Paul McCartney
A FAB TIME
Photographer HARRY BENSON was nonplussed when he received a commission to cover THE BEATLES in 1964. All the same, travelling from London to Paris and New York during this breakthrough year, he struck up a rapport with the band – and PAUL McCARTNEY in particular – that endured through several decades. With a new collection of his images due for publication, Benson shows us McCartney at work and at play – backstage, in hotel rooms and on private jets. The secret of Benson’s success? “Quickness wasn’t everything,” he tells Mark Beaumont. “It was the only thing.”
LONDON, 1964 “Beatlemania was like the fans were joining in the act, ina way. They tried to outdo one another. ‘How much crazier can we behave at this station than the other station?’ Or, ‘The place we’re at tomorrow is going to be worse than the one we just left…’”
All photos: © HARRY BENSON
PARIS, JANUARY 18, 1964 “Another photographer was coming on to the tour andI wanted to leave witha good picture.
I said, ‘I want you to havea pillow fight.’ They all said no. John said, ‘It’ll make us look childish and immature.’ He was very adamant: ‘We’ve got to stop looking childish.’ They all agreed with him. So John went to his bedroom, leaving the other three in the room. Then he came up behind them and banged them on the head witha pillow… and then it took off!”
ALL PHOTOS © HARRY BENSON