Who first used feedback on a recording?

Who was the first to use feedback, a sound that became a staple of rock music, on a recorded song? The thumbnail picture might have given it away, but it wasn't Pete Townshend or Jimi Hendrix. I guess it must have been someone we've never heard of, with a tiny bit of inadvertent feedback that got left in. But, in terms of deliberate use of feedback, it was John Lennon. At least according to John Lennon:

“That’s me completely,” John said in a 1980 interview speaking about the intro to ‘I Feel Fine’.

“..the guitar lick with the first feedback anywhere. I defy anybody to find a record… unless it is some old blues record from 1922… that uses feedback that way. So I claim it for the Beatles. Before Hendrix, before The Who, before anybody. The first feedback on record.”

I assumed it would have been John's faithful Rickenbacker* guitar that produced the feedback drone at the start of I Feel Fine but interestingly, it was done with a semi-acoustic guitar. You could listen here while you read on...

As the account in Wikipedia has it:

"I Feel Fine" starts with a single, percussive feedback note produced by McCartney plucking the A string on his bass, and Lennon's guitar, which was leaning against McCartney's bass amp, picking up feedback. This was the first use of feedback on a rock record. According to McCartney, "John had a semi-acoustic Gibson guitar. It had a pickup on it so it could be amplified ... We were just about to walk away to listen to a take when John leaned his guitar against the amp. I can still see him doing it … it went, 'Nnnnnnwahhhhh!' And we went, 'What's that? Voodoo!' 'No, it's feedback.' 'Wow, it's a great sound!' George Martin was there so we said, 'Can we have that on the record?' 'Well, I suppose we could, we could edit it on the front.**' It was a found object, an accident caused by leaning the guitar against the amp." Although it sounded very much like an electric guitar, Lennon actually played the riff on an acoustic-electric guitar (a Gibson model J-160E), employing the guitar's onboard pickup.

Later, Lennon was very proud of this sonic experimentation, making the remarks above in one of his last interviews. Here is Lennon with his trusty J160e and his muckers (hmm bit of an odd choice of phrase that when one of them's Macca):

That guitar is a very familiar sight for those of us of an age. Indeed, according to PMT online, a site selling music kit, the J160e is the only guitar that featured on every Beatles album.

The same reference has the story about John and George buying their original J160e's at Rushworth and Dreaper, the well known music store known locally as Rushworths, which rather sadly closed in 2002. The business started as organ builders, became a musical instruments supplier and, by the 1960s, was also one of the major record shops in the city. I used to buy my records there, well until Virgin opened and sold them cheaper, which probably contributed to the start of Rushworths decline. This is the rather grand building as it now looks:

By 1962 Lennon had set his sights on his first quality American guitar. The Beatles, up and coming but still scraping a living playing locally, had been signed up by the manager of another local music store, Brian Epstein. Which was just as well as Epstein co-signed the HP agreements through which Lennon and Harrison bought their guitars, or they'd just have had to save up***. Here they are collecting the guitars in Rushworths:

I find it fascinating that photos like these were taken and survived. Did Epstein even then have an eye on publicity? Or was it a relatively unusual purchase that Rushworth's wanted to publicise?

Lennon had two J160e guitars. Also just as well as the first one got nicked after a gig in late 1963. A Californian man bought it for $275 in the late 60s but was unaware of its provenance until many decades later he stumbled on a photo of Harrison with his guitar, which had similar markings to Lennon's. An expert was able to match up the serial number and wood grain markings to Lennon and the guitar was sold for $2.4M at auction in 2015. So as I Feel Fine was recorded in a single day on 18 October 1964 it was the second guitar that produced the famous feedback.

* producers are always looking for an ear catching start to songs. It rarely sounds right if the song starts straight off with the main riff or melody. I'm not sure why - it just doesn't, so few songs start that way. Lennon and McCartney were struggling with how to start She Loves You until Martin suggested starting with the chorus. But there's still an introductory drum roll from Ringo to signal "it's about to start". In the limit there's always "1-2-3-4..." - as in the start to the first song on the first Beatles album...

** some sources say it was the Rickenbacker. Ian McDonald's fabulous - and usually definitive - Revolution in the Head (Fourth Estate, 1994) says it was the Rickenbacker, the sound being obtained by striking the note with the volume switch turned down and then turning it up while pointing the pickups towards his amp, noting that Lennon was "inordinately proud of this in later years". However, while Lennon can be seen holding the Rickenbacker while miming the song in the youtube link above, I take that with a pinch of salt as Ringo is pedalling an exercise bike rather than pretending to play drums. Lennon used the J160e to play the main riff in live performances of the song (see link below). Lennon would have had both guitars with him in the studio so, while we can't be sure, I think we'll have to take McCartney's story as the most likely. Intruigingly, McDonald claims McCartney used feedback before Lennon on several tracks including She's A Woman though for the life of me I can't hear any. And why wouldn't Macca have said so in the quote above?

*** no credit cards in those days, kids. Far Out magazine has the story of Ringo getting his first set of Ludwig drums in April 1963, as the Beatles got ready for their summer tour. Epstein took Ringo to London's Drum City, Britain's first shop specialising in just drum kits and Starr picked a set with oyster black pearl finish. But Epstein didn't want to actually pay for the kit and attempted to hussle a free set in return for promoting the shop, on the back of the group's growing fame, Please Please Me having been in the top three for most of February and March. The owner, a jazz musician called Ivor Arbiter, wasn't having any of it, claiming he hadn't heard of the Beatles and "every band was going to be big in those days". They compromised on trading in Ringo's old Premier set and having the Ludwig brand name visible on the bass drum, which would allow the vendor to negotiate favourable terms. Epstein decided if Ludwig's name was going to be on the kit so was the Beatles and paid Arbiter £5 to paint the band name on the bass drum. There and then Arbiter sketched the soon to be famous logo with the enlarged B and dropped T. Oddly Arbiter has another claim to fame besides designing the Beatles logo: he introduced the first karoake machines to the Britain.

I spotted the story of the I Feel Fine feedback on the Abbey Road tribute facebook site, a cornucopia of Beatles stuff, see https://www.facebook.com/share/19tmD78rPj/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Feel_Fine

The story of Lennon's J160e and the photo of him and Harrison with their guitars in Rushworths is at https://www.pmtonline.co.uk/blog/2016/05/04/epiphone-brings-back-the-j160e-acoustic/

The story of Lennon's stolen guitar is at https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/lennon-gibson-auction-1.3310703

You can see Lennon playing the J160e in a live performance of I Feel Fine at the 1965 NME awards at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPXxMt1fXLs

Ringo's Ludwig kit and the Beatles logo story is at https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/who-designed-the-beatles-logo/