Thursday, June 28, 2007

best aftermath

the show last night
with pete best
was beautiful
and poignant
i found out
he played around 1000 shows with the beatles
in 3 years
a ridiculous amount
a lifetime's worth of gigs

i've been performing 17 years
and i'm only hovering around 700
it became even more obvious to me than before
why his ousting from the band
was so bitter
we got a chance to play to a lot of people
most of whom probably would never have heard
or seen us before
so that was cool
they were all very gracious
and complimentary
and seated
the noise played great
and i think we actually had one of our best
granada shows
the salimunist/mao posters were very popular
with the older beatle fans
which was funny
'cause the kids don't get the pun

pete was very soft spoken
and extremely polite
to tell the truth
most of the night
he looked dead tired
who could blame him?
they'd been up since 4:30am
to play on TV
he's in his mid-sixties
a man half his age would've been worthless
he played the drums for 2 hours
then signed autographs for 2 more
most of the time it looked like he could barely hold his pen
it was actually very touching
they're playing 27 dates in 30 days
not by comfy bus though
just a plain white van
pretty hard travelling even for younger men
i had to ask myself the question
"why's he doing this?"
maybe to get a slight taste of what he missed
all those years ago?
i guess nobody knows but pete...

at the end of the show the autograph line held almost
everyone who had attended the show
a bunch of people with multiple things made it slow going
drum heads
records
pictures
he even signed a guitar
we waited to the very end
and finally snapped a quick picture
with poor tired pete
who kindly perked up a bit when i told him my son
would someday get a kick out of this picture
bucks was talking to him about the talking heads
when jayme and i waved farewell
and headed off to get our little G

the end of another beautiful night

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nice to be back, after a month of creating my own online kingdom....

visit namedroppermedia.com

sorry for the blogmercial!

Bucks

6:29 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great picture of you and Pete. It was an honor to watch the two of you meet. We are all, millions of us, Children of The Beatles, and if truth be told, Pete is our dad, and Ringo our loving step-dad, cause Pete came first, and helped start the band.

Unexpectedly, this gig changed my life. I've seen you play...at least 50 times? It was your Shining Moment.

God bless Pete. He deserves a big comeback, and an apology.

6:34 PM  

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