This week brings us a new album from Ringo Starr, who’ll also appear on his former bandmate Paul McCartney’s The Boys of Dungeon Lane album coming out May 29. But real Fab Four fanatics will be excited to learn they may soon hear a new collaborative album featuring another Beatles drummer, Pete Best.

“So, we recorded this album together for the [91X] radio station… we did about six songs together, but we haven’t done anything with it,” reveals Christopher Leyva, leader of the intercontinental glam-rock collective Falling Doves.

Leyva exclusively tells LPTV this news while sitting with his rotating bandmates at Studio City’s Licorice Pizza Records, during a celebration for Falling Doves’ 10th anniversary. Leyva, a “100 percent Mexican” San Diego/Los Angeles native, has been living in Liverpool more much of those 10 years — after Falling Doves were on a Liverpool layover during their European tour, headed to Sweden, and the airline lost their luggage.

“We were stuck in Liverpool for a week, and we just fell in love with the people there. … The thing is the culture over there is so great, very much just into music,” Levya gushes.

Eventually, Leyva became pals with Liverpool’s Best, who was famously the Beatles’ drummer from 1960 to 1962, playing with them during their developing Hamburg era, before he was sacked by Beatles manager Brian Epstein and replaced by Starr.

“We were working in this documentary where they grabbed a band and they took us on the same route to Hamburg, the way the Beatles went, and for part of it we got to spend time with Pete to learn about everything that we needed to do in Hamburg — which I’m not going to go into detail about, because I don’t know who’s watching this [interview]!” Leyva chuckles. “But I will say became good friends, and he said he’d come play for me on my birthday, as my drummer. He kept his word, flew down San Diego, and we did a mini-tour.”

Leyva, a rock ‘n’ roll lifer himself, got to spend a lot of quality time on the road with Best, who had sadly become a punchline or cautionary tale because of his unluck Beatles firing. And Leyva got to learn about how Best recovered from the setback.

“To be honest with you, you can learn a lot about a man by drinking with him for a week straight,” Leyva says. “You can’t just go and ask, but the more time you’re with them, they just themselves start telling you stories. And so, [Best] did go through a really rough period. But I think he had everything that he wanted to begin with. And as the years progressed, he saw how some of [the Beatles’] lives kind of went, and he became a civil servant, but he lived a good, moderate life. And he got his due in the ‘90s [when he received substantial royalties from the Anthology project]. But he’s such an optimistic dude. And he’s such a powerful drummer, actually.”

Leyva and Best got so close, so quickly, in fact, that during that whirlwind Falling Doves/Pete Best tour he even tried to facilitate some sort of comical Ringo Starr/Pete Best collaboration.

“That same weekend that he came to my birthday, Ringo was playing at Humphreys [in San Diego]. So, I went over to say hi to Ringo, and I felt horrible, because it’s like cheating on your girlfriend! That’s kind of how it felt,” Leyva chuckles. “So, the whole weekend I was going back and forth between Pete and Ringo, hanging out, then I was drinking a little bit too much and I was smoking weed with Ringo and some of his … I’m not supposed to say that! I was smoking some weed with some of his friends. So, I just threw out this wild idea and I said to Ringo, ‘I’m shooting this music video. Let’s pretend that you’re playing the drums, and then Pete Best kicks you off the drum kit.’ And he laughed and he said, ‘That’d be funny!’ But then I said the same story to Pete… and that wasn’t that funny. No, [Best] didn’t like that at all! So, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m fucking with you, man! I’m messing with you.’”

Faling Doves ended up hiring a Ringo impersonator for the video instead, but there didn’t seem to be hard feelings on either side. And while Starr is of course widely and historically considered to be the better drummer of the two, Leyva continues to be impressed by Best’s under-appreicated skills.

“I’ll tell you a funny story. First day he walks into our studio, because we’d never jammed with him, I tell the guys, ‘Hey, let’s go a little easier on this old guy.’ And he gets in the drums and wow, he plays like Marky Ramone — hard, like boom! It’s a different ball game. Ringo’s a great drummer, but [Pete] really is a punk drummer,” Leyva marvels.

Leyva “didn’t want to do a bunch of Beatle covers,” so they let Best pick the songs, including one of Falling Doves’ originals, “Glass of Wine.” The resulting Falling Doves/Pete Best 91X mini-album, recorded live at San Diego’s Iacon Sound, remains unreleased — Leyva says Best is negotiating with NAMM to put it out — and while Best officially retired in early 2025, Leyva doesn’t rule out him eventually making some live appearances to promote the record.

“Yeah, we’ll bring him out. As long as you bring him with his wife, he might come out,” Leyva quips. “He’s never going to stop drumming. He drums. He loves it.”