What was the first mainstream song to use recorded guitar feedback?
Guitar feedback can seem like the most painful sound in the world to some. Its unexpected presence at live shows will almost certainly evoke winces from audience members and complaints from band members, but while many consider the sound to be an annoyance, specific artists and genres have deliberately incorporated it into their art, from Jimi Hendrix to Hole.
Since the likes of Hendrix and Jefferson Airplane made intentional use of feedback cool in the 1960s, distorted guitar sounds have become a mainstay in alternative music. They permeate the fuzzy soundscapes of shoegaze and elevate the sludgy intensity of grunge, leaving budding alternative bands desperate to imitate Kevin Shields and Kurt Cobain’s screeching strums.
Long before the days of Loveless, though, the sound was given its mainstream debut by none other than The Beatles. It’s no surprise that the Fab Four were the band to first put feedback onto a commercial rock record – they also pioneered musical engineering feats such as audio double tracking and sampling. Early blues music had already experimented with feedback, but the Beatles brought it into the charts with ‘I Feel Fine’ in 1964.
It may be considered the first commercially recorded example of the technique, but the single is a far cry from the torrent of feedback used by many alternative artists today. ‘I Feel Fine’ is permeated by typically twangy guitars and lovey-dovey lyrics, but the opening moments feature a short section of coarse feedback from John Lennon’s guitar, which he claimed to be the first time feedback was used on record.
“That’s me completely,” the songwriter told Playboy in 1980, “Including 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.”
His songwriting partner once explained how the feedback made it into the track, which resulted from Lennon accidentally leaning his guitar on an amp. “John had a semi-acoustic Gibson guitar. It had a pick-up on it so it could be amplified,” Paul McCartney explained, “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… and it went, ‘Nnnnnnwahhhhh!’”
The band were stunned by the sound and immediately asked George Martin if they could include it on the record. “It was a found object,” McCartney concluded, “an accident caused by leaning the guitar against the amp.” Almost six decades on, that accidental sound has become an essential element of alternative music and the foundation for genres like shoegaze and noise music.
Revisit ‘I Feel Fine’ by the Beatles below.
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