I Feel Fine - Remastered 2015

The first note of this song marked the first time feedback was used on a major release. It was created when John Lennon leaned his electric guitar against an amplifier and Paul McCartney played a note on his bass, creating a strangely appealing feedback loop. The band thought it sounded great, but in this pre-Hendrix era, feedback was considered a technical malfunction and not an artistic enhancement. Fortunately, their producer George Martin was always open to new ideas and agreed to insert it at the beginning of the song. "He'd let us experiment like nutty professors," McCartney said of Martin.

An early Beatles track, "I Feel Fine" lyrically is a simple love song about a guy who is crazy about his girl. It's not Shakespeare, but it's effective: She's so glad, she's telling all the world That her baby buys her things, you know He buys her diamond rings, you know

John Lennon wrote the majority of this song, which borrows from the "Watch Your Step" by the American blues musician Bobby Parker. In 2008, Parker told the Forgotten Hits newsletter: "I've been in litigation for close to 55 years about some of this material that was stolen from me. They had 'Watch Your Step' on John Lennon's Jukebox and then that went out all over the country on PBS Television and people heard about it. John Lennon said how he had 'borrowed' that guitar part for HIS record, and pretty soon everybody knew about 'Watch Your Step.' I go over to England now and that's all they wanna hear, they don't even care about the new stuff I'm doin'. I'm out there playin' with Buddy Guy and Robert Gray, and they just wanna hear 'Watch Your Step' from John Lennon's Jukebox!"