Seeing and being seen: candid snaps of superstardom at Gagosian

Elizabeth Maisey

Paul McCartney, Self-portrait in my room at the Asher family home, Wimpole Street, London, December 1963 © Paul McCartney, Courtesy Gagosian

Newly uncovered photographs taken by Paul McCartney capture the imminent rise to overwhelming fame, and the fleeting months before The Beatles’ first career-making visit to America. With this in late 1963 came the time of Beatlemania – one of those first examples of superstardom, the fandom which evokes even now a kind of frenzied nostalgia. This collection displays the youth and energy of the pre-Beatlemania era through not through the fans but through the young band members over three winter months in London and Paris.

The photos capture a perspective of fame different to what audiences might be used to. They are also incredibly candid. McCartney’s camera picks up backstage rooms at now lost cinemas, glistening snow on Parisian streets, the cameras of reporters, grinning faces, strange hat choices, and even the moments before his plane takes off to New York. Each slick black and white frame is treated with equal gravitas, and each contributes equally to the notoriety these four men would experience less than six months later. A hazy shot of McCartney in his mirror taken in the same room where he composed ‘Yesterday’ is a good single example of the great shift they were about to undergo. The pandemonium already pictured was about to intensify, which is marked most clearly by McCartney’s photographic adventures abruptly ceasing. 

The photographs also show a bygone era of changing social habits and consideration of spaces perhaps similar to those of his contemporary New York photographer Stephen Shore, whose photographs of his own city in the Sixties convey a conversational experience and freedom that is possibly less likely to fly in a more self-conscious world. The change from the tight squeeze of the backrooms of the Lewisham Odeon (since demolished), the Finsbury Park Astoria (closed in 1982, now a church), and the London Palladium (still going strong!) and the more present enjoyment of music along with what Shore describes as a move towards ‘not experiencing each other’ and the obvious loss of such places to a lack of funding and accessibility is sombre.

Paul McCartney, John on the Champs-Élysées, Paris, 15 January 1964 © Paul McCartney, Courtesy Gagosian

The John Lennon in these photos had less than twenty years to live, the band itself just six due to the overwhelming screams of their fans putting a stop to touring. And yet they emanate a very giddy human joy - how nice to have them uncovered.