Paul McCartney recalls how The Beatles 'lifted' US after JFK assassination
Sir Paul McCartney has reflected on The Beatles’ first-ever trip to the US, which took place months after the assassination of president John F Kennedy, and said the band’s presence seemed to have “lifted” people.
In a discussion with American actor Stanley Tucci about his new photo exhibition, Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes Of The Storm, McCartney said people were still feeling the after-effects of Kennedy’s death when the band arrived in the US in February 1964.
He said: “That was one of the big things for us … we felt it like the whole world had felt it.
“We had really felt it, but then, it was a few months after that we went to America. We, without meaning to, lifted people.”
Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963 while he rode in a motorcade through Dallas, Texas.
After conducting some 25,000 interviews, the FBI concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald had shot the president and acted alone.
With his photographer daughter Mary McCartney in the crowd, at a talk given at the National Portrait Gallery, the singer also discussed what it was like to rediscover photos taken during the height of Beatlemania.
Speaking on his decision to document their trip, McCartney said: “The four of us got cameras and just started to enjoy taking pictures of what was going on around us.
Source: breakingnews.ie
