The collection includes 275 of McCartney’s photographs—captured during the dawn of Beatlemaniaロンドンのナショナル・ポートレート・ギャラリー（国立肖像画美術館）で開催されたポールの展覧会「ポール・マッカートニー写真展1963―1964～Eyes of the Storm～」が、来年、日本にて開催されます。 pic.twitter.com/uAdHckrtFK
— Paul McCartney : 日本 (@PaulMcCartneyJp) June 30, 2023
Paul McCartney is releasing a photography book compiling 275 of his snapshots taken between the end of 1963 and the beginning of 1964—when Beatlemania was becoming a global phenomenon. 1964: Eyes of the Storm will be published June 13 by Liveright/W. W. Norton. The 35mm images are McCartney’s personal record of the time, and capture the Beatles’ travels through Liverpool, London, Paris, New York, Washington, D.C., and Miami. Watch a trailer for the book below.
“Anyone who rediscovers a personal relic or family treasure is instantly flooded with memories and emotions, which then trigger associations buried in the haze of time,” McCartney wrote in press materials. “This was exactly my experience in seeing these photos, all taken over an intense three-month period of travel, culminating in February 1964.”
It was a wonderful sensation to be plunged right back. Here was my own record of our first huge trip, a photographic journal of The Beatles in six cities, beginning in Liverpool and London, followed by Paris (where John and I had been ordinary hitchhikers three years before), and then what we regarded as the big time, our first visit as a group to America.
1964: Eyes of the Storm includes several never-before-seen portraits of John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, as well as a foreword by McCartney, an introduction by Harvard historian and New Yorker essayist Jill Lepore, a Preface by Nicholas Cullinan, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, and an essay by Senior Curator Rosie Broadley. The process of creating the book began in 2020, when a trove of nearly 1,000 of McCartney’s photographs were re-discovered in his archive.
Previously unseen photos of the Beatles taken at the height of their stardom by Paul McCartney will go on display at the refurbished National Portrait Gallery in the summer. (NME)
The exhibition, Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm, “will provide a uniquely personal perspective on what it was like to be a Beatle at the start of Beatlemania,” said Nicholas Cullinan, the NPG’s director.
“The photographs taken in this period captured the very moment that John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were propelled from being the most popular band in Britain to an international cultural phenomenon, from gigs in Liverpool and London to performing on The Ed Sullivan Show in New York to a television audience of 73 million people.
The 275 photographs were taken on 35mm film between December 1963 and February 1964 in a variety of locations, including New York, London, Washington, Miami, Paris and the band’s native Liverpool. McCartney thought he had lost them, but rediscovered them a few years ago.
The exhibition, Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm, “will provide a uniquely personal perspective on what it was like to be a Beatle at the start of Beatlemania,” said Nicholas Cullinan, the NPG’s director [via The Guardian].
Unpublished photos and conversations appear also in Beatles book Get Back.
A lot of these centred on how the Beatles made music. Contrary to myth, they were still closely collaborating, a point illustrated by a sequence in which Harrison asks the others for help on a love song he has been working on for months, soon to be titled Something. He was stuck on this new song’s second line:
He then played Old Brown Shoe, which would appear on the B-side of The Ballad of John and Yoko. McCartney gamely joined in on drums, and then a guitar he played upside down; Billy Preston played bass. Later the same day, the five of them recorded a superb version of Get Back – the rollercoaster piece of rock’n’roll that was arguably this period’s defining song.
A huge archive of previously unseen film and audio recordings, locked away for half-a century, were released by Apple to film-maker Peter Jackson and journalist John Harris. Peter Jackson's 3, 2-hour long films will be released next month. In them the band are at the top of their game. And while they talk about the future and just where they're all going, they are clearly having fun and making some fantastic music.
But both the book and the films do show the band thinking hard and talking about their future. They're no longer fresh-faced mop-tops. They've all grown up and live separate lives. John has Yoko, Paul has Linda, George is flexing his muscles as a songwriter in his own right and Ringo is looking at a career in acting. They are very much at a crossroads.
