Yesterday I went to the Lake County Discovery Museum to see the Linda McCartney’s Sixties exhibition.
I’m not sure how or why it was chosen to be presented here– the venue is a little historical society museum located in a forest preserve in Wauconda, which is about 40 miles northwest of downtown Chicago.
The exhibit consisted of about 50 photos, taken from her book of the same name. The photos featured The Beatles (of course) and Paul (of course), along with some wonderful shots of Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, and Aretha Franklin among others. There were also photos from her first professional shoot, of The Rolling Stones’ press junket to the States in 1966.
The photos that really stood out, though, were the ones of The Beatles and Paul.
Linda’s Beatles pictures captured the guys near the end of their time together, when (as she put it) “the weight of the world was on their shoulders.” We’ve heard the stories of all the fighting and nastiness between them during the recording of Get Back (posthumously released as Let it Be) and Abbey Road, but there are a few photos of Paul and John where she captured moments when you can clearly see their friendship in the middle of it all.
The photos of Paul were very touching. My issue with him is that he’s a perpetual mugger– when the camera’s on him, the charm goes on. She captured him when he wasn’t “on,” and we got to see the less showbizzy side of the guy. You can tell these pictures were taken by someone who really loved him– there’s a tenderness that comes through. The photo that appeared on the cover of the McCartney album, showing Paul with his daughter Mary inside his coat, is always a sweet one to see. (I can’t seem to locate this one on the web right now. Maybe later.)
The exhibit included two video presentations– one was a biography of Linda, the other was a photo history of the Grateful Dead that Paul assembled from Linda’s photos. The rest of the exhibit consisted of sixties memorabilia which we’ve all seen hundreds of times.
Definitely worth the trip to see the original work of someone who was actually there.