Paul McCartney’s rediscovered photos show Beatlemania from the inside

LONDON –

Is there really a new way to look at The Beatles, one of the most filmed and photographed bands in history?

Yes, says Britain’s National Portrait Gallery, offering a new perspective with an exhibition of band-eye-view images captured by Paul McCartney as the group rose to global fame.

Gallery director Nicholas Cullinan said the exhibition, subtitled “Eyes of the Storm”, is an opportunity “to see Beatlemania from the inside for the very first time”.

The seeds for the exhibition were sown in 2020, that year of lockdown projects, when McCartney unearthed 1,000 forgotten photographs he had taken in 1963 and 1964, as the Fab Four rose from emerging British celebrities to global megastars. He and his team asked if the National Portrait Gallery would be interested in displaying them.

“I think you can probably guess our reaction,” said Cullinan as he introduced the exhibition to journalists in London on Tuesday.

The show features 250 photographs taken in England, France and the United States illustrating The Beatles’ journey from cramped dressing rooms in provincial British theaters to stadium shows and luxury hotels.

“It was an insane whirlwind we went through,” McCartney writes in a note at the start of the exhibit. “We just marveled at the world, excited about all these little things that made up our lives.”

Rosie Broadley, who curated the show, said the gallery quickly realized the treasure was “not just interesting pictures of a famous person.”

“It actually tells an important story of cultural history — British cultural history and international cultural history,” she said. “This is a moment where British culture has taken over the world for a while.”

The screening begins in late 1963, shortly after McCartney purchased a Pentax 35mm camera. The early black-and-white images featured portraits of The Beatles, their parents, girlfriends, crew and colleagues, including manager Brian Epstein.

Broadley said these images depict “a parochial post-war British celebrity” — concerts in provincial cinemas alongside now-obscure bands like Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers, 16-night variety-style Christmas shows at London’s Finsbury Park Astoria.

Cullinan said the photos convey a “sense of intimacy” that is missing from professional photos of the band.

“This was not The Beatles being photographed by paparazzi press photographers, but peer-to-peer,” he said. “So there’s a real tenderness and vulnerability to these images.”

In January 1964, McCartney took his camera to Paris with the band, capturing the city at the height of its French New Wave cool. While there, The Beatles learned that “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was a No. 1 hit in the United States.

Within days, they were on a plane to New York, where their February 9 performance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” was watched by 73 million people, and nothing was ever the same again.

The American part of the exhibition shows the increasingly hectic life of the band. Many of the shots were taken from planes, trains and chauffeured cars and show crowds of screaming fans and lines of police. Sometimes McCartney turned his lens back to the newspaper and magazine photographers watching him.

A striking shot was made through the rear window of a car as a mob chased the band down a Manhattan street, a scene echoed in the band’s first feature film, “A Hard Day’s Night”, made later that year.

McCartney also took pictures of strangers — a girl seen through a train window, Miami airport ground crew going crazy.

The band’s last stop was Miami, where McCartney switched to color film. The results, Broadley said, “look like a Technicolor movie, like an Elvis movie.” The photos show John, Paul, George and Ringo swimming, sunbathing, water skiing and even fishing. From a hotel window, McCartney photographed fans writing “I love Paul” in the sand in giant letters.

McCartney, 81, spent hours talking to curators about the photos and his memories as they prepared the exhibition, one of the shows the National Portrait Gallery reopened after a three-year renovation.

The images were kept on undeveloped negatives or contact sheets for decades, and McCartney had never seen them in a large format until the gallery had them printed.

The project was not without risks. McCartney acknowledges that he is not a professional photographer, although his late wife, Linda McCartney, was, as was their daughter Mary McCartney. Some photos are blurry or hastily composed. But what they lack in technique they make up for in spontaneity.

Broadley said McCartney was “nervous about showing some of the less formally composed or less in-focus.”

“But I think we convinced him that we like those because of the story they tell,” she said. “It’s kind of nice to have the one where they sit with a cup of tea before the event.”