WPT Be more Tuned In Podcast -- Former Beatle Pete Best

We spoke with Pete Best, one of only three people alive that can claim to be former members of The Beatles, via telephone from the Casbah Coffee House in Liverpool, U.K. The mp3 podcast conversation can be downloaded here and can be enjoyed on your personal computer or loaded onto your personal mp3 player for on-the-go listening. You can also subscribe to our monthly podcasts via iTunes by clicking here.

For more than 1,000 shows until 1962, Best was the drummer for The Beatles. Along with John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, Best performed to packed houses in Germany and throughout England as the early stages of Beatlemania grew. He was there when the group signed its first recording deal, but was quietly dismissed just weeks before the release of the "Love Me Do," the band's first in a long line of hit singles.

Now, 40 years later, Best is spreading his inside knowledge of those early days of what would become the most influential rock group ever. He has a band that performs many of the Mersey Beat songs from his Beatles tenure and has created a documentary, Best of the Beatles, which will air on WPT at 10 p.m. on Monday, June 11.

In our interview, Best discusses how he became a Beatle, why his mother had a hand in the band's inception and the possible reasons that he was replaced in the band by Ringo Starr.