It was October 1963, She Loves You was at the top of the charts in the U.K., and the term Beatlemania was used for the first time in the British press. Someone at Pentax was thinking ahead: the company sponsored the four fabulous lads and gave them brand new SLR cameras to do with what they please. 

Over the next four months, the band would travel from Liverpool to London to Paris and then, for the first time, to the U.S. where they performed their new No. 1 hit I Want To Hold Your Hand on The Ed Sullivan Show in New York City and on the same program again the following week – this time broadcast from Miami.

Fast forward nearly 60 years, and Paul McCartney is archiving pictures taken by his late wife photographer Linda when he remembers, “Hey, you know, I took some pictures in the ’60s, I wonder if we still have them?” Unlike the rest of us, the 83-year-old musician was able to ask his personal archivist to track them down. Not long after, thousands of images – on contact sheets – from that timeframe in ’63-64 were discovered. And because they capture first-hand one of the most significant cultural moments in history, the National Portrait Gallery in London asked if they could take a look. 

The NPG’s subsequent exhibit, Paul McCartney Photographs 1963 – 64: Eyes of the Storm, highlighted 240 of those photos – candid pics of himself, John, George and Ringo, their friends, crew, parents, girlfriends, all having fun, meeting other musicians, looking bored, goofing around, visiting new cities. Through it all, McCartney ends up taking a good deal of photos of the press and fans taking photos of him – proving the camera was more than just a source of amusement but a protective shield as well.

Now the show has landed in Toronto at the Art Gallery of Ontario (along with a side installation of the Beatles moments in Canada) and for those in other parts of the country, there’s an curated online version where you can hear McCartney describe this Beatlemania art project in his own words.

A few of our faves:

With love from me to you

“I’ve always been interested in images and taking photos,” McCartney says in the audioguide for this exhibition, reminiscing about an early childhood vacation where he borrowed his parents’ box camera so he and his brother could take pictures of themselves in front of a hot dog stand in Wales. And, he says, these never-before-seen series of photos have a feel similar: “It’s wonderful, they take me right back to the period and my relationships during that period, the Beatles, my then-girlfriend Jane Asher and other people in my life at that time. It was a very warm surprise to go back so far in what were almost family snapshots of mine.”

It’s got a backbeat

McCartney says his reaction to looking at the photos for the first time was disbelief: “Wow, we did that, we’re just kids from Liverpool. There was every chance that we would have failed, but we didn’t. And here it is in these photographs, how great does John look, how handsome is George, and how funny is Ringo.”

I’ve just seen a face

McCartney is quick to say, “I’m not setting out to be seen as a master photographer, although I think they’re pretty good. I’m happy to be thought of as an occasional photographer who happened to be at the right place at the right time.” But his daughter, Mary, 56, – who became an acclaimed photographer like her mother – has her own take on the snapshots: “My dad’s exhibition has slightly blown my mind,” she says in the audioguide. “There’s so much of him in this. There’s a similarity between his photography style, my mom’s photography style and my photography style, so it’s making me quite emotional. I can see where my influence comes from, and I completely love taking photographs in the same way my dad and my mom did.” 

Baby, you can drive my car

McCartney is in the back of a car when he takes this powerful shot, which he says has so many components: “New York City, skyscrapers, people running, people trying to catch up with our car, us escaping, us trying to outrun them – it’s very typical of the kind of thing that happened to us during that period. You’d think it would be terrible, you’d think it would be claustrophobic, you think it would be painful, and you’d think that you would feel like an animal in a cage, but I didn’t – I can only speak for myself. This was something we wanted, so that when it happened, when there were crowds outside The Plaza Hotel and the mounted policemen were holding them back, this was like being in a very exciting film.”

Good day sunshine

From the eye of the storm to a sunshine state of mind, McCartney’s most fun and surprising photographs are from a playful day by the pool. “The colour pictures start happening when we get to Miami, and I like that aspect because it was like we were living in a black and white world on the rest of the tour – and suddenly we are in wonderland – Florida, the sun, the swimming pools. We knew we were going to a sunny resort for The Ed Sullivan Show but the sun and the surf and all of that was the attraction.”