I Feel Fine marked an important turning point for The Beatles. It was a great tune, and one of their favorite songs to perform live: it opened every set post-1964, and they played it right up until their final concert at Candlestick Park in August of 1966.

I Feel Fine stayed at No. 1 for five weeks in the UK beginning December 10th, 1964. It reached the number one spot in the US the day after Christmas. The song is the archetype for later guitar-riff based singles like Day Tripper and Paperback Writer.

I Feel Fine is only 2:18 long, but it typifies the Beatles creative output at the end of 1964 with its crystal-clear recording, tight musical arrangement and jaunty, bossa-nova rhythmic pattern. Even the single’s B-side She’s A Woman reached number four on the charts: their highest charting B-side to that point.

By late 1964, The Beatles were scrambling to find a worthy song for release as the usual end-of-year single in time for Christmas. Lennon later recalled:

“Going into the studio one morning I said to Ringo, ‘I’ve written this song but it’s lousy,’ but we tried it, complete with riff, and it sounded like an A-side, so we decided to release it just like that.”

After their previous three American singles had failed to crack the top ten (I’ll Cry Instead, And I Love Her, Matchbox), I Feel Fine catapulted the Fabs back to the top of the US charts, cementing them in the number one spot for the next six years.

I Feel Fine was based on a guitar riff from a favorite song of Lennon’s, as George Harrison later explained. “The guitar riff was actually influenced by a record called ‘Watch Your Step’ by Bobby Parker,” he told an interviewer, “But all riffs in that tempo have a similar sound.”

October 18th, 1964 was a marathon recording session for The Beatles. They needed to complete a whole new batch of songs to fill an entire album and a single before the end of the year. John, Paul, George and Ringo met inside EMI Studio Two at Abbey Road from 2:30 to 11:30 pm. In that short span of time they managed to put the finishing touches on Eight Days A Week and record several complete songs, including Kansas City / Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!, Words of Love, Everybody’s Trying to be My Baby and Mr. Moonlight, all of which were hastily-done cover tunes.

This would be difficult to pull off today in spite of all the current technology.

The story of who came up with the intro for I Feel Fine has become part of Beatles folklore: John had left his brand-new Fender Stratocaster propped up against the amplifier. He’d forgotten to turn down the volume on the guitar and a God-awful squealing noise slowly arose from the amp.

That is how feedback was ‘discovered.’

Or not. As usual, there are several contradictory viewpoints on the subject. At the time the Beatles gave the impression that it was a pure accident which occurred during the recording of the song and was later kept on the record. While this makes for a good story, it was not simply not true.

In Beatles Anthology George claims, “We invented Jimi Hendrix. I mean, everybody played feedback on stage, and the Jimi Hendrix stuff was going on long before (him).  In fact, the punk stuff now is only what people were doing in the clubs.  So I claim for The Beatles – before Hendrix, before The Who, before anybody – the first feedback on any record.”

Whatever the circumstances leading up to the first intentionally recorded feedback are, the recording session notes from October 18th 1964 confirm that the intro had been carefully rehearsed.

John was extremely proud of his achievement. “The record had the first feedback anywhere,” Lennon claimed in his famous Playboy interview a few weeks before his death. “I defy anybody to find a record – unless it’s some old blues record in 1922 – that used feedback in that way.”

Any takers?