Did Jimi Hendrix really inspire Paul McCartney to buy his "favourite guitar"?

9 September 2025, 12:33

Paul McCartney's best known instrument was his Höfner 500/1 violin bass, but he claims Jimi Hendrix inspired him to buy another instrument.

Both in The Beatles and beyond, Paul McCartney is widely recognised as one of the finest songwriters in the history of pop.

He's also not bad at holding a tune, can actually play the drums pretty well (that's him on 'Back in the USSR'), and is one of the all-time great bass players.

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He was renowned for playing the unconventional Höfner 500/1 violin bass, the instrument that went missing at the end of the 1960s before being recently recovered in mysterious circumstances, but he's also known to strum a six-string or two, especially in the studio or while writing.

And one of his most prized guitars is an Epiphone Casino.

As for why he opted for the thinline hollow body electric, Sir Paul has claimed that it was the influence of another musical great.

"I have an Epiphone Casino, which is one of my favourites," McCartney told GQ just a few years ago.

"It's not the best guitar, but I bought it in the 1960s. I went into a shop on Charing Cross Road and asked the guys if they had a guitar that would feed back, because I was very much into Jimi Hendrix and that kind of thing.

"I loved that kind of stuff and so I wanted a guitar that was going to give me feedback, as none of the others could. So they showed me the Casino. Because it's got a hollow body, it feeds back easier.

"I had a lot of fun with that. That’s the guitar I played the 'Taxman' solo on and it’s also the guitar I played the riff on 'Paperback Writer' with. It's still probably my favourite guitar."

The Beatles - Paperback Writer

While he actually mainly played a Fender Stratocaster, Hendrix was a master of feedback. His squalling rendition of 'The Star Spangled Banner' at Woodstock reclaimed the US national anthem as the sound of revolution.

"All I did was play it," Hendrix said. "I'm American, so I played it.. it’s not unorthodox. I thought it was beautiful."

Of course, Hendrix didn't actually invent the idea of creative feedback in 1969.

It had been rumbling in the underground for years, and there's a fair argument that it was The Beatles themselves that dragged the effect into the mainstream with 'I Feel fine' in late 1964.

The Beatles - I Feel Fine

That song opened with a happy accident that was eagerly grabbed by the creative force that was the Lennon-McCartney-Martin partnership.

"John had a semi-acoustic Gibson guitar," McCartney is quoted as saying in Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now.

"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."

But Hendrix took it to the next level. Macca was a fan of Jimi from his earliest days, having frequently spoken about seeing the guitar hero's first London show, which took place on November 25, 1966.

"It was in a club late at night called The Bag O'Nails, actually where I met Linda, and you just go in there and it was empty," McCartney told Howard Stern of that fateful day.

"I just heard this clanking clicking on this little stage in the corner - and I heard a sort of CLAKRKL - of this loud jack plug being plugged in... I just turned away and talked to who I was talking to and then it was Jimi and Noel [Redding] and Mitch [Mitchell].

"It was the Jimi Hendrix Experience in the corner. No-one had heard of them, and he did his whole act for virtually no-one in the club... and I'm just blown away."

Anyone paying attention will notice that McCartney saw the relatively unknown Hendrix in late November 1966, which was after he had played those licks on his shiny new Epiphone Casino on 'Taxman' and 'Paperback Writer'.

Jimi Hendrix - The Star Spangled Banner [ National Anthem ] ( Live at Woodstock 1969 )

In fact, elsewhere its been confirmed that McCartney bought the Casino in 1964, when Jimi was a sideman in Little Richard's band The Upsetters.

To be fair to Macca, he said it was "Jimi Hendrix and that kind of thing" that got him into feedback, and it was another bluesy guitar icon who may have been most directly responsibly for him buying that Epiphone.

"I showed Paul my hollowbody guitar that I’d bought when I was in the army in Japan in 1955," John Mayall is quoted as saying in Beatles Gear.

"When people get together and listen to records, they talk about all kinds of things related to the music, so obviously we must have touched upon the instruments and it struck home. He got a hollowbody after to get that tone."

But whether it was John Mayall or Jimi Hendrix who gave him the nudge to get that particular instrument, Paul McCartney certainly did his own bit to make a bit of musical history with it.