Pete Best and Cynthia in Hamburg to reveal a John Lennon statue in 1985
"A very nice, deep, tender person."
Pete Best, 1986 about Cynthia
Cynthia met Pete Best in August of 1959 at his house in Liverpool while converting the basement into a music club. His mother, Mona, wanted a safe area to hang out for her two older sons, Pete and Rory, with their friends (her third child Roag wasn't born yet). The Casbah Club served coffee, Coca-Cola, and sweets, and play music. While Mona and her children were painting the rooms, John, Cynthia, Paul, and George came by to help. Because of his bad eyesight, John used emulsion instead of gloss... it took days to dry! Cynthia painted a silhouette of John based on a photograph taken by Paul's brother Mike on one of the walls. For the longest time, I always believed Cynthia also painted the spiderweb but got into a debate with The Casbah's Facebook denying it. I mean, in credible resources always claimed that Cynthia painted the spiderweb for many years... Maybe she helped? Whatever! I wasn't there so I can't argue any valid points. Anyway, The Casbah Club opened on the night of August 29, 1959 with John, Paul, George, and Ken Brown playing guitars with no drummer with Cynthia there, beaming with pride. Pete wasn't in the band yet. He was in his own music group, the Blackjacks, with Ken (who left the Quarrymen) as the Casbah's resident band with The Quarrymen/The Silver Beatles playing occasionally. I already wrote about The Casbah experience in another post called Rock 'n' Roll Girlfriend.
"The full complement turned up at the Casbah a few days before the opening... Also with the party was a pale blonde girl who was introduced to us as Cyn - Cynthia Powell, whom John had met at Liverpool College of Art and would marry some years later. That day at the Casbah they had known each other for only a short time and had recently reached the going-steady phase."
Pete Best, 1985
"But before they could go they had to find a drummer. As luck would have it a young lad called Pete Best was available. The boys had come into contact with Pete when they played a few times at his mother's coffee bar which was in the basement of his house in a suburb of Liverpool, Haymans Green. Peter was quite a good drummer and enjoyed sitting in on their sessions whenever the Beatles played there. He was very handsome in a moody, sultry sort of way and hardly ever spoke or showed any enthusiasm. He reminded me at the time of a very young Jeff Chandler. The kids who frequented the coffee bar would sit and ogle him. He was very popular with the girls but seemed to lack the sense of humor that was such an integral part of the boys' make-up. In this sense he really didn't gel with their characters right from the very start. But they needed him and he was only too willing to join them."
Cynthia, from her 1978 book A Twist of Lennon
So, for a year, Pete and Cynthia saw each other on occasion until August of 1960 when The Silver Beatles needed a drummer to go to Hamburg. The Blackjacks drifted apart so Pete was available to join. Pete joined The Silver Beatles on August 16, 1960 and they almost immediately went to Hamburg. Pete got closer to John; they were close in age. Whenever they had some breaks, John and Pete would sit at the bar and talked- John would talk about Cynthia on how much he missed her and their future. Pete never saw John mistreating Cynthia.
"He used to tell me how he and Cyn planned to settle down and raise a family as soon as The Beatles began to pay off, and how much he missed being without her."
Pete Best
"John and I would go and have a couple of quiet beers, just to sit down and chew the fat. And he'd talk about Cynthia and how much he missed her."
Pete Best, 1986
"There were definite two sides of John, which I was fortunate to see... But the other John, which the public didn't see, was a very loving, tender person. That came out in his initial love and tenderness for Cynthia."
Pete Best, 1986
Pete Best, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Stuart Sutcliffe at Hamburg Fun Fair, Heiligengeistfeld, in 1960.
Photographed by Astrid Kirchherr
Right from the start, it was obvious that Pete didn't really gel with George, Paul, and John. Pete was quiet, kept to himself, and didn't really joined in with the rest of the band on their shenanigans. In Astrid Kirchherr's photos, there's only one picture of Pete with the band.... unlike John, Paul, George, and Stuart, Pete didn't participate as a model. Astrid also didn't turn Pete's hair into a mop top that the others were getting into. While Cynthia was visiting in Hamburg in 1961, she noticed a tension between the group and Pete.
"Some of the steam went out of our merry-go-round way of life when Cynthia and Paul's girlfriend Dot, a blonde shop assistant he met during the old Casbah days, arrived for a stay of a few weeks during Cyn's Easter vacation from college.
Cyn was befriended by Astrid and spent some of her nights as a guest of the Kirchherr family. Old friend Mutti offered to accommodate Dot on a convenient houseboat she owned and where Cyn sometimes joined her. But there were nights when the two girls trooped upstairs to our dormitory, and on these occasions George and I would be instructed not to claim our bunks until 4 o'clock in the morning. If the holiday-makers, weary of sight-seeing, came into our quarters during the afternoon, George and I would be requested to tactfully to 'look the other way'.
There was little to occupy Cyn and Dot once they had done the sights and visited the shops in the more respectable area of the city, guided by Astrid, who drove them around in her grey VW Beetle.
The German fans couldn't fail to notice that two of their favorite idols had imported a couple of rivals from England. Some of them, especially those whose beds we sometimes shared, would sit and glare, treating the Beatles to an angry silence when it was time to applaud... After this near-miss the waiters, ever dutiful, made a point of hovering near Cyn and Dot like watchful guard dogs, There was never any more trouble after that one incident [John jumping off the stage in a jealous rage over a man hitting on Cynthia]. And when the girls left home our faithful German ravers (the female ones, that is) called off their silent protest and were all smiles again."
Pete Best, 1985
I don't know exactly when John, Paul, and George decided that Pete wasn't the perfect member and wanted Ringo... definitely during the Summer of 1962. Pete started missing gigs and his mother was being like his own manager and communicating frequently with Brian Epstein, (sounds like a stage mother) who started managing The Beatles in November of 1961. When they met George Martin, he was not impressed with Pete. Aside from the underlining problems, Pete and Neil Aspinall would drive The Beatles around.
"The regular drill was that Neil and I would collect the other Beatles in his van and drive to the venue. As Lennon was leaving, I called: 'Pick you up tomorrow, John.' 'No,' he said, 'I've got other arrangements.' At the time this didn't strike me as being odd, even though it didn't conform to the usual pattern. John was going through a trying domestic period; in 8 days' time he was due to marry Cynthia, who was already pregnant."
Pete Best, 1985
Cynthia hugging Julia Baird, with Pete Best, Roag Best, Helen Anderson, Phyllis Mackenzie, and other guests to celebrate The Beatles Story museum buying her cartoons for permanent display in Liverpool.
On August 16, 1962, nearly exactly the second anniversary of joining the band, John, Paul, and George enlisted Brian to give Pete the bad news: he's fired, Ringo's in. Pete always maintained he was blindsided by the news. He couldn't believe it and I certainly feel sorry for the poor guy. But there's no denying it... Ringo was indeed the perfect fit. He matched their humor, he participated in their shenanigans, and he was one of the best drummers in Liverpool.
"I've said this many times, if you can imagine The Rolling Stones with Barry Manilow... A completely different scenario. It was the same way with the three boys and Pete. They didn't have the same charisma. They didn't have the same sense of humor. Pete was lovely and is lovely. He's a dear friend of mine, but he didn't fit in with their humor and irreverence of everything else. When Ringo came along, he fitted perfectly. And that was the reason. Pete Best is a real gentleman, only too much of a gentleman to be part of that group at that time."
Cynthia, 2005
"I was on the outside. They just got a new manager. I was not involved in the agreement. I think Pete, as lovely as he was, did not fit in. That is just a personal opinion. Because their sense of humor was different than Pete's. It had nothing to do with the fact he was a talented drummer or a nice person. It just didn't gel. What they needed in those days was someone that would fit in with their Liverpool humor."
Cynthia, 1994
Cynthia knew what was going on, but she had her own problems: pregnant. Can you imagine what John must have felt at that very moment? Two monstrous events were happening parallel: professional side was changing drummers right at the brink of success and private side was going to be a husband and daddy. On August 18, 1962, Ringo performed his first concert as a Beatle. The majority of the fans were not happy with the change of drummers. They protested and yelled to no avail. Around this time, John and Cynthia decided that she shouldn't be going anymore now that she was pregnant. Her own relationship with the fans haven't been easy and with the additional tension in the air? Cynthia was more than happy to stay home! I don't think Cynthia and Pete had a proper goodbye. After Pete got fired, John, Paul, and George wanted nothing to do with him. Pete formed his own self-titled band and occasionally played on the same bill as The Beatles. No interaction. Get off, pass by, get on. The Beatles took off with Cynthia with them. The only one to be in contact with Pete was Neil Aspinall as he was Mona's boyfriend and father of Roag until about 1966ish when he got together with Suzy Ornstein Bramley, married her in 1968 until he died in 2008. I don't know when exactly Cynthia and Pete reconnected. Cynthia returned to Hoylake briefly in the 1970s after her divorce from Roberto Bassanini but the first known encounter was in 1985 at John Lennon statue reveal in Hamburg. Since then, they became friends again, getting together occasionally until her death in 2015. Pete has been married to Kathy since August of 1963 (everything happened in August!) and they had two daughters, Beba and Bonita. Around 1965, with his music career going nowhere, Pete attempted suicide while Kathy was visiting her mother but was stopped in time when he realized how it would affect his wife and daughter. Pete became a working civilian at a bakery.
Noel Charles, Cynthia, and Pete Best at the Beatles Festival 2005 in Estrel Covention Center, Berlin on July 15, 2005
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