I t was August 1962. Pete Best, a drummer with a band from Liverpool, just about to break into the big time, was getting married in two days.

The band was playing the Cavern in Liverpool after a successful tour in Hamburg. His manager called him and asked him to pop into the office.

"I'm sorry Pete," he said. "The boys want you out and they want Ringo in."

Pete Best, at the tender age of 19, had been sacked from what was to become the biggest band in the world.

"Brian Epstein unloaded this bombshell," Pete says. "It came out of the blue, was totally unexpected. I was absolutely stunned to the core.

"We had been through thick and thin together, and everything was on the up."

The Beatles charted just two months later with Love Me Do. Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Richard Starkey, or Ringo Starr, were the brightest stars in the music scene of the 20th Century.

The reasons for Pete's sacking are still shrouded in mystery.

He says: "It is funny the amount of reasons that have been given. No one ever gave me a proper explanation. Some people have come up with stupid reasons, like I wouldn't comb my hair down like the rest of the band, or that I was anti-social, or that I wasn't a good enough drummer.

"I was with the band for two years. If I was a rubbish drummer, I'm sure someone would have said something before they did."

Pete had joined the band after a phone call from Paul McCartney in August 1960.

"We weren't just band-mates," Pete says. "All four of us knocked around together as well. Even when we weren't playing, we were always at each other's houses."

He joined just before they left for Hamburg to play gigs in clubs there. They spent 1960-1962 playing in both Liverpool and Germany.

In 1961, manager Brian Epstein saw the Beatles at the original Cavern club in Liverpool, and was so impressed he later approached them with an offer to manage them. In June 1962, the band recorded Love Me Do at Abbey Road recording studio, which became the Beatles' first British chart hit in October, with new drummer Ringo Starr learning Pete's rhythms.

The shy, softly-spoken Pete carried on drumming until 1968 with different bands, and even made it into the top 100 of the music charts, while his ex band-mates were shooting to number one and enjoying the kind of notoriety Pete could only dream of.

"The last time I saw the band was in late 1962, when I did three shows on the same bill as them. I was playing with Lee Curtis and the All Stars, and it was just a case of everyone keeping their heads down. We saw each other but never spoke.

"If I ever saw any of them again I would just ask them if they wanted to go for a pint."

In 1968 Pete put down his drumsticks and left the music industry, becoming a civil servant in Liverpool instead, and made time for his wife Kathy and his two young daughters.

"I packed away my drum-kit and didn't think about it for a long time. One day, I was getting ready for work when my wife shouted up to me, 'Pete, John is dead'. My first reaction was 'John who?' because I knew a few Johns at that time.

"When she said John Lennon I started listening to the radio, just like millions of other people. I couldn't believe it.

"I was really sad because John was my pal within the group, more so than the others.

"He never cared a monkeys what other people thought of him, even from those early days."

Pete was asked to play at a Beatles convention in Liverpool in 1988 and, under pressure from his mother and friends, agreed to perform. A promoter asked him to do some dates in Canada and he has been drumming again ever since.

The grandfather-of-four has had widespread media interest since then, and has appeared on the John Letterman and Oprah Winfrey shows in the US.

He still lives in Merseyside and celebrates his 40th wedding anniversary next year.

Pete says: "There are only six of us that could call ourselves Beatles, and two are dead.

"I have as much right as anyone to use the Beatle name - all four of us are ex-Beatles now anyway."

But Pete, much as you think he should be, isn't bitter.

"I have had a great life," he says. "I have a great family, great friends, and I'm a very, very lucky guy. I can't pretend that I don't wonder sometimes, what it would be like, but it is hard to imagine.

"It is water under the bridge. I had to let go otherwise I would have gone insane."

* An Audience with Pete Best is at Arc, Dovecot Street, Stockton at 7.30pm on Thursday. Tickets are £7.50 and are available from (01642) 666600

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