John Lennon and George Harrison in 1964.Photo: Paul McCartney
Paul McCartneyis providing a personal glimpse of his early days withThe Beatles.
For the first time ever, the British singer-songwriter, 80, is releasing a collection of photographs he took during the early days of ‘Beatlemania’ in a London exhibition.
Paul McCartney Photographs: 1963-1964 Eyes of the Stormwill kick off on June 28 and run through Oct. 1 at the U.K.’s National Portrait Gallery.
“Looking at these photos now, decades after they were taken, I find there’s a sort of innocence about them,” thefather of fivesaid in a release about the exhibit, which captures the early days of the Fab Four from December 1963 and February 1964.
“Everything was new to us at this point. But I like to think I wouldn’t take them any differently today,” he added. “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.”
Paul McCartney
This, McCartney added, created “a picture I will never forget for the rest of my life.”
“The truth is that I have always been interested in photography, from the time I was very young, when our family owned a little box camera in the 1950s,” McCartney continued. “I used to love the whole process of loading a roll of Kodak film into our Brownie camera.”
The display will consider such things as the frenzy of ‘Beatlemania’ and more intimate moments between the bandmates from McCartney’s own personal perspective.
“While the exhibition’s narrative represents just four short months, McCartney’s photographs chronologically document the experiences of the band on their travels – from the grainy black and white portraits taken backstage in Liverpool, rehearsing musicians at a recording studio in Paris, wintry Manhattan skylines, to the gleaming colour shots of Miami Beach in the sunshine,” added the exhibition release.
George Harrison.Paul McCartney
After the seven-time Grammy-winning group disbanded in 1970, McCartney then ventured on to a successful solo career.
On March 21, the “Hey Jude” singer answered a fan question about the biggest risk he’d taken in his decades-long career.
“The main question I had was whether to keep goingafter The Beatles,” he wrote in a website post, “because it was a hard act — some might say, an impossible act — to follow.”
“The ingredients in the Beatles were so unique,” he added. “You had John right there, who could have made any group brilliant. Then you had George’s talent, and Ringo’s, and then me.”
McCartney confessed that once the iconic band split he didn’t know what to do with himself and that “trying something new was really risky.”
John Lennon.Paul McCartney
He also recalled feeling like he was starting all over and “earning my fame again.” He added that he’s typically not one to take risks and came to a crossroads after his final days with The Beatles.
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McCartney also sought to finally draw a line under the question of precisely who it was that forced the band to split.
“I am not the person who instigated the split. Oh no, no, no. John walked into a room one day and said, ‘I am leaving the Beatles.’ Is that instigating the split, or not?” he said of the late artist.
In fact, McCartney said that when it first happened, he wanted the band to go on — since after eight years together, they were still creating “pretty good stuff.”
“This was my band, this was my job, this was my life, so I wanted it to continue,” said McCartney.
source: people.com
