Anyone who rediscovers a personal relic or family treasure is instantly flooded with memories and emotions, which then trigger associations buried in the haze of time. This was exactly my experience when seeing these photos, all taken over an intense three-month period, culminating in February 1964. It was a wonderful sensation because they plunged me right back. Here was my own record of our first huge trip, a photographic journal of the Beatles in six cities, beginning in Liverpool and London, followed by Paris (where John and I had been ordinary hitchhikers just over two years before), and then what we regarded as the big time, our first visit as a group to America – New York, Washington DC and Miami – to the land where, at least in our minds, music’s future was being born.
The truth is that I have always been interested in photography, from the time I was very young, when our family owned a little box camera in the 1950s. I used to love the whole process of loading a roll of Kodak film into our Brownie camera. I would ask my brother, Mike, to take a picture of me outside a hotdog store – an American export to a country that had never previously known hotdogs. And from those early years, we would use the camera to take pictures of each other. This was not just a McCartney family hobby. Every family we knew would take a camera on holiday, as in “Here we are on holiday in Blackpool” or “Here I am with Auntie Dilys and Uncle Harry”, as we did when we went to Butlin’s holiday camp. As our group made its way to DC and then to Miami, my camera was attracted to this new American universe of common people. There’s a man with a shovel in front of the Pennsylvania freight car in Washington DC, standing raptly watching, or four aeroplane mechanics clad in white at Miami airport. These are my people. This is where I’m from. I grew up in a working-class family in Liverpool, so I could never detach myself from people like these. I wanted to be right in the middle of them. My relatives were exactly like these people. You’ll find them – the bus driver, the postman, the milkman – not only in my songs but in many of these photos.
Although we had no perspective at the time, we were, like the world, experiencing a sexual awakening. Our parents had fears of sexual diseases and all sorts of things like that, but by the middle of the 60s, we’d realised that we had a freedom that had never been available to their generation. Travel was one thing our parents had never done. They never had money, either; you have to appreciate how hard things were both during and after the war. You might be surprised to learn that I was the first person in my branch of the family who ever had a car. People just didn’t have them; they depended on public transport, which all of us were used to in Liverpool. Only later did I come to realise that we were in the forefront of these new changes, this abrupt shift in the youth that in hindsight seems to have crystallised in 1964. Rediscovering the photographs I took in my early 20s inevitably makes me reflect on much larger questions. I think it’s the same as it would be for anyone, that when you look at pictures of yourself when you were younger – in my case, a lot younger – there are a lot of emotions. On the most basic level, you think, “Boy, didn’t I look good?”, 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. I realise that many people get sad when they pore through old family albums, but I don’t feel that sense of loss, even though quite a few of the people who are portrayed here have died. It’s not so much a feeling of loss but a joy in the past. When I look back and think, I have to say, “Wow” – we did all that, and we were just kids from Liverpool. And here it is in the photographs. Boy, how great does John look? How handsome is George and how cool is Ringo, wearing that funny French hat? I’m also drawn to the pictures of the photographers, who were never our enemy. They bring back memories of what it was like being in New York for the first time, being taken down to Central Park, with all those hard-bitten cameramen shouting out, “Hey Beatle, hey Beatle, hey Beatle.” And we’d look at them and they’d take the picture, and then one more, always just one more. I’m reminded of so many things: of an England that was more my parents’ generation than my own; of the early concerts and those original fans; of “Beatlemania” and of a London that in 1963 spoke of promise and ambition and everything new to four young men from the north. And I’m reminded of an America that I know still exists, somewhere. I remember all those stories, some of them real, others imagined, from looking out of the train window, seeing American freight trains, American railway yards. I like American trains to this day. I like to think that I can hear “that lonesome whistle blow”.
“It was still slightly shocking for us to see a gun in real life.”
In 1968, Richard Bernstein created one of the most controversial pieces titled The Nude Beatles where he had superimposed the Beatles’ heads on nude male bodies in neon colors. A French judge ordered the prints to be confiscated and Apple Records (the Beatles’ label) sued the artist, but ultimately he prevailed. Bernstein, who later met John Lennon and discussed the painting, told him that the work would have made a great album cover. Very few of these prints exist today, but one was recently exhibited at MoMA in 2015 for the Making Music Modern exhibition.
With The Beatles: “It was taken quite quickly in the corridor of a hotel we were staying in where natural light came from the windows at the end of the corridor,” Paul McCartney remembered. “I think it took no more than half an hour to accomplish.”
Rubber Soul was the group’s first release not to feature their name on the cover, an uncommon tactic in 1965. The ‘stretched’ effect of the cover photo came about after photographer Bob Freeman had taken some pictures of the group wearing suede leather jackets at Lennon’s house. Freeman showed the photos by projecting them onto an album-sized piece of cardboard to simulate how they would appear on an album cover. The unusual Rubber Soulalbum cover came to be when the slide card fell slightly backwards, elongating the projected image of the photograph and stretching it. Excited by the effect, they shouted, “Ah! Can we have that? Can you do it like that?“, to which Freeman said he could. Paul McCartney conceived the album’s title after overhearing a musician’s description of Mick Jagger’s singing style as “plastic soul“. Lennon confirmed this in a 1970 interview with Rolling Stone, stating, “That was Paul’s title, meaning English soul. Just a pun.”
Jim McCartney and friends at an Aunty Jin & Uncle Harry party at 147 Dinahs Lane, Huyton, Liverpool.
Jim McCartney and the Shadows at Paul’s 21’s birthday party. Says Mike:
When we were young, one of the most successful groups in the country was Cliff Richard & the Shadows, so you can imagine the surprise and one-upmanship when Paul has his big 21st party at Aunty Jin’s house in Huyton, and… the SHADOWS turned up! (Our kid’s group must have been getting big.) In a rather dark room are Dad, Aunty Jin and the Shads. Although the Shadows were a more respectable, mohair suited, showbiz-group than heavy, grunting rock’n’roll, when they appeared at the 21st party we at least had the chance of passing Hank B Marvin and whispering ‘Hi, Hank’. This was the party where John famously belted Bob Wooler; but just before that, aled out of his head, John stood about a foot away from me and Gorman as we tried to perform a Scaffold comedy sketch, repeating loudly, over and over, ‘Thass not funny.’ (I blame Roger’s script.)
Mike and Jim McCartney looking at fan mail.
” A rather over the top shot of Mad Mick Mac and Rollei Magic practicing cable release photography. Again taken in the three-mirrored dressing table of my back bedroom, this time showing my first Phillishave electric razor, plus darkroom accessories of orange tungsten light and black & grey rotating Paterson developing tank.”
Note the photo of young Mike and his older brother on the dresser.
Photos by Mike McCartney
Photos and excerpts from The Macs courtesy of The Gilly.
JOHN LENNON OWNED PHOTOGRAPHS – HARRY BENSON. Four original 1960s studio prints of images taken by Harry Benson in January 1964, depicting The Beatles. All to measure approx 20 x 30cm. Provenance: originally given to Bernard Brown (Apple publishing manager) by John Lennon when John moved to New York. The current owner was a good friend of Bernard Brown and purchased them approximately 35 years ago. They have been in his private collection since then. Includes letter of provenance from the vendor along with copies of correspondence between the vendor and Bernard Brown.
I have a feeling that this photo was taken at the same time:
I was twenty-one and already shooting pictures for two years as a pro when Crawdaddy, the pioneering rock ’n’ roll magazine, precursor to Rolling Stone and Creem, opened a bureau in Los Angeles and installed an editor by the name of Patrick Snyder; nom de plume Scumpy. I cold-called to ask if I could show him my work. Scumpy did call days later asking, “What are you doing Thursday?” I waited a beat. “Not much,” I replied, faking nonchalance. Surprise! He asked me if I could meet him at an address in the hoity-toity West LA enclave of Bel-Air at 9AM next Thursday morning to accompany him on an interview with John Lennon. Well, okay.
That Liverpudlian lingo! Those round and wire-rimmed tinted glasses! I tried not to act starstruck. He was not much shorter than my six feet, but wearing colorfully embroidered cowboy boots, giving him an extra inch or so. He wore a black cashmere sportcoat over a knitted black turtleneck sweater and bell-bottom blues; jeans that is, à la Derek and the Dominos, with tiny flowers and butterflies appliquéd on the exaggerated wide cuffs.
I don’t think John’s playing air guitar.
Lennon pulled himself together quickly for the interview, considering the empties littered around the house; evidence of the previous night’s debauchery. Spliffs were lined up on a coffee table, next to a note reminding John to “[buy] jeans for Julian,” written in broad strokes with a Sharpie on the back of a catalog. The musicians, with whom he had apparently stayed up all night, had all taken off but one. I met Jesse Ed Davis on his way out that morning.
I may have been a young wise-ass, but I like to think I may have saved the day by suggesting that John could finish the interview with the help of a ventriloquist dummy lying to his right on an end table. It was just there, one of many tchotchkes Lou Adler left lying about the furnishings. Inspired by contemporaneous goings-on with the Nixon-Watergate scandal and the concept of deniability, I told John he could disavow any quotations that might give him second thoughts, later on, by blaming them on the dummy. He bought it. Throughout the rest of the interview, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, John kept the dummy on his lap, working its mouth up and down with a string in the back.
John was forcibly 86-ed for obnoxiously heckling the Smothers Brothers, during their comedy act, and assaulting a waitress. “I got drunk and shouted,” Lennon later remembered. “It was my first night on Brandy Alexanders — that’s brandy and milk, folks. I was with Harry Nilsson, who didn’t get as much coverage as me, the bum. He encouraged me. I usually have someone there who says ‘Okay, Lennon. Shut up.’”Lennon lost his trademark eyeglasses after punches were thrown curbside, on the way out, according to Tommy Smothers, whose wife ended up with the spectacles. Actress Pam Grier (decades later of “Jackie Brown” fame, the Tarantino adaptation of an Elmore Leonard story) was near Lennon when the commotion started. She was ejected too. Tommy and Dick Smothers, graciously defended Lennon, saying that they had egged him on by engaging with his antics while they were onstage. They also said the press blew the incident out of proportion.Lennon and Nilsson reportedly sent flowers to Tommy and Dick Smothers the next day. Lennon wrote an apology to Grier. Meanwhile, the waitress who claimed that Lennon assaulted her, whose name regrettably seems lost, dropped the charges. Tommy Smothers reported that Lennon, without his glasses, couldn’t tell that the figure he threw a punch at was a woman. Lennon, however, said, “There was some girl who claimed that I hit her, but I didn’t hit her at all, you know. She just wanted some money; and I had to pay her off because I thought it would harm my immigration. So I was drunk. When it’s Errol Flynn, the showbiz writers say, Those were the days when men were men. When I do it, I’m a bum. So it was a mistake, but hell, I’m human.”It wasn’t the first time, however, that Lennon raised hell at the Troubadour. A month earlier, Rolling Stone ran a similar story about him, on hand for a performance by singer “I Can’t Stand the Rain” Ann Peebles. Prancing on a tabletop up with a sanitary napkin stuck to his forehead. He may not, yet, have met Brandy Alexander, but something obviously addled his reason. “Do you know who I am?” he was reported to have asked another waitress who admonished him for not leaving a tip on his way out. “Yeah,” she shot back, “You’re some asshole with a Kotex on your head.”
Lennon’s lost eyeglasses turned up at another auction decades after that night at the Troubadour. My photographs of him wearing them were used as proof of provenance to close the sale. I didn’t get paid for that either.
I sure would like to hear that tape, though, because I’d get to hear my own, young self suggest to Lennon that he should let the dummy speak on his behalf. And I’d get to hear John Lennon talking to me.
Excerpts from Tom Zimberoff’s A Day With John Lennon, during the Lost Weekend, photos courtesy of Tom Zimberoff.
Dear Robert Freeman has passed away. He was one of our favourite photographers during the Beatles years who came up with some of our most iconic album covers. Besides being a great professional he was imaginative and a true original thinker. People often think that the cover shot for Meet The Beatles of our foreheads in half shadow was a carefully arranged studio shot. In fact it was taken quite quickly by Robert in the corridor of a hotel we were staying in where natural light came from the windows at the end of the corridor. I think it took no more than half an hour to accomplish.
Bob also took the Rubber Soul cover; his normal practice was to use a slide projector and project the photos he’d taken onto a piece of white cardboard which was exactly album sized, thus giving us an accurate idea of how the finished product would look. During his viewing session the card which had been propped up on a small table fell backwards giving the photograph a ‘stretched’ look. Instead of simply putting the card upright again we became excited at the idea of this new version of his photograph. He assured us that it was possible to print it this way and because the album was titled Rubber Soul we felt that the image fitted perfectly.
I will miss this wonderful man but will always cherish the fond memories I have of him.
” A rather over the top shot of Mad Mick Mac and Rollei Magic practicing cable release photography. Again taken in the three-mirrored dressing table of my back bedroom, this time showing my first Phillishave electric razor, plus darkroom accessories of orange tungsten light and black & grey rotating Paterson developing tank.”
John was forcibly 86-ed for obnoxiously heckling the Smothers Brothers, during their comedy act, and assaulting a waitress. “I got drunk and shouted,” Lennon later remembered. “It was my first night on Brandy Alexanders — that’s brandy and milk, folks. I was with Harry Nilsson, who didn’t get as much coverage as me, the bum. He encouraged me. I usually have someone there who says ‘Okay, Lennon. Shut up.’”Lennon lost his trademark eyeglasses after punches were thrown curbside, on the way out, according to Tommy Smothers, whose wife ended up with the spectacles. Actress Pam Grier (decades later of “Jackie Brown” fame, the Tarantino adaptation of an Elmore Leonard story) was near Lennon when the commotion started. She was ejected too. Tommy and Dick Smothers, graciously defended Lennon, saying that they had egged him on by engaging with his antics while they were onstage. They also said the press blew the incident out of proportion.Lennon and Nilsson reportedly sent flowers to Tommy and Dick Smothers the next day. Lennon wrote an apology to Grier. Meanwhile, the waitress who claimed that Lennon assaulted her, whose name regrettably seems lost, dropped the charges. Tommy Smothers reported that Lennon, without his glasses, couldn’t tell that the figure he threw a punch at was a woman. Lennon, however, said, “There was some girl who claimed that I hit her, but I didn’t hit her at all, you know. She just wanted some money; and I had to pay her off because I thought it would harm my immigration. So I was drunk. When it’s Errol Flynn, the showbiz writers say, Those were the days when men were men. When I do it, I’m a bum. So it was a mistake, but hell, I’m human.”It wasn’t the first time, however, that Lennon raised hell at the Troubadour. A month earlier, Rolling Stone ran a similar story about him, on hand for a performance by singer “I Can’t Stand the Rain” Ann Peebles. Prancing on a tabletop up with a sanitary napkin stuck to his forehead. He may not, yet, have met Brandy Alexander, but something obviously addled his reason. “Do you know who I am?” he was reported to have asked another waitress who admonished him for not leaving a tip on his way out. “Yeah,” she shot back, “You’re some asshole with a Kotex on your head.”
In Their Own Words 