While a thousand cameras were trained on Paul McCartney at the sides of a dozen stages at this weekend’s Glastonbury Festival, the National Portrait Gallery was preparing an extensive glimpse through the other end of the lens.
Over 250 Pentax 35mm photographs the Beatles legend took in the four months between November 1963 and February 1964 – just as their star ascended at home and Beatlemania struck America – have been selected for the Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64 exhibition.
They come from over 1,000 shots unearthed, all but forgotten, from McCartney’s personal archive in 2020. Between them, and the accompanying photo-book 1964: Eyes of the Storm, they provide a wonderfully candid trip inside a phenomenon, mid-explosion.
Taking in the noirish focus and filmic framing of McCartney’s shots of early support acts and his nonchalant, cigarette-drooling self-portraits in hotel mirrors, you can better understand the affinity he’d go on to have with his first wife, the photographer Linda. And there are plentiful insights into the easygoing nature of the Hamburg-hardened Fab Four, found lounging in dressing rooms or guesting on Jukebox Jury largely unfazed by the gathering storm.
Amid plenty of pensive Ringos, awkward Georges and cheery Brian Epsteins, John Lennon is a flitting figure, sometimes serious and bespectacled, sometimes playful, clowning through his pre-show grooming routine or gooning to camera.
Side-of-stage shots from 1963, taken on McCartney’s Pentax by crew members, offer an electric new angle on their live show and, backstage, moments of largely headwear-based fun emerge: George wearing a stack of top hats, or Ringo and John sporting Napoleonic bicorns.
As the media tumult descends in Paris in 1964 you can see the showmen in them leap to life, while the Paul’s-eye-view of The Beatles’ first visit to the US is a priceless historical document. From inside the chaos we witness hordes of blurry girl fans – some dressed as beauty queens; one, if you look closely enough, holding a chimpanzee – swarming over the roofs and runways of JFK airport or crammed against barriers outside New York’s Plaza Hotel. Portraits of bemused, overrun cops. Fans, through the rear window, chasing the band’s car through Manhattan on foot.
What we’re looking at is the first generation of teenage pop fandom, having cut its teeth howling at Elvis’s every gyration, now losing itself in full-blown hysteria and pushing at its limits, clawing at the boundary between fan and idol. Meanwhile, behind the camera, The Beatles are also fathoming how global superstardom works – or can work – in any sort of un-claustrophobic manner, bewildered by all their dreams coming true overnight.
As Paul switches his film to colour in Miami, a surreal tone sets in. There’s “shy one” George accepting a cocktail from a bikini-clad waitress in the very image of first-generation rock star luxury – an image the 1970s would solo itself senseless trying to emulate – but with the distant expression all four share as they calmly try to fish, swim or lounge on Miami Beach while police hold back baying hordes. The modern pop dynamic is born in these pictures and, coloured by the seismic cultural impact of the era, it’s both humanising and beautiful to watch.
