Paul McCartney Photographe 1963

This exhibition of more than 250 photographs taken by the musician between 1963 and 1964 traces a pivotal period for the group, as its fame begins to extend beyond the borders of Liverpool and the United Kingdom, becoming a genuine global phenomenon.

« A l'époque on avait pas le droit à la paresse. Il fallait prendre la bonne photo, composer soi-même l'image dans son cadre sans se dire qu'au pire on pourrait toujours la rogner après-coup  ».

It was thanks to the rediscovery in 2020, in Paul McCartney's archives, of nearly a thousand photographs taken by the artist with a 35 mm camera, that this deeply personal testimony on this decisive period in the group's evolution is presented.

The artist captures the extraordinary journey of the Beatles, from city to city, from Europe to the United States: Liverpool and London at the end of 1963, Paris, then the United States in February 1964, where their performance on the programme « The Ed Sulivan Show  » was watched by some 73 million viewers.

At that precise moment, the Beatles became global stars and redefined the notion of celebrity in the modern age, as if they were the prototype of what fame would become in the decades that followed…

« America was unquestionably the jackpot: it was the cradle of much, if not all, of the music we loved  »

This exhibition of more than 250 photographs spans 700 m² of museum space and will allow visitors to discover this unique group.

These images reveal something of the intimacy of these four boys from Liverpool on tour, who are beginning to travel the world and discover the United States for the first time.

We are less than 20 years from the end of the Second World War, and this country is seen by Paul McCartney - and more broadly by many Europeans - as the nation that liberated Europe. It embodied a certain modernity at the time. It fascinated.