The Beatles hit Harvard, 1964

The Harvard Crimson looks back at how Beatlemania struck campus back in 1964. 
 “Like everything in pop culture, [the Beatles] were disdained by [kids] who were trying to get away from pop culture and be in some sort of elite…There was definitely a hangover of the ’50s,” Merry W. Maisel ’62, said. “The Beatles on the contrary were something very new, and daring, and different, and therefore we didn’t catch on.”

Maisel remembered thinking how different they were from other pop and rock music, and she recalled the optimism and openness to the world that they signified.
“The Beatles had different rhythms and they had different tunes, everything was different. A symbol of what was to come,” Maisel said.

By early spring 1966, the Beatles were everywhere, remembered Hendrik Hertzberg ‘65.

“‘Rubber Soul’ had been released a few weeks earlier,” Hertzberg wrote. “As I walked around the Square and the Yard, there was never a moment when I didn’t hear a song from that album, ‘Norwegian Wood’ or ‘Run For Your Life,’ wafting through an open window.”
 This vintage 1964 article from the Crimson is pretty fun, too.

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