Stanley Tucci is to interview Paul McCartney to open the new Beatles exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery this month.
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From June 28-October 1 this year, the reopening of the gallery will see 250 photographs taken by the musical legend of his bandmates and surroundings on tour from 1963-64.
Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes Of The Storm will show what ‘Beatlemania’ looked like from the bassist and singer’s Pentax camera, and McCartney will be in conversation with Tucci for an in-person and live-streamed event on June 29 at 2pm BST.
“Looking at these photos now, decades after they were taken, I find there’s a sort of innocence about them,” Macca said of the exhibition. “Everything was new to us at this point. But I like to think I wouldn’t take them any differently today. They now bring back so many stories, a flood of special memories, which is one of the many reasons I love them all, and know that they will always fire my imagination.
“The fact that these photographs have been taken by the National Portrait Gallery for their reopening after a lengthy renovation is humbling yet also astonishing – I’m looking forward to seeing them on the walls, 60 years on, and reminiscing about those times with the wonderful Stanley Tucci.”
Tucci added: “I am honoured and thrilled to interview Paul McCartney about these photos and that time in his extraordinary life. A life that has changed all of ours for the better.”
Tickets for the livestream are priced £10 and available here, with concession prices at £5.
An accompanying photobook to the exhibition, titled 1964: Eyes Of The Storm, will be released on June 13 via Penguin Press.
Speaking in the book’s foreword, McCartney said of the period: “It felt like millions of eyes were suddenly upon us, creating a picture I will never forget for the rest of my life.”
Of his love of photography, he added: “The truth is that I’ve always been interested in photography, from the time I was very young, when our family owned a little box camera in the 1950s.
“I used to love the whole process of loading a roll of Kodak film into our Brownie camera.”
Elsewhere, the earliest known full recording of The Beatles playing a live show in the UK has been found almost exactly 60 years after it was made.