Paul McCartney: Photographs 1963-64 review – watching the world change, almost overnight

National Portrait Gallery, London
Eyes of the Storm, which collects McCartney’s pictures taken as the Beatles’ fame went stratospheric, record a pivotal moment in pop culture

First they were ours, for a brief and precious moment. Then, suddenly, they belonged to the world. Eyes of the Storm, the exhibition of Paul McCartney’s photographs at London’s newly reopened National Portrait Gallery, depicts with great clarity and special intimacy the handful of weeks in which the Beatles were transformed from a local celebration into a global phenomenon. Whatever their merits as art, McCartney’s hitherto unseen photos, taken between December 1963 and February 1964, record a pivotal moment in popular culture.

The sequence of 250 backstage and off-duty images begins at the Liverpool Empire, a triumphant return home for the group during a UK tour reaching its climax at Finsbury Park Astoria in north London, where their 16-night Christmas variety show also features the actor Dora Bryan, recently in the charts with All I Want for Christmas Is a Beatle. Then, early in the new year, come 18 sold-out days and nights at the venerable Olympia music hall in Paris, playing two and sometimes three shows a day to a new generation of yé-yé fans at the top of a bill including acrobats and comedians.