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Screaming and crying girls. Innumerable hotel rooms. Nonstop camera flashes. A group of four Liverpudlian guys in the middle of it all. We’ve all seen the photos and videos documenting the insanity of Beatlemania, the obsession over the Beatles from 1963 to 1966.
But it turns out that the Beatles’ bassist and singer, Sir Paul McCartney, actually turned the lens on the crowds, the paparazzi and the cities that hosted them in the early days.
McCartney and the Brooklyn Museum are showcasing more than 250 of the icon’s personal photographs that illustrate the intensity of this historical moment, but also the quiet moments unseen by millions of fans in “Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm.”
The exhibit gives new insight into the demands of touring, the constant media attention as well as McCartney’s band members, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, who were undergoing an extremely life-changing era.
The show opens on May 3 and we got a sneak peek at it beforehand!
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First on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London, the exhibition is made up of photography, video clips and archival material between The Beatles’ concert hall performances in Liverpool and London to their international tour, first to Paris and then to the United States. From hotel to hotel and from venue to venue, McCartney was taking portraits, landscapes and documentary shots all along the way. The museum says you can see references to New Wave, documentary filmmaking and photojournalism across the exhibition.
As a massive Beatles fan, access to these personal photos is a gift. Seeing the rabid fans and the insane moments from McCartney’s perspective, especially from his time here in NYC, is something I never thought I’d get to see. It’s easy to build the group up as icons—each individually and together—but this showcase breaks down that perspective because it is like looking at a family photo album.
The galleries are filled with close-up portraits of the guys in various situations—waiting for rehearsals to start, fiddling around on their instruments, interacting with fans and even taking a day off and swimming in Miami! Fans already know that the foursome were close, but seeing these behind-closed-doors images offers a new insight into their humor, individuality and humanity, which can often be forgotten about.
We’ve seen them in so many black and white photos on stage, in the studio and making public appearances, but these quiet moments (and some in bright beautiful color) shift the eye away from ‘icon’ to ‘individual.’
It’s also made more personal with McCartney’s actual pencil marks on the images he selected from his various contact sheets and his quotes about certain images and times during this era. There’s also a camera on display that is the same model that he and his fellow bandmembers used—the 35mm Pentax SLR. Plus, McCartney comments on some of the photos along the way, which you can read on the wall next to them.
“The crowds chasing us in A Hard Day’s Night were based on moments like this,” McCartney said, referencing the photo below. It was taken in New York City during the same trip they went on the Ed Sullivan Show.
There’s an entire gallery about when the Beatles first came to New York City in 1964, in fact, and it’s incredibly cool not only to see New York City in that era with its giant yellow cabs and smaller skyline, but from McCartney’s point of view—through car windows, in crowds that swarmed the group and even from outside the Plaza Hotel.
“We were staying at the Plaza Hotel, who were pretty horrified by all the hullabaloo,” McCartney is quoted as saying about that time.
The exhibit comes to a climax with the band’s time in Miami. The museum says McCartney shifted from shooting in black and white film to brilliant color to capture the vivacity of the city and beach—a far departure from the snowy, gray they experienced in NYC and D.C. beforehand. The gallery literally reflects this with bright yellow and blue walls. The photos depict a much more relaxed band, who had some time off to swim and enjoy the sun. Seeing a photo of John Lennon swimming in the ocean excitedly was heartwarming to say the least.
“Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm,” supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, opens May 3 and will be on at Brooklyn Museum through August 18.