Photo shoot with David Bailey

On this day, photographer David Bailey conducted a studio photoshoot featuring John Lennon and Paul McCartney in London. The session produced a series of intimate, closely framed portraits of John and Paul, characterized by strong contrasts, plain backgrounds, and an emphasis on expression over styling.

Bailey was a leading figure of the emerging Swinging London scene. Known for his work with Vogue and for photographing cultural icons such as Mick Jagger, Jean Shrimpton, and Michael Caine, he helped redefine portrait photography in the 1960s with his bold, minimalist style.

According to Bailey, some tension arose between John and Paul during the shoot, leading him to pose John with his back partly turned toward Paul in certain frames.

Later in 1965, Bailey included one of the portraits from this session in “David Bailey’s Box of Pin-Ups,” a portfolio of 36 portraits of the fashionable mainly-male elite of the time — individuals, as the cover description noted, who “belong to Bailey’s own world of fashion, pop music, and the Ad Lib [nightclub].”

Bailey would photograph Paul McCartney again in 1967.

John was a f***er. Paul was always the nicest guy in the world. George, he always seemed full of angst. Ringo always seemed Mr Nice Guy. But John was a bit poky; I liked him.

I told John to close his eyes because I could feel this tension between him and Paul. I did them (together) afterwards; I got them looking different ways because there was such a tension. Although I’ve never seen it like those two guys – Oasis. I was doing their first Rolling Stone cover and I did it in 10 minutes because I thought they were going to kill each other.

David Bailey – Interview with GQ magazine, March 2014

David Bailey: Do you remember when I first photographed you, John?

John Lennon: Yep. With Paul.

David Bailey: Yeah. You came in like two yaybos.

John Lennon: Two what? Two what?

David Bailey: Yaybos.

John Lennon: What’s that?

David Bailey: It’s cockney. I don’t know really what it means. But you came in full of power and overpowered us all.

John Lennon: You were quite powerful yourself. […] We were nervous as shit.

David Bailey: Were you?

John Lennon: Yeah. […] We were nervous as shit when we first came, Paul and I.

David Bailey: Don’t say that 

John Lennon: Cos you were the great David Bailey. It was life or death whether you came out all right or not.

David Bailey: Life or death whether they came out.

John Lennon: We were really nervous. The photo sessions were nerve-wracking cos you’re always so phoney

David Bailey: I didn’t make you feel phoney, did I

Conversation between David Bailey and John Lennon, during a photo shoot in 1971 – Transcript from The Space Between Us — John Lennon talking to David Bailey about his 1965…

Going further

The Beatles Diary Volume 1: The Beatles Years

With greatly expanded text, this is the most revealing and frank personal 30-year chronicle of the group ever written. Insider Barry Miles covers the Beatles story from childhood to the break-up of the group.

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