Rare Beatles Photos Go Under The Hammer

Rare, early, colour photos of The Beatles on tour in the US are to be sold at auction exactly 50 years after the band's first album was released.

The previously unpublished pictures were taken during the Fab Four's triumphant summer 1964 visit when Beatlemania was taking America by storm.

Ernie Sutton, of the British Beatles Fan Club, said: "New photographs that emerge of The Beatles are always of interest to the fans, but with the majority of photographs from this tour in black and white, it is a delight to see colour photographs."

Colour photography was more expensive and seen as too extravagant for a new pop group who many felt were just a passing fad.

The collection of 65 slides contains stage shots, including George Harrison with his red Rickenbacker guitar, famously used on the A Hard Day's Night album, close-up portraits from a news conference in Las Vegas and pictures from a private party.

The photos are expected to fetch between £10,000 and £15,000.

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.