They are the lost photographs that show four young men at the height of their dizzying fame: behind-the-scenes snapshots of The Beatles on their last American tour in 1966.
Taken by Bob Bonis, the band’s U.S. tour manager, these pictures are part of a collection that remained unseen for four decades until his son Alex opened his late father’s archive of memorabilia.
Now they are published in a new book for the first time.
The fresh-faced four from Liverpool appear relaxed as they tour the States. But they also seem lost in thought — for behind the unique photographs is a story of disappointment as fame began to take its toll.
Tomorrow never knows: Resting after their LA concert by the poolside at the home of artist David Wynne, Ringo Starr plays cowboy with a toy gun reported to be a gift from Elvis PresleyFrom the very beginning, America was seen as the end of the rainbow for The Beatles. That was where the real glory and the pot of gold would lie, they’d told themselves when, as unknown hopefuls, they’d played night after night in Hamburg and Liverpool’s Cavern Club.
But when they finally got to the U.S. in 1964 they felt as though they were prisoners — locked in by their own impossible fame.
From the moment they stepped off the BOAC plane in New York and were surprised to find a frenzied, screaming mob, to their last ever concert, in San Francisco in 1966, they would be besieged by uncontrollable hysteria.
More... Do you Love Me (new) Do? Rihanna tries out the iconic Beatles cropAt first, of course, touring America was exciting. With their singles claiming the top five positions on the U.S. charts and their film A Hard Day’s Night a box office smash, their manager Brian Epstein agreed to a 24-city tour of the U.S. and Canada over 32 days.
That meant travelling an average of 600 miles a day in their own private plane and playing 32 concerts of about 30 minutes each.
And looking at the photographs of that first tour in the book, there’s almost a sense of schoolboy euphoria as The Beatles, like any four lads on holiday, goof around the hotel swimming pool in Los Angeles.
Very quickly, however, the excitement began to pall. Unable to go out to a restaurant, into a bar or simply to walk unnoticed down a street, they only saw the real America from a distance, through hotel windows and from the insides of limousines.
Other, later, photographs reveal their isolation. Taken in hotel rooms, backstage or in rehearsal, The Beatles are either alone or together as a group, the four of them driven ever closer by the demands of a voracious, grasping adoration.
Enlarge Enlarge Looks like it's been a hard day's night for John Lennon in August 1966, while the mystery tours had stopped being magical for George HarrisonWherever they went there would be fans, while frequently so many people would congregate in their hotel suites to luxuriate in simply being in The Beatles’ presence that all four would escape into a bathroom to smoke or play poker.
For Lennon and McCartney the boredom could be broken by working on new songs, but the more temperamental George Harrison would very quickly begin to complain about the ‘madness’ of it all. Fame never really suited him.
Perhaps the placid Ringo Starr, who’d only been recruited by The Beatles when they were on the cusp of fame two years earlier, enjoyed it most. ‘I’ve always had crazes. I could be happy with a camera shop,’ he once told me, so it’s no surprise to see him in other pictures with a brand new camera photographing his colleagues.
A second tour of the U.S. took place in 1965. It was shorter and The Beatles by now were more cynical. Later, John Lennon would describe The Beatles on tour as being like four Caesars, surrounded by drugs, groupies and, sometimes, prostitutes.
Enlarge The long and winding road: A young Ringo Starr puts his feet up on the way to St Louis, MissouriBy now, playing the same few songs almost every night to fans who couldn’t hear them because of the screaming seemed pointless.
‘How often do you think The Beatles enjoyed a show?’ John Lennon would later say to me. ‘One show in 30 would give us any real satisfaction, and you’d go through all kinds of hell to get that. So, what was I? A performing flea.’
By the time of the last U.S. tour in 1966 The Beatles knew they couldn’t carry on. There was no fun in playing live any more and the sounds created for their Revolver album couldn’t be reproduced when piped through the primitive sound systems of the stadiums in which they performed.
When they returned to Britain, it was to the recording studios, the only place they would ever play together again as a band.
Though they struggled on for another three years, the end was inevitable. What these pictures capture is The Beatles’ calm at the centre of a hurricane of their own creation,
Photographs extracted from The Lost Beatles Photographs, by Larry Marion published by It! Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers at £19.99. Copyright 2011 by 2269 Productions, INC. / NotFadeAwayGallery.com
