This spring, the art gallery Gagosian LA will exhibit 36 of Paul McCartney‘s recently rediscovered photos, including some that featured in the former Beatle’s Eyes of Every Storm book and many that have never been shown before.
The photos were taken between December 1963 and February 1964. And the exhibition, simply titled “Paul McCartney,” opens April 25 and runs through June 21.
One never-before-circulated shot (above) is an artistic view of Ringo Starr in a loose-fitting white shirt, drumming at Miami Beach’s Hotel Deauville ahead of the the Beatles’ second Ed Sullivan Show appearance. McCartney took the photo on Feb. 15, 1964.
Poolside at the Pollaks’, Miami, 15 February 1964
© Paul McCartney/Courtesy the artist and Gagosian
“The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein arranged for the band to play two live appearances on the popular Sunday television program, The Ed Sullivan Show: the first on Feb. 9 from the show’s New York-based studio, and the second a week later, on Feb. 16, from Miami,” Joshua Chuang, director specializing in photography at Gagosian, tells Rolling Stone.
“The second performance was broadcast from the Deauville Hotel, the beachside resort in Miami Beach where the Beatles also stayed. At this point, Beatlemania was officially gaining steam in America and cheering fans were a constant; the press nicknamed the hotel ‘Beatle Central,’ as fans milled about the grounds and wrote the band messages in the sand below their balconies.
“The Beatles rehearsed for their performance in the hotel’s ‘cool room’ near its outdoor pool, wearing hotel-issued toweling shirts,” Chuang continues. “McCartney took photographs of his bandmates as they practiced their six-song set. Lennon, ever-so-cool, strums his guitar while wearing sunglasses, while Starr is framed in a psychedelic fog — an inadvertent interaction of light and chemistry that resulted in a one-of-kind image.”
The exhibition includes other photos taken at the Deauville, as well as early selfies and images of Beatlemania. Prices for the photos, which are individually signed, will range from $12,000 to the high five figures. Proceeds from the sales of the photos will benefit recovery efforts for those affected by the recent southern California wildfires.
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An exclusive video from Gagosian shows McCartney reflecting on the photos and signing them, as well as sharing stories behind songs like “Yesterday” and the Beatles’ visit to the States.
“We didn’t really know how important Ed Sullivan was,” he says. “We hadn’t heard of him. … By the time we got to America, that was the coolest thing. But when we went on this show, we didn’t realize the significance. It’s just another TV show, we thought.”
Gagosian’s exhibition complements the “Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm” exhibit, currently showing at San Francisco’s de Young Museum.
Chuang says the photos show McCartney’s natural inclination toward visual art, citing the singer-songwriter’s collaboration with artists like Peter Blake and Jann Haworth on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Richard Hamilton on the cover of “The White Album.” He also notes that McCartney came up with the cover image for Abbey Road.
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“Of course Paul is very much associated with the medium of photography — I’m thinking of the well-known photographs of him taken by the likes of David Bailey, Harry Benson, and Richard Avedon, and the fact that his first wife Linda and daughter Mary were and are photographers,” Chuang says. “What isn’t as well known, however, is Paul’s own engagement with photography. There are a number of images from the mid-1960s of him with a camera, but his photos were never made public; he even forgot about them for a while! Their rediscovery is a major event, and working with Paul and his team to bring them into the world has been a privilege.”
In his opinion, Chuang believes the photos provide an “indispensable perspective” of the Beatles. “I can’t think of another time when a figure of such importance — not just musical but also cultural and historical — captured the very moment their impact was first being made with such compelling photographs,” he says.
