The Beatles Recorded Their First Single With Three Different Drummers

The Beatles made their first single three separate times in 1962, and on each of those three days a different man was sitting behind the drums. This is not a fan theory anyone had to reconstruct: the liner notes on the band's own Anthology state it flatly that "The Beatles recorded Love Me Do three times in 1962 – on 6 June, and 4 and 11 September 1962 – on each occasion with a different drummer."
The Lost Pete Best Session

The first attempt came on Wednesday, June 6, 1962, in Studio Two at EMI's studios on Abbey Road, with Pete Best on the kit. George Martin, the Parlophone A&R man who had agreed to meet the group on the reasoning that he had nothing to lose, got four songs onto tape that night: "Besame Mucho," "Love Me Do," "P.S. I Love You" and "Ask Me Why."

None of the four was released, and only two of them survived in EMI's vaults at all, which meant that the "Love Me Do" recorded that evening—slower than the one you know, with John Lennon's harmonica opening it—sat unheard by anybody outside the building for the next three decades.

Ten weeks later, Best was gone. On the morning of August 16, road manager Neil Aspinall drove him into Liverpool and dropped him in Whitechapel, and at 10 o'clock Brian Epstein delivered the news in his office above the NEMS record shop: "The boys want you out and Ringo in." When Best asked why, Epstein gave him two reasons, and they were the same reason twice. "They don't think you're a good enough drummer, Pete," he said. "And George Martin doesn't think you're a good enough drummer."
Ringo Starr vs. Andy White

Ringo Starr's first session with the band came on September 4, by which point the contract was signed—"By this time we did have a contract," Paul McCartney said later—and the group put down around fifteen takes of the backing track. Martin made one call in the room that outlasted the day: Lennon could not sing the words "love me do" with a harmonica in his mouth, so the line went to McCartney, and his nervousness at being handed it is audible on the finished record.

Source: mentalfloss.com/Matt Hoffman

Read More<<<