Pete Best's brother Roag announces the news on X:
"My brother Pete Best has today announced that he is retiring from personal appearances and performances with his band. His daughter has told me that it's due to personal reasons," writes Roag Best.
Pete Best had played with the Beatles for two years when he was replaced by Ringo Starr in August 1962. Two months later, the group's breakthrough came when their debut single "Love me do" was released. The rest is history.
Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and John Lennon already played in the 1950s with their first band The Quarrymen at Casbah Coffee Club, a music venue in Liverpool run by Pete Best's mother Mona Best. And the guys became friends.
Best took his departure from the Beatles hard and left the music industry. More than 20 years later, he picked up music again with his own band and has been playing ever since.
The burden of his place in music history became easier to bear in 1995 when the Beatles' collection album with rarities, "Anthology 1", was released. Pete Best plays on ten of the tracks and received a substantial financial boost due to the royalties from that album.
