Beatlemania through Paul McCartney’s eyes
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“Eyes of the Storm” photo show at Toronto’s AGO goes backstage with Fab Four
Peter Howell
Toronto Star
He loves them, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Paul McCartney’s upcoming photography exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario turns early Beatlemania into a family album, a collection of images more about connection than celebrity.
Shot while McCartney was on tour from late 1963 through the band’s first, world-changing visit to America in 1964, the hundreds of mostly black-and-white images chronicle the dawn of Beatlemania more vividly and expansively than in the 2023 book they were drawn from, “1964: Eyes of the Storm.”
Previewed by the Star during installation, the AGO show foregrounds the close personal and professional bonds the young bandmates were forging in the middle of global hysteria. Standing at the centre of a phenomenon, McCartney chose to capture the faces nearest to him.
Opening Feb. 18 for AGO members (with general admission beginning March 24), “Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm” is an affectionate collection of some 250 snaps that were discovered in McCartney’s archives. The photos were taken in a whirlwind of travel from the Beatles’ hometown, Liverpool, to London; Paris; New York; Washington, D.C.; and Miami.
There are also pictures from side trips that included concerts in Toronto. One image shows McCartney reading the Toronto Star on a chartered aircraft, presumably after the band’s two shows at Maple Leaf Gardens on Sept. 7, 1964 — sold-out afternoon and evening performances.
Some photos are blurred or misaligned but all are of significance to McCartney and undoubtedly to the many Beatles fans who will see them.
“We were moving at such speed that you just had to grab, grab, grab! It meant some of these shots were not as sharp as others,” McCartney wrote in his book. “But I kind of like that, I like the mixture. We’ve got some very sharp pictures and we’ve got some more romantic photos with that softness which really captures the time.”
