\n<\/p>\n
They are now a collector\u2019s trove \u2014 Paul McCartney\u2019s own photos, shot 60 years ago, when the Beatles took Europe and America by storm: images of screaming fans (one carrying a live monkey); a girl in a yellow bikini; airport workers playing air guitar, and unguarded moments grabbed from trains, planes and automobiles.<\/p>\n
McCartney, now 81, doesn\u2019t like to sit still and reminisce about the past, so he chatted while driving home from his recording studio in Sussex, England. \u2018\u2018My American friends call these small, one-way lanes \u2018gun barrels,\u2019 \u2019\u2019 he said, warning his interviewer that at any moment the signal might die (it did). In the end, it took two days to complete a coherent conversation about the breakthrough period when the Beatles went viral, captured in the traveling exhibition \u2018\u2018Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-1964: Eyes of the Storm,\u2019\u2019 which features 250 of his shots. Currently it\u2019s at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Va.<\/a>, and comes to the Brooklyn Museum<\/a> May 3-August 18. (Don\u2019t be surprised if the artist shows up for the opening.)<\/p>\n It was McCartney\u2019s archivist, Sarah Brown, who found 1,000 photographs the musician had taken over 12 weeks \u2014 from Dec. 7, 1963, to Feb. 21, 1964, \u2014 in the artist\u2019s library.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought the photos were lost,\u2019\u2019 he said. \u2018\u2018In the \u201960s it was pretty easy. Often doors were left open. We\u2019d invite fans in.\u201d Even the recording studio wasn\u2019t a safe space. \u201cI was taking my daughter Mary to the British Library to show her where to research for her exams, and in one display case I saw the lyric sheet for \u2018Yesterday,\u2019\u201d he said. A sticky fingered biographer had swiped the original from their studio.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Rosie Broadley, a senior curator at the National Portrait Gallery in London, where the show was inaugurated, said, \u201cHis photographs show us what it was like to look through his eyes while the Beatles conquered the world.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n McCartney won an art prize at school and practiced photography with his brother, Mike (who later became a professional photographer). He graduated to a 35 mm SLR Pentax camera when the Beatles hit it big.<\/p>\n \u2018\u2018It was the most sophisticated hand-held camera of the era. It would be like having the latest iPhone today,\u2019\u2019 Darius Himes, Christie\u2019s international head of photography, said, adding: \u2018\u2018We were all quite surprised by Paul\u2019s sophisticated eye, and his awareness of trends in the visual arts. The yellow bikini shot is like a striking mix of Stephen Shore, William Eggleston and William Klein.\u201d<\/p>\n The Beatles traveled with a flock of cameramen and were not shy about gleaning tips. McCartney admitted some of his earliest shots in the exhibition are a little fuzzily focused. \u2018\u2018I console myself that one of my favorite photographers, Julia Margaret Cameron<\/a>, also liked soft focus,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n \u2018\u2018His photos get better as he practices,\u2019\u2019 Broadley noted. The exhibition, and its accompanying book, take visitors on a whirlwind trip through six cities beginning in Liverpool and London, and ending in Miami. The images from the British leg are exhibited in small \u2018\u2018austerity\u2019\u2019 walnut frames, to indicate Britain was still in throes of a postwar recession. The Fab Four might look nervous in these photos, but they had already reached stardom on their home turf, having bagged three No. 1 singles and met the Queen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After a brief stint performing at the Olympia in Paris, alongside Sylvie Vartan, they heard that \u201cI Want to Hold Your Hand\u201d was No. 1 on the American charts and sped to New York. The crowning moment in America was their live television debut on the \u201cThe Ed Sullivan Show\u201d on Feb. 9, 1964, singing five propulsive pop hits \u2014 an event watched by 73 million people.<\/p>\n In Miami, McCartney\u2019s photos burst into Kodachrome color and the newly minted celebrities seem to bloom in glamorous new surroundings: lounging poolside, sipping scotch and riding around in motorboats. By April, the Beatles\u2019 songs held the top five spots on the U.S. Billboard charts.<\/p>\n Musing on the images, he said, \u201cThere is an innocence to them,\u201d adding, \u201cI think it was a lot more fun than it was. We worked probably 360 days out of the year.\u201d It was an all too brief halcyon period. Two and a half years later, the Beatles stopped touring. The logistics, the screams, the armored cars, had become a nightmare.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Like most successful artists thriving past retirement age, McCartney has projectitis. He\u2019s working on a new album with the producer Andrew Watt<\/a> (\u201cHackney Diamonds\u201d), and just released the 50th anniversary remaster<\/a> of the Paul McCartney & Wings classic \u201cBand on the Run.\u201d \u201cHis live shows continue to be of such high voltage one half expects him to burst into flames,\u201d the Irish poet Paul Muldoon<\/a> wrote in McCartney\u2019s recent book, \u201cThe Lyrics: 1956 to the Present.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n His next project is organizing a gallery sale of some of his photographs. \u201cIt\u2019s a process I like,\u201d he said, describing the joy of curating. \u201cI\u2019ve done it a few times with Linda\u2019s work\u201d [a reference to his first wife, the photographer, Linda Eastman]. His current homes, shared with his wife Nancy Shevell<\/a>, are adorned with images by Linda and Mary, though, curiously, none of his own. But that may change. \u2018\u2018The sale,\u201d he said, \u201cwill probably encourage me to get some for myself.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Here are edited excerpts from our conversation, in which he reflected on popular images in the exhibition.<\/p>\n My favorite photos are of John and George. There\u2019s a huge sentimental aspect to them. No one else could have taken this pic. John was a great character. A very different kind of guy to the other boys I knew. We met at the village fete. He was playing with his band. He was a year and a half older than me [and] my first friend who wore glasses. He was always taking them off and polishing them. I found it fascinating. He\u2019d take them off in public, which rendered him half blind. Onstage, he just stood there and gazed out into the blackness. Maybe it helped him focus on playing.<\/p>\n We began by playing in really crummy little clubs and bars in Liverpool and Hamburg. In Germany, we slept in a little room, with a Union Jack flag for a blanket. Back in England, it started to get a little better. We played in ballrooms, got radio work and then TV work. It was like a staircase ascent for us. What nobody realized is, by this time [seven months after the Beatles\u2019 first No. 1 hit on the U.K. charts], we were really fully formed beasts. We\u2018d come from the postwar years into a Britain that was now experiencing joy for the first time in decades, and we ate it up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Our Pentax cameras were probably a gift. There was a lot of artistic black and white photography emerging at that time. We admired David Bailey<\/a> [who had a Pentax camera], Don McCullin<\/a>, a stunning war photographer, and Norman Parkinson<\/a>. When he took our picture, he\u2019d say \u2018give me big eyes\u2019 and we\u2019d all play along. I like to shoot through the mirror because things look good in a mirror. We all smoked. Smoking gave us a suave, grown-up feel. We were pretty young. I was just 21.<\/p>\nJohn Lennon. London, January, 1964<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
John, George and Ringo backstage in their dressing room. London, 1963.<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Self-portraits. Paris, 1964.<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Ringo Starr. Paris, 1964.<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n