Pete Best, the drummer who performed with the Beatles before Ringo Starr, has confirmed his retirement.

The 83-year-old’s brother, Roag Best, announced the news on social media on the weekend, writing that the drummer would no longer be performing with his band, the Pete Best Band.

“Well what an absolutely wonderful ride we’ve had. However, everything comes to pass,” he wrote. “My brother Pete Best has announced today he is retiring from personal appearances and performing with the group. His daughter has informed me it’s due to personal circumstances.”

Best confirmed his brother’s statement, writing: “I had a blast. Thank you.”

Sometimes called the “fifth Beatle”, Best first performed with the band in 1960, about the time they changed their name from the Quarrymen.

His family owned the Casbah Coffee Club in Liverpool, where the Beatles performed some of their very first shows. Best met the band through his mother, Mona, when she booked John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ken Brown to play at the club.

Best successfully auditioned for the newly named Beatles in August 1960 and joined them for their three-month residency in Germany that year.

He performed in the Beatles until 1962, when Parlophone Records executive George Martin decided he wanted to hire an experienced session drummer for their recording sessions – a decision Martin later said he “felt guilty” about “because I felt maybe I was the catalyst that had changed [Best’s] life”.

After McCartney, Lennon and Harrison asked him to make the final decision, the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, fired Best from the band and he was replaced by Ringo Starr.

“We were rockers, we were little hardies, we could handle ourselves. But when I got back home and I told my mother what happened, behind the sanctuary of the front door, I cried like a baby,” Best told the Irish Times in 2020.

Lennon described Best as “a lousy drummer”, while McCartney said he was “good, but a bit limited”. Harrison later admitted he was “quite responsible for stirring things up” around Best, saying: “I conspired to get Ringo in for good; I talked to Paul and John until they came round to the idea.”

Best would continue performing with other groups but eventually stopped. He sued the Beatles for defamation over comments made in a Playboy interview, eventually settling out-of-court for an undisclosed amount in 1969.

After stepping away from live performance for 20 years, he started the Pete Best Band with his brother in 1988.

In 2024, Best told the Guardian there was no bad blood about the Beatles’ decision.

“I still don’t know the reason today but it doesn’t worry me one iota,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, it happened 60-odd years ago, and I’ve lived my life, I’ve had a great life. It did cause me initial heartache and resentment but that’s showbusiness.”

• This article was amended on 9 April 2025. An earlier version stated that Pete Best performed with the band when they were known as the Quarrymen; however, his first performance was under the name the Beatles.