Original Beatles drummer Pete Best 'Back in the USSR'

by John Maher. Published Fri 19 Mar 2010 11:00, Last updated: 2010-03-19

Pete Best is heading to Russia this weekend

Former Beatle Pete Best is set to play in Moscow this weekend.

Best, a music legend in his own right, will be 'Back in the USSR' when his Liverpool band performs at a mop-tops tribute festival in the Russian capital on Sunday.

The Best of the Beatles event will also feature performances from The Beatween, from Moscow, Nube 9 and Double Fantasy.

In 1962 drummer Best, 68, was kicked out of the Beatles months before the band found international success.

Alexei Plyush - the 'John Lennon' of The Beatween - said performing on the same bill as Best will be a great experience.

He added: "With the international bands we have for the festival, the whole event will display a certain Beatles diversity."

The Fab Four never actually played in the former Soviet Union and their music was banned there.

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev even called the group's tunes "cacophonous rubbish" at the time.

Sir Paul McCartney eventually got to play Russia in 2003, when he dusted down his back catalogue in Red Square for 100,000 fans.

Best's self-titled quartet "The Pete Best Band" will perform a mix of their own work and Beatles classics.