US Beatles show comes ‘home’ to Liverpool

Mar 29 2008 by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post

A SENSATIONAL photographic exhibition chronicling The Beatles taking the United States by storm is to get its British debut in Liverpool.

The Beatles Story, at the Albert Dock, has acquired the rights to show the exhibition of over 80 photographs which were previously shown at Washington’s Smithsonian Institute, where 3m fans paid to see them. They have never been displayed in this country before.

Taken by CBS TV and Life magazine photographer Bill Eppridge, they document the first few months of 1964 when the Fab Four landed in the States to perform amid hysterical scenes.

Among the highlights are pictures taken before their live TV debut on the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday, February 9, 1964, watched by an estimated 73m viewers, a record audience for that time.

One features the recently deceased Neil Aspinall, labelled by some as the fifth Beatle. He is pictured centre stage between Paul McCartney and John Lennon during camera rehearsals as a stand-in for George Harrison.

The lead guitarist had been confined to bed at the band’s fan-besieged Plaza Hotel in New York after developing tonsillitis and a fever of 102.

Another shows legendary TV presenter Sullivan sporting a manic grin, and with a mop-top wig on his head, as he stakes his own claim to be George’s replacement. The tour is widely acknowledged by modern historians as a cultural turning point, especially in the States, a genuine phenomenon when music, art and fashion would never be the same again.

Lennon once compared it to The Beatles being in the eye of a hurricane continually trying to stay in the calm, while all around them was madness and frenzy.

“I wasn't much older than The Beatles when given this assignment,” explained Eppridge, who also covered assignments from the Vietnam War to the Woodstock Festival .

“We were all just kids caught up in a socio-happening that was beyond our control. I shot photographs, they shot quips, and history shot us all into the record books.”

Beatles Story managing director Jerry Goldman said: “The images in this award-winning exhibition represent the very best of 60s photo-journalism, and show The Beatles at a pivotal moment in their career. We’re hugely excited, of course, that we’ve secured this exhibition exclusively for the band’s home city.”

The Beatles: Backstage and Behind The Scenes officially opens to the public from 9am on Friday, April 4, and continues until Friday, August 15. Admission is included in the price of general admission which is £12.50 for adults, £8.50 concessions, and £6.50 for children aged 5 to 16.

mikechapple