The Beatles Bookstore

Go Get Ringo

In the latest excerpt from Tony Broadbent’s book The One After 9:09, Tony looks at the great change from Pete Best to Ringo. Did Paul and John drive to meet Ringo?

August 16 – Thursday | In the early hours of the morning John and Paul drive across country to Butlin’s Holiday Camp, in Skegness, to recruit Ringo Starr | Meanwhile, mid-morning at the NEMS office, Whitechapel, Liverpool, by request of the three other Beatles; and quite without warning; Brian Epstein sacks Pete Best from the group | Not The Beatles’ finest hour; and only understandable in the light John, Paul, and George all thought that if they didn’t act—and get a different drummer—they’d lose their hard-won Parlophone recording contract.

£25 a Week

| Ringo agrees to join The Beatles—for £25 per week—but elects to play on with Rory Storm and The Hurricanes until the weekend | That evening Johnny ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson, of The Big Three, is drafted in as drummer for The Beatles’ scheduled gig at the prestigious Riverpark Ballroom, Chester.

PAUL McCARTNEY pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator and, wheels spinning, tyres screeching, his ‘new’ Goodward-green Ford Consul Classic shot forward from the traffic lights. There wasn’t a minute to lose. He and John had left Liverpool at the crack of dawn to make the 160-mile journey, across country, to the seaside resort of Skegness. Only this was no pleasure trip, but a rescue mission. To rescue themselves, their group, and the recording contract that was almost certainly now within their grasp.

Off to Butlin’s

The sole reason they were speeding to the Butlin’s Holiday Camp, located on the east coast of England, to pick up Ringo Starr. And once they’d got both him and his drums packed safely inside the car and the trunk, they’d turn right round again and make the long journey back home.

Paul had decided not to go via Manchester and Sheffield, but opted instead for the more southerly route through Warrington, Stockport, and Chesterfield, before finally making for Lincoln and Skegness. “It’ll be much faster that way. Less traffic.”

Thermos Flask?

“The speed you drive, Paul, I’m surprised we’re not already meeting ourselves coming back. Just get us there in one piece, will yer?” John yawned and poured himself another cup of coffee from the Thermos flask Paul’s dad had given them. “Incidentally, your dad could’ve put some bloody milk in here,” sniffed John. “It’s just like that Nazi crap we drank in Hamburg.”

“Well if you’d just like to step outside the car and get yourself some, John, I’ll be back this way in about five or six hours.”

“Ha, bloody, ha, but no complaints, it’ll do till we get there. Anyroad, I’m just really glad Ringo said, yes, to our ‘Eppy’.”

“Me, too, as it’s clear Pete can’t help get us where we’re going to.” Paul glanced over at his friend. “So, you’re okay with it, now, John?”

“What? The coffee?”

“No, dafty, what we’re doing now…dumping Pete for Ringo.”

“Yeah, I am.” John nodded. “But only because of the group, Pauly, nowt else. You’ve always got to think of the group, first. That’s what I did when I first met you. You could play better than me, so I didn’t hesitate, the group was that much stronger with you in it.”

Paul nodded and smiled. “I’m glad you did, Mr Lennon. Only, that’s what our George has been on about, all this time, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is. I thought he was a right drag, going on and on about it, at first, but after both Decca and EMI, well, I changed my mind.”

“Funny, our George, then George Martin coming to the same conclusion…both pushing for a change so the group could sound better.”

Us Being Better

“But that’s it, Pauly, us being better as a group. We’ve always got to do that, you and me, or what’s the bloody point? Just playing the same old things, the same old way, would get us nowhere. It’d kill me, for sure. Kill us, too. And that’s not what it means to be a Beatle.”

“It’s like when we write our songs…always trying to make them better than the last one…then trying to make them better each time we play them. Like that harmonica piece you worked out on, ‘Love Me Do’. It made the song sound so…so much better…real bluesy, like.”

“That was from me listening to that Delbert Clinton play harmonica for Bruce Channel. What a terrific bloke. He showed me some real nice licks on the harp. That’s what I mean, you see, it’s always searching for what’ll make what’s good sound that much better.”

Paul ripped right into ‘Searchin’—the root of anything and everything good yet to come.

John started in on ‘One After 909’—one of the first songs he’d ever written that he’d thought was any good.

Paul joined in—right on track—harmonising—seamlessly.

Paul laughed. “Right, then, you bugger, now one of mine.” And then he lit straight into ‘I Saw Her Standing There’.

John nodded, imagined, reached for new and different notes, and harmonised in fourths, as Paul sang in fifths. It sounded great. They both nodded, then. Yeah, that’s a real keeper.

And that’s how they went on for miles and miles. The two of them singing and laughing and joking and thinking and smoking and chatting—in between challenging each other with their favourite songs. Some of which they’d written together.

Discover more from Tony’s book now: