In late 1963, four mop-topped kids from Liverpool, England entered the eye of a storm.

The press called it Beatlemania, the frenzy of screaming crowds, fainting girls, and paparazzi that trailed the musicians like starving wolves from concert hall to hotel to airport and back again.

On their first world tour—a three-month, six-city pilgrimage from England to Paris to the United States—thousands, maybe millions, of photographs were taken of John, George, Paul, and Ringo. But only one camera, Paul McCartney’s Pentax, captured this pivotal moment in pop culture history from the inside out.

McCartney never printed the images he took. For almost 60 years, they sat forgotten in his personal archives. Then, while organizing photos for an exhibition of the work of his late photographer wife Linda in 2020, the cache was rediscovered, a time capsule of the innocence and excitement of the band’s first brush with global stardom.

McCartney compiled almost 300 of the portraits, street shots, and intimate behind-the-scenes images for Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-1964: Eyes of the Storm, which debuts at San Francisco’s de Young Museum on Saturday, March 1st.

Never intended to be seen by the public, McCartney’s photos are an unusually intimate and authentic look at the early days of The Beatles. He’s “really bringing us into their inner worlds,” says Sally Katz, assistant curator of photography at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the coordinating curator of the exhibition.

McCartney captures John sleeping in the backseat of a car and Ringo feeling sick; he snaps photos of the band practicing, setting up, and winding down after shows; he takes his own picture in a mirror decades before selfie was even a word.

But McCartney’s “not just looking inward at their experience, he’s looking out, too,” says Katz. He aims his lens at photojournalists and out the rear window of the car as fans chase behind them. He catches the blur of famous landmarks as they speed by on the way to their next engagement.

Paul McCartney is the first to admit that he’s not the best photographer of all time. The images from the tour are not trying to be “fine art.” Nevertheless, says Katz, the man has talent. He puts together interesting and off-kilter compositions. He plays with angles and reflections and the blur of movement. He takes inspiration from the cinematic styles of the day like French New Wave and cinéma vérité.

“He was really using and exploring the camera as an artistic tool, not just as a documentary tool,” she continues.

In Eyes of the Storm, the photos McCartney took between December 1963 and February 1964 are displayed chronologically, beginning in Liverpool and London, where family members, friends, managers, and roadies regularly appear by their sides backstage and in moments of respite. By February 1964, they’ve arrived in the U.S.(a first for all but George) for their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, one of the most memorable moments in TV history. A clip from the broadcast, along with various ephemera from the journey like hand-written lyrics and pages from McCartney’s journal, are mixed in among the photos.

At their last stop, Miami, the band finally has the chance to rest and play. To McCartney, it’s like they’ve woken up in a wonderland of sun and swimming pools and he switches from black-and-white to color film for the first time. As they waterski and fish and lay in the sun, “we get to see them as young boys messing around,” says Katz. “It humanizes them.”

Although the term Beatlemania had been coined in England a few months before the 1963-64 tour, those three months they spent on the road was foundational for a band that would become one of the most famous of all time. Just six months later, they were back in the U.S., kicking off their first North American tour from a familiar location, San Francisco’s Cow Palace.

“As part of pop culture, The Beatles captured a zeitgeist, a moment, a youth movement,” says Tom Campbell, director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. In Eyes of the Storm, we get the chance to see what the men behind it all were like when every camera but one had gone home.

// Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm will be on view at the de Young from March 1 to July 6, 2025; 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr. (Golden Gate Park), famsf.org.