Unseen Beatles Colour Pictures of First US Tour go on Sale

Rare and unpublished early colour photos of The Beatles on tour are to be sold at auction. They were taken during the Fab Four’s triumphant summer 1964 visit to the US, when most early photos of the band, and even films, were in black and white. Colour was more expensive and seen as too extravagant for a pop group from Liverpool – who many felt were just a passing fad.

The images were taken by Dr Robert ”Bob” Beck, an award-winning research physicist and inventor who died in 2002 and left them in a huge archive of photographs and slides in his Hollywood home. The lot will go on sale on March 22, 50 years to the day in 1963 when The Beatles released their first album, Please Please Me.