Paul McCartney Photo Exhibit: A Beautiful Trip Back In Time
On February 9, 1964, my parents sat me in front of the television to watch Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr on Ed Sullivan. Sadly I have no memory of that magical moment, but 73 million other people did. Shortly after, I became a mega Beatles fan, and I haven’t looked back since. Last week at the Brooklyn Museum, I took a beautiful trip back in time by seeing Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes Of The Storm, Paul McCartney’s Photo Exhibit. It was the final weekend it would be there, and I didn’t want to miss out.
I “day tripped” it to the City, taking Amtrak to Penn Station, then hopped on the 2 train to Grand Army Plaza. There’s actually a Brooklyn Museum stop on the 2, but I wanted to walk around the neighborhood a bit. Getting off a stop early also gave me the chance to walk by the gorgeous Brooklyn Botanic Garden on my way.
If you’ve never been to the Brooklyn Museum, it’s a gorgeous facility. I met my long time friend, Brooklyn resident and fellow Beatles fan Ashok, out front. As soon as you walk toward the entrance, one of the first things you see is Deborah Kass‘ iconic “YO/OY” sculpture, the same one that adorns the entrance of the Weitzman National Museum Of American Jewish History on Independence Mall. Of course, I had to pose on the “YO” side, being from Philly but, in Brooklyn, the “OY” side likely gets more traffic.
There were several exhibits going on at the museum but, from the looks of us, the person who greeted us inside knew where we were headed. “Here for the Paul McCartney Exhibit?” “Ohhh yes!” Up we went to the 5th floor of the museum.
We walked in and were instantly transported on a beautiful trip back in time. While Ringo was long thought to be the band’s unofficial backstage photographer of events around the Beatles arrival in America in 1964, all four Beatles were given nice Pentax 35mm cameras sometime in 1963, and we see that Paul took an astonishing amount of photos. The exhibit goes back to January, 1964, when The Beatles played a dozen and a half shows at Paris’ Olympia Theater. During that time, Paul snapped away backstage, in their hotel rooms, and on the streets of Paris. The series below is one of my favorites of the exhibit. Harrison/Lennon in Paris:
I have to say my favorite photos of the Paris trip were the shots Paul took inside EMI’s Pathe Marconi Studios. It was there The Beatles recorded the German versions of “She Loves You” and “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” as well as “Cant Buy Me Love.” While there didn’t appear to be shots of The Beatles recording inside the studio, it was still really cool to see it from the inside.
Next, of course, were the photos from The Beatles’ first trip to America. I loved seeing this historic trip through the lens of Paul McCartney. You could feel the excitement browsing these photos, everything from the thousands of fans gathered on the streets of New York, to all the action going on inside their rooms at the Plaza Hotel. You see Brian Epstein, Cynthia Lennon, Ronnie Spector and Murray The K in many of the photos, hanging out and soaking in all of this excitement.
Paul also seemed to really enjoy photographing ordinary people he saw in his travels. One shot of a train man standing next to a big train engine, presumably taken on the band’s trip from New York to Washington, D.C., is a wonderful moment in time. Once in Miami, Paul got some color film for his Pentax, and the shots are stunning. There’s one of George Harrison, poolside in dark glasses, being handed a drink. You only see the bottom half of a bikini-clad woman serving it to him, but the look on his face was that of a young man fully enjoying the riches of success.
The exhibit wraps up with shots taken during The Beatles’ first U.S. Tour. There are cool shots in the airplane between gigs, and photos of the opening acts, Jackie De Shannon, The Exciters and Clarence “Frogman” Henry. I was happy to see Paul included a photo of Frogman in his exhibit!
There were also two video presentations going on, one involved the Ed Sullivan performance, with the boys performing a snippet of “I Want To Hold Your Hand” from the broadcast. The other was a collage of color photos from the Miami trip, and Paul’s lovely instrumental b-side, “222,” served as the soundtrack.
I cannot tell you how glad I was that I made the trip to see this exhibition. There was a smile on my face throughout, and it totally transported me back to a wonderful time. I can’t recommend Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes Of The Storm enough and, while its time in Brooklyn is over, four more cities will get to host this wonderful experience, Tokyo, Portland, Osaka and San Francisco. Get the dates here.
A Bootleg Inspired Paul McCartney's First Live Album
The Beatles always did things big, even as solo artists. Rather than release your standard one or two-album live set, Paul McCartney not only released his band’s entire setlist, it came as a monster 3-LP package. Here’s how a bootleg inspired Paul McCartney’s first live album, Wings Over America.
The Bootleg Business
By 1976, it was pretty easy to go to your favorite independent record store and buy a bootleg. Titles were popping up everywhere from any artist you could name, in varying degrees of sound quality. Having said that, in most cases the sound was pretty rotten. But it didn’t seem to matter to fans. The underground bootleg business was thriving, with pressing plants all around the world secretly pressing bootleg vinyl. Fans were scooping them up as fast as they were coming out. Live concert performances and even rare, unreleased studio outtakes were now being heard by fans.
Bootlegging Boldness
It took guts, and some ingenuity, to record live shows. Some of these bootleggers were really brazen when it came to smuggling in high end sound equipment. Legend has it that one guy came to a show in a wheelchair and was, of course, given preferred access right up front. What no one realized was that the wheelchair was completely wired for sound. It had stereo mics coming out of each arm, and recording equipment strapped underneath the seat. Many artists, obviously, were not too fond of bootlegs. In a classic clip, Neil Young was filmed shopping in a random record store and finding one of his own bootlegs. He was not happy. Some artists didn’t mind having their shows recorded, so long as the tapes were used for trading only. I can think of The Grateful Dead, Phish and George Clinton as examples of this policy.
The birth of Wings From The Wings
So how is it that a bootleg inspired Paul McCartney’s first live album? When Paul McCartney announced his U.S. Wings Over America Tour, fans like me were out of our minds with joy! Little did we know in advance what a tremendous live set Paul and Wings would perform. For the first time since he left The Beatles, Paul performed Beatles songs live, some for the very first time. Needless to say, bootleggers were drooling at the prospect of recording these historic shows and getting them out to the underground collectors’ market.
Paul and his band played their final night of sold out shows at the L.A. Forum on June 23, 1976. 18,000 fans saw Paul and his band run through a simply stellar setlist. There were also a smattering of tapers amidst the crowd, with one recordist in particular getting a really good audience recording of the entire show. The photos below are NOT the cassettes from where the bootleg was taken but, rather, from a recording made by legendary taper Mike Millard. It’s to show the number of expert tapers who were in the audience that night.
A photo of legendary taper Mike Millard’s recording of Wings’ L.A. forum Concert on June 23, 1976. Photo used by permission.
A copy of “Wings From The Wings”, plus a recording made at the same show. Photo used by permission.
It wasn’t long before that complete Wings Forum concert would be pressed on red, white and blue, and sometimes black, vinyl and released to the underground market as Wings From The Wings. It was a stellar set, had all the between song chatter intact, and it sold quite well by bootleg standards. I never picked one up back in the day, so I asked a few of my collector friends and associates to show me their copies!
Roy Fisher, of the Road Dogs, with his copy of “Wings From The Wings.”
Rick Glover, of “Fans On the Run,” was kind enough to show me his copy. This one was on standard black vinyl.
Collector Bob Koenig sent me a shot of his set.
Mike Constantine, frequent contributor to my old Breakfast With The Beatles radio show, with his copy of that classic Macca boot.
How A Bootleg Inspired Paul McCartney’s First Live Album
Right around the same time, Paul and his engineering team were preparing his first live album, going through the hours and hours of concert audio they’d recorded from the tour, and picking the best performances. Originally, Wings Over America was going to be a single album release. After the apparent success of that triple LP bootleg, it was decided to release the entire show as a 3-LP set. None of the between-song banter was used on the official release, and not all of Wings Over America was live. Paul and the band reconvened at Abbey Road Studios in the fall of 1976 to fix mainly some vocals. Wings Over America was released on December 10, 1976, just in time for the holidays, and hit #1 the week of January 22, 1977. It’s also part of MGK’s Thursday Top 10 Countdown from April 4, 1977, which you can see below.
