Photos

No One Captured Beatlemania Like Paul McCartney

New book Eyes of the Storm features Macca's rare photographs of the Beatles on top of the world in 1963 and 1964

May 24, 2023

paul mccartney photos beatles 1964 — George Harrison, photographed by Paul McCartney in 1964 © 1964 Paul McCartney

We’ve seen lots of Beatlemania photos over the last six decades, from the minute the Fab Four landed at JFK airport in New York City to their pool party in Miami. But we’ve never seen Beatlemania from the inside — until now. The new book Eyes of the Storm, out June 14 (with an accompanying exhibit at London’s National Portrait Gallery, followed by Virginia’s Chrysler Museum of Art), features more than 250 photographs that Paul McCartney took back then, capturing the chaos from the band’s perspective. The rare images range from November 1963 to February 1964, just as the Beatles achieved global superstardom.

“Looking at these photos now, decades after they were taken, I find there’s a sort of innocence about them,” McCartney writes. “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 is humbling yet also astonishing — I’m looking forward to seeing them on the walls, 60 years on.”

Tell Me What You See

Image Credit: © 1964 Paul McCartney

A McCartney mirror selfie taken in London, 1963. A few months earlier, they were still playing Hamburg; by year’s end, they were major stars across the U.K.
Dizzy Miss Lizzy

Image Credit: © 1964 Paul McCartney

Ringo Starr in London in 1964, the year Beatlemania became an unprecedented worldwide phenomenon.
Can’t Buy Me Love

Image Credit: © 1964 Paul McCartney

Lennon in Paris, 1964. On one visit to the city that year, he and McCartney wrote three classic songs — “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “If I Fell,” and “I Should Have Known Better.”
Run For Your Life

Image Credit: © 1964 Paul McCartney

“The crowds chasing us in A Hard Day’s Night were based on moments like this,” McCartney writes of this New York shot. “Taken out of the back of our car on West Fifty-Eighth, crossing the Avenue of the Americas.”
Some Time in New York City

Image Credit: © 1964 Paul McCartney

Photographers capturing the band in Manhattan’s Central Park, 1964.
I’ll Follow the Sun

Image Credit: © 1964 Paul McCartney

Harrison in Miami Beach in February 1964. “That was just like paradise,” McCartney later recalled. “Because we had never been to anywhere where there was palm trees.”