Customer Rating: 
Summary: Welcome to the Casbah
Comment: This book is heavy with pictures on every page,including rooms The Beatles painted and played in,clothes they wore before the leather look,a diagram of The Casbah. Many stories about people and events that took place there."As was written,It was hot and sweaty.No booze,just coffee and coke and fantastic live music."If you are wondering who Roag Best is,he is the son of Mona and Neil Aspinall.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Cradle of Anglo-Rock History
Comment:
A fascinating book about the inception of the Beatles, or "pre-Beatle" era, if you will. The beautiful archival photographs will certainly delight all readers as well as the memorabilia. Readers will certainly get a feel for early-1960s Liverpool (1960-62) and the environment in which the Beatles flourished.
Thanks to this book, fans can actually see the club where the Beatles' fame was soon launched. The world's number one band cut their musical teeth in the Casbah, owned and run by drummer Pete Best's mother, Mona Best. The club opened in 1959 when the Quarrymen-Silver Beatles were coming into their own. This underground rock club was the precursor to its American counterparts such as the Hard Rock Cafe and the Fillmore East and Fillmore West, to name three.
This fresh perspective of Beatle history includes Mona Best's story as well as other members of the Best family. Pete Best, the Beatles' first drummer was unceremoniously ousted from the band in August of 1962. Ringo Starr replaced him and the rest is, well, history. Fans will undoubtedly feel as if they are watching the Beatles evolve from relative local obscurity into the musical juggernaut they became and remain to this day.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Dream Book
Comment: I love this book! Makes me want to fly to Liverpool now and visit. Pete Best, who was drummer for the Beatles before they kicked him out with no explanation, gives us a fabulous treat. His mother ran the Casbah Club in Liverpool in the family home's basement. After Pete was booted out, the club sort of died down and was closed. It remained sealed up for many, many years, until it was opened. Original murals done by the Beatles still on the walls, microphones, and other items were found, and the club reopened to people who wish to come and see the only remaining original club, with even the original walls! Let the Cavern try to claim that! Color photos, inside stories, more make this a sensational book. Beatle fans, Merseybeat fans, music historians, Scousers, etc...BUY IT!
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Summary: Neil Aspinall's son with Mona Best
Comment: The story behind this book is one of the secrets in the Beatles tale. Neil Aspinall, who still works for the Beatles as director of Apple Corps, looking after their legacy and business interests, classmate of Paul McCartney's at the Liverpool Institute, was Pete Best's good friend. When the band needed someone to help them move their equipment from gig to gig, Neil was hired because he had a car. Throughout the band's story, Neil was the road manager.Neil lived with Pete's family for a while in the early years. He had an affair with Pete and brother Rory's hip, relatively young, Indian mother, Mona. They had a child together, Roag.
When Pete was tossed out of the Beatles, he told Neil to choose between the job with the band and his living with the Best family. Neil chose the Beatles. He was not allowed to see his son grow up.
This is that son's book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An Unfocused Book with Two Slender Ideas
Comment: Will any true Beatles fan ever admit that there is no need for any further information regarding the Fab Four? Absolutely not --- the strong popularity of THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY is evidence enough that a voracious audience still exists for Beatles lore in all shapes and sizes.THE BEATLES: THE TRUE BEGINNINGS really encompasses two book ideas: the Merseybeat music scene in Liverpool from which the Beatles developed, and Pete Best's experiences as an early Beatle. Either of these ideas, developed fully, would make interesting reading. As they are, however, two slender ideas are crammed into one unfocused book with big pictures and sparse text. Even so, I get the impression that this book was a stretch --- does any fan, no matter how obsessive, really require a picture of the case in which Pete Best carried his drums? How about a shot of the spare guitar strings he found inside?
A prominent outpost of the Merseybeat scene was Mrs. Best's Casbah Coffee Club, owned and operated by Pete Best's mother, Mona Best. This book is in large part a tribute to the remarkable Mona Best from her sons --- Roag, Pete, and Rory. Mrs. Best pawned her jewelry, placed a bet on a horse, and won the money to buy Number Eight Haymans Green, a giant house whose cellars were transformed into the Casbah when the Best boys discovered rock-and-roll and needed a place to perform and listen to music. The Beatles first performed at the Casbah as the Quarrymen. They played to a crowd of 1,500 and received three pounds as payment.
You probably know how the story goes. The Beatles were a huge success and got a gig playing in Hamburg, Germany where they endured a horrible, grueling performance schedule and living conditions like something from a Dickens novel (assuming Dickens might ever have written about a German red-light district). In short, the Hamburg experience was destined to make or break the Beatles. It made the Beatles, but Pete Best was not invited to continue their success.
Is the Best family bitter? Maybe a little; it is their theory that Pete Best was simply so much better looking that he was a liability to the other band members. Also, the title THE TRUE BEGINNINGS seems to imply that they are setting the record straight, but there isn't very much new information here and it's unlikely to change anyone's mind about the Beatles as individuals or as a cultural phenomenon.
--- Reviewed by Colleen Quinn
