Behind The Beatles: Paul’s photos reveal the early days

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Behind The Beatles: Paul’s photos reveal the early days

By Jason Steger

In Philip Larkin’s poem Annus Mirabilis, the English poet wrote famously of a significant year for him: “Sexual intercourse began/ In nineteen sixty-three/ (which was rather late for me) -/ Between the end of the Chatterley ban/ And the Beatles’ first LP ...”

It was also pretty momentous year for the four Scousers who released their first album, Please Please Me, in March of that year. According to Paul McCartney, “We were just four guys having fun and doing what we loved, which was playing music.”

John Lennon and George Harrison in Paris, February 1964.

John Lennon and George Harrison in Paris, February 1964.Credit: Paul McCartney

And didn’t they have fun, and didn’t they play a load of music. As Britain left the staid and drab world of the 1950s behind, life was changing, art was changing, music was changing. The Beatles – McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, as if we didn’t know their names - stormed the charts there and around the world, and Beatlemania overwhelmed society.

Now we have Paul McCartney’s perspective on that time thanks to a collection of his contemporaneous photographs, preserved in his archives, but not seen for getting on 60 years.

1964: Eye of the Storm by Paul McCartney. Book cover

1964: Eye of the Storm by Paul McCartney. Book cover

They came to light only when he was helping put on an exhibition of photos by his wife, Linda Eastman, and he wondered what had happened to them. They capture the months from December 1963, starting in Liverpool, through that year’s Christmas shows at London’s Finsbury Park Astoria, and on to gigs in Paris, and then the first tour to the US, where they played New York, Washington DC and Miami. The photographs are being exhibited at London’s newly renovated National Portrait Gallery.

As McCartney writes in the foreword to 1964: Eyes of the Storm, “no one can doubt that these three months were something of a crucible, but at the time we didn’t know that a new sound, a new movement was happening … [we] couldn’t possibly realise then the implications of what we were doing.”

The bulk of the pictures are candid, taken on the hop, catching his fellow Beatles in relaxed mode, making music, working. They’re mainly in black and white, sometimes with the softest possible focus, and reflective of a very different time.

You can imagine him getting on their nerves, popping up with his Pentax at every possible moment. There are plenty of portraits and snapshots - of their manager Brian Epstein, producer George Martin, their roadie, their publicist; of Lennon in his rarely seen (in those days) glasses, his then-wife Cynthia, Ringo goofing around, George asleep, McCartney’s girlfriend, Jane Asher, other musicians such as fellow Scouser Cilla Black, Billy J. Kramer and Ronnie Spector.

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But McCartney is also interested in the wide world around him. He takes street scenes in Paris, and snaps the photographers as they shoot the band. His eyes, ears and mind are opening up to the exciting possibilities beyond Britain.

When the Beatles get to New York, things change. You can sense a sort of wide-eyed awe from the man behind the camera: this is America, where all that great music comes from.

Paul McCartney in a self-portrait taken in late 1963.

Paul McCartney in a self-portrait taken in late 1963.Credit: Paul McCartney

There are pictures of cops, rooftops, workers, streets, studio scenes for their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show - watched, according to McCartney, by 73 million people.

And then the work is almost over. The Beatles have a week in Miami where they record another television show, and then it’s R&R by the poolside of their hotel.

Appropriately, McCartney switches to colour film because “these photos essentially are holiday snaps, revealing the personal side of The Beatles”.

But their lives have changed. They go back to Britain in March and make A Hard Day’s Night; they have the top five spots in the US Billboard charts. Then they set off on a world tour in June. Ringo got ill, but rejoins the band in Melbourne.

George Harrison gets the star treatment in Miami, February 1964.

George Harrison gets the star treatment in Miami, February 1964.Credit: Paul McCartney

Their third album is released; they go on a 26-date North American tour and then a 27-date British tour. They end the year with Another Beatles Christmas Show at the Hammersmith Odeon, 38 shows over 20 nights.

How does McCartney view the pictures now? “I find there’s a sort of innocence about them. Everything was new to us at this point. But I like to think I wouldn’t take them any differently today.”

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So keep your eyes open for the old guy with the bass guitar and the Pentax wandering the streets in October.

1964: Eyes of the Storm is published by Allen Lane at $140.

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