Pete Best - Later Years

Later Years

Best decided to leave show business, and by the time of Hunter Davies' authorised Beatles' biography in 1968, he was not willing to talk about his Beatles association. Years later he stated in his autobiography, "The Beatles themselves certainly never held out a helping hand and only contributed to the destruction with their readily printed gossip that I had never really been a Beatle, that I didn't smile, that I was unsociable and definitely not a good mixer. There was not a single friendly word from any one of them". During the height of Beatlemania he attempted to commit suicide, but was talked out of it by his mother, Mona, and his brother, Rory.

In 1963, he married Kathy, who worked behind the biscuit counter at a Woolworth's store. Their marriage has lasted for more than 45 years: they have two daughters (Beba and Bonita) and four grandchildren. Best did shift work loading bread into the back of delivery vans, earning £8 a week. His education qualifications subsequently helped him become a civil servant working at the Garston Jobcentre in Liverpool, where he rose from employment officer to training manager for the Northwest of England, and, ironically, remembered "a steady stream of real-life Yosser Hughes types" imploring him to give them jobs. The most he could do, he recalls, was to offer to retrain them in other fields, "which was an emotional issue for people who had done one kind of work all their lives."

In time, Best began giving interviews to the media, writing about his time with the group, and serving as a technical advisor for the television film, Birth of The Beatles. He found a modicum of independent fame, and has admitted to being a fan of his former band's music owning their records. In 1995, the surviving Beatles released Anthology 1, which featured a number of tracks with Best as drummer, including songs from the Decca and Parlophone auditions. Best received a substantial windfall—between £1 million and £4 million—from the sales, although he was not interviewed for the book or the documentaries. The collage of torn photographs on the Anthology 1 album cover includes an early group photo that featured Best, but Best's head was removed, revealing a photo of Starr's head, taken from the Please Please Me cover photo. (The missing section of the photograph appears on the cover of the album Haymans Green). A small photograph of Best can be seen on the left side of the Anthology cover. Best appeared in an advertisement for Carlsberg lager that was broadcast during the first commercial break of the first episode of the Anthology TV series on ITV in November 1995. The tag line was "Probably the Pete Best lager in the world", a variation of Carlsberg's well known slogan.