-very powerful audition in which he was not very pleased with Pete Best,” McCartney said in The Beatles Anthology. “George Martin was used to drummers being very ‘in time,’ because all the big-band session drummers he used had a great sense of time. Now, our Liverpool drummers had a sense of spirit, emotion, economy even, but not a deadly sense of time. This would bother producers making a record. George took us to one side and said, ‘I’m really unhappy with the drummer. Would you consider changing him?’” McCartney said they did not want to betray Best by firing him. Still, they worried this could be their only chance to get a record deal. They decided it would be best to find someone new.
Source: cheatsheet.com/Emma McKee
