Personnel: Pete Best (drums); Phil Melia (vocals, guitar, harmonica); Paul Parry (vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards); Tony Flynn (vocals, guitar); Paul Parry (vocals, guitars, piano, keyboards); Tony Flynn, Phil Melia (vocals, guitars); Roag Best, Roag Best (drums, percussion).

Recording information: Casbah Coffee Club Studios, Liverpool, England.

Original Beatles drummer Pete Best has released a handful of albums over the years and led the Pete Best Band since the late 1980s, reviving the Cavern Club-era sound. HAYMAN'S GREEN, however, is a horse of quite another color. Consisting of all original material, it's right in line with the latter-day efforts of his former bandmates, sounding like something Jeff Lynne could have produced, from the George Harrison-esque slide-guitar lines to the undeniably Beatlesque chord progressions. It's certainly at least on a par with Ringo's contemporaneous solo work.

As we become increasingly aware of the need to protect our non-renewable natural resources, it becomes obvious that the musical community is not making adequate use of the dwindling supply of former Beatles, and as Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr can hardly be expected to keep the world supplied with Beatles-related material forever, another onetime member of Liverpool's finest, Pete Best, has stepped forward to help remedy this situation. Sure, Best was given his walking papers by the Beatles about three weeks before they cut their first single for Parlophone, but he still counts as a former member of the band, and Haymans Green is his fifth album since returning to active duty in 1992, a few years before the release of the Beatles' Anthology 1 made him a very wealthy man and convinced him there was a disturbing gap between demand for Beatles solo recordings and the current supply. Haymans Green is the most Beatles-sounding album from a former Beatle to emerge since Paul McCartney became aware of his advancing maturity, but what's remarkable is that it recalls not the rough-and-tumble rock & roll of their early days playing clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg, but the ambitious pop of Revolver through Abbey Road, as if Best wants to prove to the world he could have helped make Sgt. Pepper's or the White Album if someone had given him the chance. Best also had a hand in writing the 11 songs on Haymans Green, something he's never done before, but guitarist Phil Melia and guitarist and keyboardist Paul Parry are also credited on all the tracks, and Pete's brother Roag Best (who doubles with him on drums) also pitches in on eight of the selections, so this falls a bit short as a defining personal statement. It also says a certain amount about Best's role in the Beatles that he's surrounded himself with people who write, play, and even sing like John, Paul, and George; 46 years after he stopped being a Beatle, he's still defined by the sound of his former bandmates even on his own solo album, as if he has nothing to say as a musician besides "I knew them when." As a Beatles pastiche, Haymans Green isn't quite up to the inspired appropriation of Utopia's Deface the Music or anything by the Rutles, but the quality is at least a couple steps up from Best's clumsy covers of beat-era material on his previous albums, and it is doubtless more satisfying than whatever Jimmy Nicol or Andy White have in the works. ~ Mark Deming