1964: Eyes of the Storm

What's in the Book: 275 Photos From the Eye of Beatlemania

Liveright (US) and Allen Lane (UK) published 1964: Eyes of the Storm on June 13, 2023. It is a 336-page hardback of 275 photographs Paul took on a 35mm camera between December 1963 and February 1964, arranged by city: Liverpool, London, Paris, New York, Washington, DC and Miami.

The photographs were part of a cache of nearly 1,000 images that Paul rediscovered in 2020, during lockdown, and most had never been published before. The book was released alongside the exhibition Paul McCartney Photographs 1963 to 64: Eyes of the Storm, which opened at the National Portrait Gallery in London on June 28, 2023, as part of the gallery's reopening, and ran until October 1, 2023.

The text comes from several contributors. Paul provides a foreword and personal reflections on the photos throughout. The historian Jill Lepore, a professor at Harvard and a staff writer at The New Yorker, wrote the introduction. The National Portrait Gallery's director Nicholas Cullinan and senior curator Rosie Broadley also contributed, reflecting the book's origins as an exhibition catalogue that grew into something bigger.

The book is best understood as the full version of that exhibition. It adds Paul's running commentary, and it gives each city its own chapter, so the sequence reads almost like a travel diary. It rewards slow reading: a city per sitting works better than flicking through all 275 images in one go.

Photos and Design: What the Beatles Saw

The core appeal is the point of view. Beatles photographers like Dezo Hoffmann, Robert Freeman and Harry Benson captured the band from the outside. Paul's photos turn the camera around: fans chasing cars, police holding back crowds, the view from hotel windows in New York, and quiet moments with John, George and Ringo away from the stage.

Most of the book is in black and white, which suits the grey British winter and the Paris hotel rooms. The Miami chapter switches to colour, and the change is immediate: swimming pools, sunlight and four young men finally off duty after the New York crush. The reproduction is sharp, and the layout often gives a single photograph a full page, which lets the details in the backgrounds come through.

Paul was not a professional photographer in 1964, and some images are casual snapshots rather than composed pictures. Some were taken through car windows on the move. That is part of the value: these are the frames a 21-year-old shot of the most extraordinary weeks of his life, and they carry a spontaneity that a hired photographer standing at a distance could not have captured.

Writing and Context

Paul's reflections are the highlight of the text. They are conversational and specific, recalling who was in the room and what they were laughing at. Jill Lepore's essay, titled 'Beatleland', sets the pictures in the wider history of 1963 and 1964, including the mood in the United States less than three months after the assassination of President Kennedy, which helps explain why the Beatles' arrival hit America as hard as it did.

This is not a detailed chronology of the tour, and the book does not attempt to date every frame to the hour. For the documented history of how the Beatles reached this point, the definitive account is Mark Lewisohn's Tune In, which ends on the last day of 1962, just before the events in these photographs begin; our review of Tune In explains why it is worth the effort. What 1964 offers instead is atmosphere and a first-person perspective, which no reference book can supply, and reading the two together gives you the build-up and then the explosion.

The tone is warm and often funny, and at times quietly moving, particularly in the images of John and George, who look as young and as startled by it all as Paul was. Seen now, the pictures of four friends crowded into cars and hotel rooms carry a weight that no one could have anticipated in 1964.

The Timeline Behind the Photos

The period covered is among the most important in Beatles history. By December 1963 the group was the biggest act in Britain, with 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' at number one and The Beatles' Christmas Show opening at the Finsbury Park Astoria on Christmas Eve. From mid-January 1964 they played a three-week residency at the Olympia in Paris, and it was there that they heard 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' had reached number one in America.

On February 7, 1964, they landed at New York's newly renamed Kennedy Airport. Two days later they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, watched by an estimated 73 million viewers. On February 11 they played their first American concert at the Washington Coliseum, then flew to Miami for a second Sullivan broadcast from the Deauville Hotel on February 16 and a few days of rest. Paul's camera was with him through all of it.

Knowing the timeline makes the book richer. With a chronology such as Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Chronicle open beside it, you can follow the mood of the photos as it shifts from the controlled chaos of London and Paris to the full-scale mania of New York, and then to something close to a holiday in Florida.

Value and Editions

At a US list price of $50, 1964: Eyes of the Storm is reasonably priced for a large-format photo book of this quality, and it has often been discounted since release. The UK Allen Lane edition carries the same photographs and text, so buy whichever is cheaper where you live.

It is sturdy and well bound. Keep the dust jacket in good condition if you care about resale, since books tied to a specific exhibition can become harder to find once the print run ends, but this is a book to read and handle rather than seal away.

It is also one of the easiest McCartney gifts to recommend, because it appeals to Beatles fans at every level and to anyone interested in photography or 1960s history. It features in our guide to gifts for McCartney fans for exactly that reason.

Who It's For

The book is most rewarding for fans who already know the standard histories of Beatlemania and want to see it from the inside. If you have ever wondered what the view from the back of the car looked like as fans chased it down the street, this is the answer.

It is also a strong choice for photography enthusiasts, because it is a rare example of a major artist documenting his own fame at its peak, with a young man's curiosity and no agenda. For the wider shelf of Beatles reading, see our roundup of the best Beatles books.

It also sits naturally next to Paul's other recent book, The Lyrics, which covers his life through 154 of his songs. Where The Lyrics ranges across seven decades, 1964 freezes a single moment and lets you look around inside it; our review of The Lyrics covers that book in detail.