Unseen photos taken by Paul McCartney show Beatlemania

By Sarah Mills

LONDON, (Reuters) – Personal and previously unseen photographs taken by musician Paul McCartney as ‘Beatlemania’ was soaring in the 1960s have gone on display at The National Portrait Gallery in London.         Images of McCartney and his former Beatles bandmates – John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison – as young men flying to America, relaxing by a pool in Miami and being chased by photographers in New York form part of “Paul McCartney Photographs 1963- 64: Eyes of the Storm.”        “They document this period in which they went from sort of Beatlemania in Britain through to global fame – through… their first ever visit to America,” exhibition curator Rosie Broadley said.        There are over 250 photographs from McCartney’s archive on display, which even his team hadn’t seen for decades.        One image, which Broadley said is a favourite of McCartney’s, show’s George Harrison in a pair of sunglasses relaxing with a drink and cigarette by a pool a few days after the Beatles had performed to millions of people on hit U.S. television programme “The Ed Sullivan Show”.       “I don’t know quite if what had just happened has actually sunk in, but this photograph just shows George really enjoying .. the good life,” Broadley said    Another shot taken in Washington shows a young girl looking in at McCartney through a car window.    “A lot of (the photographs are) very intimate and personal….which is why it’s called ‘The Eyes of the Storm,'” Broadley said.        “It’s the inside looking out. It just gives this other layer of personal experience.”         With photographs taken in London, Paris and across America, the exhibition is on until October 2023.

(Sarah Mills)

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