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In the early days of The Beatles, before they became the iconic quartet, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison went through several lineup changes. Originally known as the Quarrymen, the group slimmed down over time. A well-known instance of change was when drummer Pete Best was let go just before the band shot to stardom. This wasn’t the first time they had to make such a tough decision.
The Beatles ignored a guitarist when they wanted to fire him
When George Harrison joined the Quarrymen, Lennon and McCartney felt they were edging closer to the sound they envisioned. However, not every member fit the evolving dynamic as seamlessly as Harrison did. Drummer Colin Hanton noted that he sensed his role was temporary, and guitarist Eric Griffiths, one of the founding members, shared similar concerns.
“John and Paul were becoming too serious about the band,” Hanton remarked in Bob Spitz’s book, The Beatles.
Lennon’s vision included a three-man guitar lineup, which led to his desire to remove Griffiths from the band. Rather than directly informing Griffiths of their decision, Lennon and McCartney took a different approach. They arranged a rehearsal and chose not to invite him.
“It was an awful situation,” reflected Hanton.
Griffiths called the house while they were rehearsing, and Lennon and McCartney made Hanton speak to him.
“And they made me deal with it, then and there,” Hanton said. “John and Paul refused to acknowledge the situation.”
They also stopped contacting guitarist Len Garry after he contracted tubercular meningitis.
They did the same thing with their drummer
Hanton eventually left the band, and they began working with drummer Pete Best. He remained with the group until they were on the cusp of fame. Best never experienced Beatlemania, because his bandmates had their manager, Brian Epstein, fire him.
“He said, ‘I’ve got some bad news for you. The boys want you out and Ringo in,’” Best recalled, per The Beatles: The Authorized Biography by Hunter Davies. “It was a complete bombshell. I was stunned. I couldn’t say anything for two minutes.”
Best said that his bandmates’ refusal to talk to him stung more than the firing itself.
“I’m not saying I’d change the outcome, but at least give me the decency of being there and [letting me] confront them,” he told the Telegraph in 2018.
He saw them at a show not long after his firing, and others present said The Beatles completely ignored him.
The Beatles later felt bad about their method of firing Pete Best
While the band didn’t speak much about Griffiths’ firing, they did feel guilty about Best.
“We weren’t very good at telling Pete he had to go,” Harrison said. “Historically, it may look like we did something nasty to Pete and it may have been that we could have handled it better.”
Lennon admitted it was a cowardly way to go about it, but he thought things could have become violent if they spoke to Best in person.
“We were cowards when we sacked him,” he said in The Beatles Anthology. “We made Brian do it. But if we’d told him to his face, that probably would have been much nastier. It would probably have ended in a fight.”
Best said he hasn’t spoken to any of his former bandmates since they fired him.
