Peter Howell: Paul McCartney’s Beatlemania book ‘1964: Eyes of the Storm’ shares newly discovered photos taken the year the Fab Four became famous

As a photographer, Paul McCartney makes an excellent musician.

The many rough and random images in his new photo scrapbook, “1964: Eyes of the Storm,” attest to this.

I don’t mean to slag Sir Paul. On the contrary, I’m relieved that the billionaire musical genius behind “Yesterday,” “Eleanor Rigby” and scores of other classic pop tunes isn’t also a world-class cameraman. That would somehow feel unfair in the cosmic scheme of things. Instead, McCartney proves himself to be a charming photographer and storyteller.

The affectionate recollections prompted by what amount to travel snaps of very famous people are more fascinating than the images, which will also be featured in an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, with plans for a global tour, and the book includes an essay by Harvard professor and author Jill Lepore that is heavy with historical context.

There are 275 photos in “1964: Eyes of the Storm,” most of them backstage and in-transit portraits of fellow Beatles John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr (who has released his own books, including 2015’s “Photographs” from Genesis Publications). Most of these images have never been seen publicly. Recently rediscovered by McCartney in his voluminous archives, they fill him — and will fill fans, too — with fond memories.

Beneath two youthful pics of now departed bandmates Lennon and Harrison, McCartney writes, “I love and miss them both dearly.”

The pop star took most of these photos — including a few mirror “selfies” — during the frantic three months from December 1963 through February 1964 when Beatlemania was going global, crossing the Atlantic from the U.K. and Europe to North America. (The images are arranged city by city, with Liverpool, London, Paris, New York, Washington, D.C., and Miami each getting their own chapter.)

McCartney was just 21 at the time, planning for and making his first trip to America with his bandmates for their triumphant Feb. 9 appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” which reached an astounding 73 million TV viewers.

McCartney’s wide-eyed awe at the whirlwind surrounding the visit infuses the pictures. He snapped them, using only available light, with his newly acquired 35mm Pentax SLR camera, often while escaping pursuing fans. It’s fun to think that many of those Beatles fans, most of them now in their 70s or older, will be surprised to see themselves in these photos and realize the superstar they were fascinated with was also curious about them.

“Who is looking at who?” McCartney teases in the book’s introductory essay.

He clicked his shutter at his alternately amused and bored bandmates — he caught Harrison in a yawn — and it’s clear his friends didn’t feel they had to mug for the camera, as they often did in publicity photos. McCartney also caught fleeting glimpses of smiling family members and associates, watchful police, jostling journalists, screaming fans and even screeching seagulls. He was so shocked by the weaponry of a motorcycle cop in Miami who cruised past the band’s limo, he snapped a close-up of his guns and ammo: “Particularly in the wake of President Kennedy’s killing, I came to realize that this was something that was so American,” he writes.

There’s an endearing sense of wonder in these mostly black and white images as McCartney contemplates the world around him.

“Looking at these photos now, decades after they were taken, I find there’s a sort of innocence about them. Everything was new to us at this point. But I like to think I wouldn’t take them any differently today. Some of them are soft and I could say, ‘Well, I wish I’d taken a bit more time to focus them up.’ But we didn’t have that time.”

Their global treks in 1964 included Toronto. An outdoor crowd scene during the Beatles’ first two concerts in this city — they played two September shows at Maple Leaf Gardens — is included in a chapter titled “Coda” of photos McCartney took later in the year.

Another photo, taken about the same time, shows McCartney reading what may well be the Toronto Star — the paper has a full-page ad for the now-defunct retail giant Simpson’s.

The good news for Beatles fans is that all of the Fab Four are well represented here: McCartney would often hand his camera to band manager Brian Epstein, road manager Neil Aspinall or personal assistant Mal Evans.

They’d obligingly snap away as Paul joined John, George and Ringo in Beatle antics, such as clowning in Paris with clay sculpting moulds of their faces. They were deemed immortal even then. Often, however, they are pictured cooped up in hotels, doing press interviews and waiting for their next stage appearance.

“You might think that all this was terrible, that it was painful, and that we felt like animals in a cage,” McCartney writes. “I can only speak for myself, but I did not feel that way. This was something we had always wanted, so when it actually happened, when the mounted policemen held back the crowds … I felt like we were the stars at the centre of a very exciting film.”

A film much like “A Hard Day’s Night,” the 1964 Beatles comedy, directed by Richard Lester, that was inspired by the events seen in these photos. McCartney had switched to colour Kodachrome film by the time the Beatles reached Miami, the last stop on their U.S. mini-tour. Photos taken during a break while they relaxed around a private swimming pool are bright and calming counterpoints to the earlier insanity.

One shot shows Harrison in sunglasses, looking as cool as James Bond as he receives a drink served by a bikini-clad woman, whose face has been cut off by McCartney’s awkward framing.

“Living the life,” Paul wryly notes.

It’s the kind of joke any of us might write on a vacation snap, except it’s Paul freakin’ McCartney kidding about George freakin’ Harrison, hence the hoopla over the book and museum exhibition.

One thing is the same, though, between ordinary fans and extraordinary pop stars: the feeling that we looked so much better in our youth.

“On the most basic level, you think, ‘Boy, didn’t I look good?’” Paul writes. “But we all look beautiful when we’re young, and I’m proud to have been through that and to now have the privilege of revisiting so many of those moments.”

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