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Original Beatles drummer Pete Best — best known for being replaced by Ringo Starr — believes the Fab Four wouldn’t have missed a beat if he had not been booted all those years ago. “I still think it would have been The Beatles and I still think they would have been playing the same music and I still think the sound would have been very, very, very similar,” Best, 81, told The Post from his home in Liverpool. “To this day I still don’t know why” he was dismissed, Best added. Best — the Beatles’ drummer from 1960-1962 — is...

COLONIE, N.Y. -- As the live beat of Beatles classics begins bouncing off the walls of the Elks Lodge, a man with a gray mustache stands before his drum set and speaks up in a Liverpool lilt. "Let's take you back," he tells the crowd, "to the days when I used to play with a bunch of guys by the names of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison." Ringo Starr's playing the Elks club? No. Meet Pete Best, the drummer booted from the band just before Beatlemania exploded. John, Paul, George and new guy Ringo went on to become voices...

The great singer-songwriter and performer Billy Preston, the real "Fifth Beatle," has died after a long illness as a result of malignant hypertension that resulted in kidney failure and other complications. As a result of a medical insult, he'd been in a deep coma since last November 21, but was still struggling to recover. He died at Shea Scottsdale Hospital in Scottsdale, Ariz., where he'd lived for the last couple of years. Billy was called the Fifth Beatle because he played keyboards on "Let It Be," "The White Album" and "Abbey Road." He also played on the Rolling Stones' hit...