HE missed out on Beatlemania but is estimated to have banked £1m from re-released recordings, and now Pete Best wants to break the 45 years of silence with Sir Paul McCartney.
The 65-year-old drummer has not had a conversation with Sir Paul since he was sacked as the Beatles stood on the verge of stardom.
But Best says he feels no bitterness towards the Fab Four, even though they were stacking platinum albums as he stacked loaves in a bread factory delivery van.
He said: “We’re not getting any younger.
“We know what we’ve done and we’re not going to think any worse of each other if we had a chat now.
The drummer left his group, the Blackjacks, to join the Beatles in August 1960 to help them fulfil a series of dates in Hamburg.
They spent these early appearances on stage, at the likes of the Indra Club and Kaiserkeller, honing their skills and it was this period of their career that later featured in the film Backbeat.
But two years down a road that included their first Parlaphone audition recordings of “Love Me Do” and “Besame Mucho”, Best was dropped and replaced by Ringo Starr.
He has never been given a proper explanation about why he was sacked, although many theories abound. Some have suggested that his musicianship was not up to scratch, that his hairstyle didn’t fit, that he was too popular with the fans for Lennon to bear, that he turned down Brian Epstein’s advances, or that he was unreliable – all dismissed by Best over the years.
He told a national newspaper that he bore no grudges.
He said: “Some people expect me to be bitter and twisted, but I’m not.
“I feel very fortunate in my life.
“God knows what strains and stresses the Beatles must have been under.
“When I got kicked out of the Beatles, none of us knew what was going to happen.
“I know we went about saying we were going to be ‘bigger than Elvis’, but I didn’t believe it and I don’t think the others did either.”
And after all these years, Best now finds himself making money from the band as the thirst for fresh or rare recordings remains unquenched.
A number of tracks laid down during his two years made it on to Anthology 1, and are said to have netted him around £1m.
He also continues to play with the Pete Best Band, performing early Beatles tracks like “Love Me Do” and “My Bonnie”, which the group released with singer Tony Sheridan.
