More historic photos from the early years of The Quarrymen & Beatles have been made available. In some instances the quality of the original photos is higher, and there’s been colorization of some black & white photos. Let’s see if that’s a good thing.
The very start of the group that became The Beatles was the day Paul McCartney auditioned for John Lennon’s group, The Quarrymen. That was on July 6th, 1957. The above black & white photo captures that day as The Quarrymen were performing at a Liverpool event. Also above is a recently colorized version of that photo. In this case (even though the colorization is flawed in places), the colors seem to make the photo clearer as the teenagers appear more as individuals, rather than blending into the monochrome of the first photo. (All photos enlarge with a click.)
This is the first public performance of Lennon and McCartney with The Quarrymen, October 18th, 1957. I haven’t seen a colorized version of this one, probably because it’s not especially clear.
At the urging of Paul McCartney, 15-year-old George Harrison was added to The Quarrymen as the lead guitarist in 1958. Paul was 16 and John 17. This is an actual color photo taken by Paul’s 14-year-old brother Mike at a wedding reception March 8th, 1958. It’s thought to be the first color photo of the future Beatles, as well as George’s first gig with the others.
The above black & white photo has been readily seen for decades, and now it has been colorized. This photo is from Hamburg, Germany in 1960, two years before Ringo Starr joined the band that had become The Beatles. Here the drummer is Pete Best, and the bass player (far right) is Stuart Sutcliffe. I found a couple colorized versions of this photo, and except for the too-white drum sticks, this one is quite good. It may not give the gritty old-fashioned period look of the black & white photo, but it better represents how the guys looked in real life.
Here are some more photos from Germany in 1960 of John, Paul and George.
You can decide which versions you prefer.
Above is one more photo comparison of The Beatles in 1960, at a Hamburg club.
In 1962, Ringo joined The Beatles. Here they are together in the studio for the first time, recording “Love Me Do” on September 4th, 1962.
And here’s their first photo shoot shortly after that.
The debate about colorization could even be extended to the first Beatles movie.
Here’s a famous shot from The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night. The black & white film was very popular with critics and the public. No one wants to colorize the classic Film-Noir movies of the 1940s & 50s, but would a lighthearted musical comedy really be ruined if it could be made into a quality color version?
That might be a step too far, but if old black & white photos can be carefully and tastefully turned into color (the process is still improving), wouldn’t it make them more historically accurate? After all, despite what old photos show, the world was never black & white.
Bonus: Here are a couple of extra comparisons from the Hamburg photos, and a colorized photo from a 1965 TV appearance.
And finally, here’s an extra photo of 17-year-old George from Hamburg in 1960. Didn’t find one that was colorized, but wanted to include it anyway.
Great to see the fab 4 in their early days in full color. Thank you for sharing !!!