In a discussion with American actor Stanley Tucci about his new photo exhibition, Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes Of The Storm, McCartney said people were still feeling the after-effects of Kennedy’s death when the band arrived in the US in February 1964. (Breakingnews.ie) Main Picture Source: (MPL Communications/PA)
He said: “That was one of the big things for us … we felt it like the whole world had felt it.
“We had really felt it, but then, it was a few months after that we went to America. We, without meaning to, lifted people.”
With his photographer daughter Mary McCartney in the crowd, at a talk given at the National Portrait Gallery, the singer also discussed what it was like to rediscover photos taken during the height of Beatlemania.
Speaking on his decision to document their trip, McCartney said: “The four of us got cameras and just started to enjoy taking pictures of what was going on around us.
“The nice thing was, I realised they were all quite intimate because the press photographers couldn’t get here.”
Tucci asks McCartney about John Lennon’s poor eyesight, and the fact that he wore glasses, but usually, Paul describes one particularly amusing scene after a late-night songwriting session at his house, after which Lennon walked home around midnight and the next day, told McCartney that he had been amazed to see people on the corner of Booker Avenue “out on the porch playing cards.” Says Paul: “I had to investigate, so I went round and had a look. It was a nativity scene. They weren’t playing cards, they were all bent over the baby Jesus. So that’s why he needed glasses.”
From June 28th to October 1st, 2023, the gallery will display 250 unseen photographs taken by Paul of his bandmates and the cities they travelled to during their 1963-64 tour, according to Farout.
Stanley Tucci is an Academy Award nominated actor known for his versatility as an actor, writer, director, and producer. He has appeared in over 100 films, countless television shows and more than a dozen plays on and off Broadway.
Event in partnership with MPL Communications LTD, Penguin Random House and Norton.
The images were taken on Paul’s personal Pentax camera, and will also be available in an accompanying photobook titled 1964: Eyes of the Storm, slated for release on June 13th via Penguin.
Sir Paul was joined by a number of friends at the exhibition, including Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde 71, who posed alongside him.
Watch the full Photogallery on DailyMail and on NPG.Org
Paul was also joined by his famous daughter Stella McCartney who was seen posing next to pictures of her father from his Beatles days. posing with her sister Mary at the exhibition, with The Beatles pictures visible behind them and with actress Leslie Mann who looked glamorous in gold.
Paul was seen posing with author Olivia Harrison, the wife of his late Beatles bandmate George Harrison.T he late John Lennon’s son Julian Lennon, Sir Paul McCartney and Mary McCartney pose also together.
In a statement, McCartney said of the exhibition and event: “Looking at these photos now, decades after they were taken, 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. They now bring back so many stories, a flood of special memories, which is one of the many reasons I love them all, and know that they will always fire my imagination.
“The fact that these photographs have been taken by the National Portrait Gallery for their reopening after a lengthy renovation is humbling yet also astonishing – I’m looking forward to seeing them on the walls, 60 years on, and reminiscing about those times with the wonderful Stanley Tucci.”
Meanwhile, Tucci added: “I am honoured and thrilled to interview Paul McCartney about these photos and that time in his extraordinary life. A life that has changed all of ours for the better.”
1964: Eyes of the Storm was published on June 13 by Liveright.
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.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I always knew I had taken some pictures in the 1960s. At first, I couldn’t pinpoint the year, but I was certain we were quite young, just when the Beatles were really taking off.
I never tried to find this collection – consciously, that is – but I kind of thought that it would just surface at the right time. There’s often a certain amount of serendipity involved. And while we were preparing for an exhibition of my late wife Linda’s photographs in 2020, I learned that my own had been preserved in my archives. When I first saw them after so many decades, I was delighted that these images and contact sheets had been finally located. (Excerpt from the Guardian)
