Pete Best
I
t must be an extraordinary thing to have your life defined or changed forever by a single unexpected event, by something climactic that happens to you and alters your life completely, or that determines how people will always remember you. Terry Waite and John McCarthy, for instance, will surely always be remembered by most people as hostages; fewer would be able to tell you what they were doing with themselves before they were put through that awful ordeal. As another example, the only reason people remember football pools winner Viv Nicholson is because her promise to ‘spend, spend, spend’ her winnings made her a public figure overnight in 1961, and much good it did her. There are countless instances of things happening to people that affect their lives forever. One of those people was Pete Best, the Beatles’ original drummer, and the event that changed his life occurred in August 1962. That’s when he was summoned to the NEMS offices to be told by a highly flustered Brian Epstein that the rest of the Beatles 13
