That was the guitar with which Lennon recorded all the band's early hits, from Please Please Me to I Want To Hold Your Hand, as well as being the guitar with which he appeared on the historic Ed Sullivan show in 1964, the show that broke all American television ratings records. George Harrison doesn't know how he was able to afford it or if he ever paid for it in full, but the guitar became part of rock history.
In 1960, while the Beatles were doing their first stint in Hamburg, John Lennon bought a Rickenbacker 325, a guitar he had seen on a Jean Thielemans’ record. George Harrison / John Lennon (The Beatles) Two facts would make them the company at the forefront of the musical revolution of the 60s: one was that the Beatles became the most famous band in the universe with its two guitarists playing Rickenbacker models and another that its 12-string model would become, thanks to the magic of Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, the sound of all the great guitar pop bands, with a jangling sound that would give rise to its own genre: ‘Jangle Pop’. Soon after it was decided to change the name to Rickenbacher, which would end up as, simply, Rickenbacker. Little did they know that they had taken the first step towards the biggest revolution in popular music in the 20th century. In 1931, 90 years ago now, Adolph Rickenbacher and George Beauchamp founded Ro-Pat-In Corporation (which stood for ElectRo-Patent-Instruments) to sell electric Hawaiian guitars that Beauchamp designed.