Pete Best has nothing to do with Beatlemania

I am greatly disappointed that my favorite music station, DZRJ Manila, would lend itself to what I feel is a big rip-off. I find it morally dishonest for the station to help window-dress a coming concert by Pete Best as something that it absolutely is not.

To those not born yesterday, Pete Best was the original drummer of the Beatles. He played with them in Hamburg and in gigs around Liverpool, singing cover songs popularized by others. But he was fired just before the band released its first ever recorded song under the name Beatles.

The only recorded songs he appeared with the group was when they played backup to a song by Tony Sheridan and released under Sheridan's own name, and in one of three demo tapes of the Beatles first ever recorded release "Love Me Do." The tape that had him was eventually discarded.

Thus, he was never part of the Beatles in the context of how the Beatles has come to be known to most people. No way can he be associated with the phenomenon called Beatlemania that swept the world in the Sixties, the same Beatlemania DZRJ now asks people to relive through Best.

When the Beatles Anthology series was released in the mid-1990s, Best naturally had to be included -- in a few tracks on Anthology 1 -- because the Beatles story cannot be told completely without featuring its first drummer.

But it is important to note that the Anthology series is a "post-mortem" compilation, released long after the group broke up in 1970, and long after the death of John Lennon. If at all, it is only considered a "new" Beatles album for its significance to history and posterity.

Indeed, the Anthology series features mostly "outtakes" or recorded versions of Beatles songs that were discarded, for one reason or another, in favor of the final versions that were eventually released commercially.

To Beatles fans, historians and music scholars, however, the significance of the series cannot be overemphasized. It is for this reason that the tracks that featured Best on drums had to be included. Other than this, it might as well be that Best was never part of the Beatles.

The closest Best ever came to landing a toe-hold in the Beatles recorded legacy, which is all that matters to most people and which, for all intents and purposes, started with the release of "Love Me Do," was his part in one of three recorded versions of that song.

Aside from the version with Best in it, there was another that had his replacement Ringo Starr, as well as a third version that featured session musician Andy White. It was the latter with White that was eventually chosen and released on the Beatles debut album "Please Please Me."

Shortly after that, Best was fired and Ringo Starr came on board for keeps. So, without a role in any released Beatles recording (except briefly in Anthology 1 for posterity purposes), it is preposterous for anyone to associate Pete Best with Beatlemania.

Best was simply no longer a Beatle when the world came to be acquainted with them through their recordings and got swept into that phenomenon called Beatlemania. So how could DZRJ come out invoking Beatlemania to help promote the coming Best concert when that is simply not true?

Frankly, I don't even know if Best can legally sing any Beatles song in the concert. For while anyone can probably cover any Beatles song, the case of Best is different because while he is a former Beatle, he had absolutely no part in any recorded Beatles song.

I even read somewhere that he got into some trouble when he released an album by his own band entitled "Best of the Beatles." It may have been just a play on words, in reference to his former association, but those who bought it thinking they were buying Beatles songs felt cheated.