Yesterday: The Beatles Once Upon A Time documents the Beatles and the city of their birth during the making of their first film, A Hard Day's Night , in 1964. It captures the rhythm and texture of the tough English port city where the smell of cigarettes and seawater mingled and the strains of pop music were transformed by an early 1960s music scene that gave birth to the Mersey Beat and the greatest band of all time.
Before they achieved world fame, the Beatles perfected their craft in another port of call, the northern German city of Hamburg. There they met Astrid Kirchherr, a budding photographer who became close friends with the band and later was engaged to the Beatles' original bass player, Stuart Sutcliffe. Some four years later by which time the Beatles had conquered the world Kirchherr, with Max Scheler, visited the band and took the photographs that appear in this book. Kirchherr and Scheler focused on the Beatles in private and public moments, during the filming, and also on the city itself, on the streets, the music scene, the people, evoking for us today the gritty humor and passion of 1960s Liverpudlians. This book offers a moving testament to the inspirational effect of the Beatles' success on their hometown as well as an important chapter of the Beatles' almost-mythic story.