Was Pete Best really that bad of a drummer?

First 5 in fact: up until Tired Of Waiting For You.

 

For those Mick doubters out there:

 

You ain't no George Martin!

 

He's also clearly on "Set Me Free" and "Well Respected Man." And later he played on "Death of a Clown." And it's Clem Cattini on "Till The End of the Day." Lots of session drumming on the first few years of Kinks recordings.

 

are there any recordings of Pete singing with his stay in the Beatles?

 

No.

 

what does he know? LOL he was just there...Pete would have driven them farther up the insane Beatlemania ladder...he was handsome and the girls loved him...can only imagine.

 

too bad... I would have loved to compare his voice to Ringo's if one can call it a voice...

 

You'll have to make do with just one photograph from April 1962. Paul looks quite happy to be on the drums:

 

yeah, i'd be very curious to hear that one, too bad it doesn't exist. shows how democratic the Beatles were, even writing a song for a member they didn't like very much. though, as discussed on this thread, john and paul might have been closer to him than they later admitted.

 

the TV movie Birth Of The Beatles was somewhat based on Pete's memories...like it or not he knew more than the nay-sayers who will put it down...Hmmm he lived it. : ) I love this movie and it shows how close they may have been...

 

thanks, and the Paul remark? clue me...: )

 

I'm thankful that Pete got a second career as a musician in the past couple decades. You know he has to love playing with his band around Liverpool and having fans come up to shake his hand. I think he's a really decent person.

 

WTF? George was hilarious, and Ringo was charming and witty too.

What did Paul and John do to seem so much more "packed with personality" than G and R???

 

The Scowling Beatle?
The Talentless Beatle?
The Beatle Who Refuses to Get a Haircut?

 

the scene where Pete auditions for them is hilarious. i think it was wishful thinking on Pete's part though. In his memory, he knocked it out of the park.

 

What are your sources for Set Me Free, Well Respected Man And Death Of A Clown? Doug Hinman says Avory is on all 3. I could believe Graham plays on Set Me Free and maybe Well Respected Man, but I highly doubt he’s on Death of a Clown.

 

HOMERUN...

 

.YES...much deserved...

 

On the first two, I was speculating, because I think they sound like Graham's style. Going back and re-listening, I could be wrong about "Set Me Free" though. I had remembered the drumming as being more "Grahamy" than it really is.

I feel pretty confident it's Graham on "A Well Respected Man." It sounds very much like his style, and Mick's drumming on bot the BBC and Kelvin Hall versions is quite different than the drumming on the record.

As to "Death of a Clown," Graham himself says he played on it in this interview.

 

Bad?
He had a loud thump, did the job.

 

The Beatles wanted and needed more than "did the job" to get where they did.

 

Wasn't he married to Elizabeth Taylor? Nothing fishy about the question.

 

In retrospect it makes sense.

 

Interesting. I would usually doubt this as (as noted in that very article) session drummers played on many different sessions and versions/covers of songs day in day out and can get mixed up (Clem Cattini has incorrectly claimed to be on ‘Sunny Afternoon’, for instance.) but the fact he speaks so highly of his work with The Kinks gives it more credence. I’m not great at telling drummers styles apart but I always thought they’d stopped working with session drummers by 1967. Be interesting to see what Hinman thinks.