Beatles by Hunter Davies Read Free Book Online Page B

which at one time had the Casbah Club in the cellar. I knocked for 15 minutes, and was beginning to think the house was abandoned, before I was let in. The fact that I was working on an ‘authorized biography’ was in this case not exactly a help. She was still furious about the way her Pete had been treated and I worked hard to convince her that I was simply trying to get at the truth, to hear all sides. She said that she had passed on my messages to Peter, but he didn’t want to meet anyone to do with the Beatles. She eventually relaxed and took me through her meetings with the Beatles and the history of the Casbah, all of which I used in the book.
    Unbeknown to me, Peter had arrived at the house while we were talking, to visit his mum. He was sitting alone in another room, and refused to come out and talk to me. I asked Mrs Best to send through her younger son Roag, to ask if he would talk to me, just to help me get the dates right of the Hamburg years. In the end, she said come on, I’ll take you in to see Pete, it’ll be all right. I spent a long time with him, although I used only part of his story in the book.
    He stood up and smiled wearily, as if giving in, realizing that, thanks to his mother, he’d been found and trapped. He looked embarrassed and tired. He held his head self-consciously to one side, almost stooping. He seemed sad and a bit pathetic. He talked slowly and quietly. He was tired, having just come off shift work at the bakery. As he talked, there was obviously a great deal of pride left in him.
    He went over the Hamburg and earlier days, brightening up as he told funny stories, such as John standing in the street in his Long John underpants.
    ‘I suppose I have got over a lot of it. It took a long time. I had so much press and publicity to live with. I did refuse many offers to sell my stories. I just didn’t want to. What good would it have done, apart from the money? It was all over, and that was that.
    ‘Twice I was really at the bottom, really low, and didn’t know what to do with life. My wife Kitty said step up, go back and have another go. Mo worked very hard. Mo always wanted me to be a success in show business. She took my side in everything, but it was really my fight.
    ‘When I left show business, it wasn’t so bad. I didn’t meet other groups who might say I was no good. It was difficult at first starting an ordinary job. Some people said I should have stuck to show business. At work they’d stare at me and say, what’s he doing here with us?
    ‘When I’m drinking in a pub, people still come up to me and say, aren’t you so and so, you were with the Beatles. They start on me, asking the usual things, labouring into me. They’re just sticking their noses in, which I don’t like, nobody would. I just try not to say anything.
    ‘I never felt hatred for them, even at the time. At first I did think they’d been a bit sneaky, going behind my back and all the time scheming to get rid of me and never telling me to my face what they had decided. I got over that after a while. I suppose I could see why they’d been sneaky.
    ‘What hurt me was that I knew they were going to be big. I could tell it. We all could. We were getting amazing crowds in Liverpool, everywhere we went. I knew I was going to miss all the fun of that.
    ‘I do try to think of any rows, but I can’t. I have recently remembered one little incident. About two months before it happened, I had heard some sort of rumour that I was going. I asked Brian. He said he hadn’t heard anything and he’d find out. He did look into it, but he said there was nothing. I was all right and not to worry.
    ‘I’ve thought about being too much of a conformist, perhaps that was it. Or not combing my hair down. That sort of thing might have been one of the causes.
    ‘I can’t take being thought of as not good enough, that’s what hurts. What is a good drummer? It’s just a matter of different styles, not a matter of being