There are all kinds of things that make a song heavy but it’s never just about high-gain electric guitar, tuning down and turning up. If it was then it would be easy. And heavy music doesn’t come easy.

Kirk Hammett knows this. Metallica has had their share of heavy tracks. The Thing That Should Not Be and Harvester Of Sorrow are front-to-back heavy. Sad But True perfects the art of heaviness in box-office stadium metal.

As an album, the impenetrably dense …And Justice For All has something to it that is undeniably heavy – this great wall of guitars, James Hetfield’s stentorian bark delivering über-bleak verse, while Lars Ulrich’s biscuit-tin snare hammers through a cold and hostile mix almost wholly absent of Jason Newsted’s bass guitar.

And then there are those moments; the bridge in The Four Horseman, ditto Creeping Death, the shock and awe as For Whom The Bell Tolls heaves itself into a groove. It says something that here the tempo is dialled back. Heaviness can prove elusive when the tempo is frantic. Aggression takes over.

So yes, Metallica have had their moments, but when Total Guitar caught up with Hammett in 2020, he said that he was still trying to write the perfect heavy song, to summon the very quintessence of heavy in a riff. And he had just spoken to a man who did just that way back in 1969.

Hammett was on the phone to pay tribute to the late Fleetwood Mac co-founder Peter Green, whose famous Les Paul Standard, Greeny, is now in his possession. Some months before Green died, Hammett visited him, Greeny in tow, to pay his dues to one of blues-rock’s founding fathers.

The visit is a story for another day but the conversation with Hammett moved to a Fleetwood Mac classic that he was scheduled to play with Billy Gibbons at the Peter Green Tribute Concert at the London Palladium – and it is a song that has possessed him ever since he first heard it.

When we sift Green’s discography for inspiration, we can hear what is being done, but how? That’s the question. Green’s writing would seesaw between light and darkness, between the briny calm of Albatross and the urgent fury of Oh Well, the invigorating electric slide on the Elmore James cover Shake Your Moneymaker, the crestfallen Man Of The World. Towards Green’s final days in Fleetwood Mac, the darkness was winning.

That’s when fame, among other things, was warping everyone’s perspective. LSD enters the picture, ultimately overwhelming Green, but not before he had written The Green Manalishi (With The Two Prong Crown) – the song that captured Hammett in its spell, and, he argues, showed metal what heaviness sounded like.

The Green Manalishi was written in 1969, supposedly inspired by a lysergic nightmare about an undead dog that kept barking, and the song came to Green in the immediate moments after waking up. It’s quite the story; there are shades of Son of Sam to it. Green later revealed the themes were more about the corrupting influence of money, the root of all evil.

The backstory only goes some way to explaining the darkness in Green’s arrangements, in his haunted poetry and a riff that teaches us many lessons, chief among them that heaviness is not contingent on a Peavey 6505 head and tuning down to C. That it is about atmosphere and feel, a morbid sensibility.

“You’re so spot on with that song,” said Hammett. “To me, that song is so incredibly heavy. High-gain amps, high-output pickups, none of that stuff existed. That song sounds so incredibly dark, and so incredibly heavy, and it is atmospheric and it gets straight to the darkest parts of one’s psyche. That’s what happened to me.”

Hammett sounds like he’s getting goosebumps just talking about it.

“It just goes so deep in me,” he said. “And that song has so much voodoo in it. It sounded like it was written under a full moon, in a circle with candles, with him and the candles lit all around him, just him and the guitar…”

Hammett discovered the song as many metalheads did, through Judas Priest, who covered it on 1979’s Killing Machine (released as Hell Bent For Leather in the US), and most famously on the Metal Gods’ essential live album, Unleashed In The East, which was released later that year.

KK Downing and Glenn Tipton’s twin-guitar treatment transform it. If Green’s was nightmarish and psychedelic, rooted in the blues mythos, Judas Priest reinvented The Green Manalishi with a polished-steel production, dialling up the tempo and placing Rob Halford’s peerless vocals front and centre. It would become a staple of their live show.

In the punishing heat and humidity of the 1985 Philadelphia summer, Chevy Chase introducing them to the stage at Live Aid as Judas Priest performed it in a three-song set. The darkness cooked that day.

Priest superfans Corrosion Of Conformity covered it as a secret track on their 1984 debut LP, Eye For An Eye. Pantera used to play it during soundcheck.

The Melvins covered it, too, lacing it with a knowing venom as they stretched it out to nearly seven minutes, performed lower and slower but more in the spirit of the original.

It finds Buzz Osborne going full nocturnal vampire (was King Buzzo channelling the dog that visited Green in the night?), the Washington state alt-rock institution leaning into the uncanny vibe and latent avant-gardism of the original, reimagining Green’s ghostly vocals as a squall of noise to conclude the track.

Great songs endure reinterpretation. In Judas Priest’s hands, The Green Manalishi is chromium-plated, total metal. The Melvins drew out its weirdness and the weight of the riff.

For Hammett, the fact The Green Manalishi could be performed in a Fleetwood Mac set alongside blues standards and not be out of place just demonstrates how short the distance is between blues and metal.

“That song should have been the soundtrack to Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil,” said Hammett. “Green Manalishi reminds me of the darkest Robert Johnson songs. It is right up there with Hellhounds On My Trail, Me And The Devil Blues. It’s just right there and it is so heavy and it contributed to the blueprint that so many people jumped on.”

The Green Manalishi came together as the original Fleetwood Mac were coming apart. Green was regularly taking LSD. He was checking out. They were playing it live before they got around to tracking the single. Guitarist Jeremy Spencer sat out the sessions; he didn’t appreciate Green’s didactic manner in the studio, though later admitting to Classic Rock that he should have been “more accommodating”.

“Peter would invite me to the studio with parts mapped out for me,” said Spencer. “But I thought he should just go ahead and do them himself.”

Danny Kirwan was the opposite. He relished working on Green’s compositions. The Green Manalishi was not an easy song to record but Kirwan went the distance. It took 28 takes. Martin Birch, who produced it, was similarly inspired by the material, engineering the intro guitar tone by placing speakers in an underground car park and miking it up for the natural reverb to swallow it, the ambience a proxy for the dream logic that inspired Green in the first place.

The Green Manalishi was Green’s last hurrah with Fleetwood Mac. The song, and everything that had gone into it – everything that had inspired it – had left him drained and spent. “It took me at least two years to recover from that song,” Green said in Martin Celmins’ 1995 biography. “When I listened to it afterwards there was so much power there – it exhausted me.”

The ‘60s came to a chaotic and bloody end. By ’69 the Summer of Love felt like a lifetime ago. The war in Vietnam was ongoing, with no end in sight. There was the Manson Family murders, the carnage at Altamont. The hippie dream was dead and heavy metal was looming on the horizon.

The Beatles’ Helter Skelter and the acid-rock freakouts of Blue Cheer foreshadowed what was to come, before Black Sabbath officially inaugurated it in 1970, just a few months before Fleetwood Mac released The Green Manalishi as a single. Of all the proto-metal of the era, Hammett sees The Green Manalishi as being without equal.

“There wasn’t really much of a precedent for a song like Green Manalishi,” said Hammett. “There was dark stuff that Jimi Hendrix was writing. For sure, Sabbath. But nothing quite like Green Manalishi. Green Manalishi, Oh Well, Black Magic Woman – all blues-rock that later on contributed to hard rock and heavy metal.”

That is where Hammett really jives with Peter Green as a player – a virtuoso who knew the value in economy, in expressing a mood and letting the audience fill in the gaps. As a horror movie obsessive, Hammett can’t get enough darkness, and that is what he hears in Green’s best work.

“You think about those three songs, the subject matter, the content, the arrangements, the atmosphere, how things just switch on a dime, the heaviness and the change of moods, it’s all there,” says Hammett. “It’s all there for heavy metal to eat up and turn into a completely different plate of jello, and thank god, thank fucking God for Peter Green because, for me, his contribution to heavy metal, to the music I play, is so huge, so huge.

“It just took years and a couple of generations for it to filter into heavy metal as we know it today. But still, he put out the blueprint. I can only hope to compose a song like Green Manalishi. I can only hope to. I aspire to do that.”

Kirk Hammett makes no secret that he is a collector. He can’t help himself. He’ll buy guitars, he’ll trade them. If there’s something about an electric guitar that speaks to him then he’s an easy mark. It’s in the blood.

But he has an eye for this stuff. Hammett has acquired of the rarest vintage guitars around, such as the Bigbsy-equipped 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard that left the factory with a black finish. He had Joe Bonamassa to thank for that one, giving him a heads up text after he spotted it in Carter Vintage Guitars. There is only three of them in existence – with rumours that a fourth is out there somewhere, like Bigfoot.

Hammett also owns one of the most famous Les Pauls of all time, Greeny, the ’59 Les Paul Standard once owned by Peter Green then Gary Moore. It has quite literally become his signature guitar, with Gibson and Epiphone both releasing replicas of it.

But speaking in Dublin at one of his The Collection in-person events, sandwiched between Metallica’s performances on the latest leg of their stadium-packing M72 Tour, Hammett introduced one guitar of special significance, a Les Paul previously owned by one of his heroes, and is another super-rare Factory Black unicorn.

So why then did Hammett have mixed feelings about owning it?

“This guitar used to belong to one of my all-time star heroes, a huge source of inspiration, Neal Schon,” says Hammett. “And I got this in an auction, and I don’t know what was up, but I got this for, like, half the price that it was worth!”

Many players would be happy. It is not often you can get a bargain on the vintage market, doubly so if the guitar has an association with a platinum-selling artist. Hammett adores Schon’s playing. He loves Schon. None of this sat easy with him.

“I felt kind of bad about it because I should have paid a fair price,” says Hammett. “But I paid a price that was lower than it should have been.”

Who can say what was going on in Schon’s mind at the time. This was 2021, the Covid era. The auction was a big deal in the press. This was a huge consignment of guitars, some 112 in total, with some of the rarest – and most valuable – vintage guitars being auctioned off.

This was the auction in which Schon’s Grainger 'Burst 1959 Les Paul Standard sold for $350,000. His 1977 Don’t Stop Believin’ Les Paul went for $250,000. And there were some bona-fide vintage curios, too, such as his ’87 Superstrat prototypes that had a body like an upside-down Jackson Soloist. There was even a super-weird 1967 Coral Sitar Vincent Bell.

Hammett Schon’s P-90 loaded 1957 Les Paul Standard was unusual. It had left the Gibson factory with a custom black finish rather than its regular Goldtop. A unicorn, and at $87,500 from Heritage Auctions, a bargain. But it wasn’t the only unicorn to sell for what many believed was way under the estimate.

In his Guitarist column, Dave Davidson of Well Strung Guitars in NYC highlighted a 1960 Les Paul Custom in a Cherry finish, supposedly the last surviving instrument in a consignment of six that were custom-finished for Hägstrom.

He said Schon got really unlucky and “missed the boat” on the vintage guitar market boom. Schon should have waited until the pandemic was over.

“It turned out to be the worst time to do an auction because his guitars really undersold,” said Davidson. “I remember having a conversation with Joe Bonamassa afterwards, and he felt Schon should have waited. I was amazed he didn’t just get a storage place and put it off for a year or two, but nobody knew where the market was going to go at the time. It was a brutal auction to watch.”

All this was bothering Hammett, so he thought he’d do the decent thing. He’d call Schon up. If the Journey guitarist had been sweating over the auction, he didn’t show it. He was totally cool.

“So, I actually called Neal,” recalls Hammett. “I said, ‘Neal, do you want the guitar back?’ And he said, ‘No, man, you keep it. You buy it; you keep it.’”

This, says Hammett, is typical Schon. There were no hard feelings. A year later, Hammett joined Schon onstage to play Wheel In The Sky. He left the ’57 Les Paul behind though, taking Greeny along for the night.

“Neal Schon, he’s such a cool, cool guy,” says Hammett. “If you guys ever, like, really get to know Neal Schon, I mean, he’s an amazing guitar player. He’s amazing. He lives and breathes music. And to me, he’s just such a inspiration, ‘cos I see him, and I see how he conducts his life, and how he plays, and his commitment and dedication to music, and I was just like, ‘Yeah! That’s what I want to do, too.’ So I’m doing it.”

And he is. You can catch Metallica in London this weekend (July 3/5) before they head back to the US in for their residency at the Sphere, in Las Vegas, opening night October 3. See Metallica for ticket details. And you can watch the conversation about his collection in full above or at Kirk Hammett's YouTube channel.

Gibson The Collection: Kirk Hammett, written and edited by MusicRadar alumnus Chris Vinnicombe is available now via Gibson.

There are few electric guitars in the history of rock that are more recognisable than Michael Schenker’s 1971 ‘Medallion-era’ Flying V, and now, thanks to the work of the Gibson Custom Shop, there are 50 more of them, with the launch of a Collector’s Edition replica that required 3D scans and Murphy Lab ageing to recreate every detail of the original.

That original is a guitar Kirk Hammett describes as “almost like a religious relic”. When the Metallica lead guitarist was growing up, Schenker’s Flying V was the guitar he wanted.

And he really did put his mind to it; Hammett is now the proud owner the original, and speaking in the coffee-table book documenting his epic arsenal of guitars, The Collection: Kirk Hammett, out now via Gibson Publishing, the Metallica guitarist details how his obsession with all things Schenker led to an obsession with all things Flying V.

“It represents so much of my youth and all the travails I went through in just trying to learn how to play guitar and be a great improviser and soloist like Michael Schenker,” he says, in an extract published in the Gibson Gazette. “I spent so much time as a teenager just staring at this guitar on the back of UFO’s Force It album.

“There’s a picture of Michael Schenker playing this very guitar – it’s red, you can see the medallion – and I used to stare at the guitar and go, ‘I need to get a Flying V.’ Little did I know that, decades later, I would have the very Flying V that I was staring at.”

Schenker’s Flying V has been known as this black-and-white custom job for so long now – nearly 50 years – that we often forget that this was a refin. Schenker had one black guitar, one white.

Watching as his tech was repairing holes in the body during a Scorpions rehearsal in 1979, he says he wanted a fresh paint job.

That would become his signature style. But as he explains in the launch video, was the shape of the Flying V, and its initially unwieldy shape, that helped him find his signature sound.

“What I do is all self-expression. I need a bit more volume, distortion and power,” he says. “I developed a certain way with the guitar because of the shape. It was awkward at the beginning but, quickly, I put it between my legs and I realised, ‘Yes, this is solid. It stays here.’ And I was able to use my arm for heavy vibrato. It almost became like part of my body.”

Schenker made full use of the extra purchase. It was little wonder that a coltish Kirk Hammett would be so taken with this muscular style. But there was already evidence to suggest that Schenker was going to be play the instrument hard. He got his first taste of the Flying V when his big brother, Rudolf, bailed him out after he broke a string.

“I was always kind of getting everything secondhand, whatever my brother didn’t use anymore,” he says. “I was about 16 years old. I broke a string at the show, and my brother was playing the V, and I had to take the solo so he quickly gave me his guitar.”

This was a Eureka! moment for the teenager.

“That’s when I noticed there was something about my guitar and the amplifier,” he says. “I was like, ‘Wow!’”

Gibson’s Collector’s Edition replica of Schenker’s ’71 Flying V does not come cheap at £14,899/$16,999, and you can guarantee that they will sell out in no time. But those lucky enough to get their hands on one will have the next best thing to the original. Each has been signed by Schenker. The specs are dead on with his original.

At a certain remove, the black-and-white paint job looks immaculate but upon closer inspection there is noticeable checking in the aged nitrocellulose lacquer. The dings on the headstock are present and correct (and if you play a Flying V, you’ll invariably add some of your own).

It even ships in a replica Michael Schenker Group guitar case, inside which you’ll find a COA (black-and-white of course) and a commemorative medallion. The medallions were originally commissioned to mark the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany.

As befitting the Flying Vs of that era, it is fitted with a pair of T-Top Alnico V humbucking electric guitar pickups, each hand-wired to their own volume and tone controls (500k CTS pots as standard, Switchcraft selector switch and 1/4” jack FTW), with the “knurled white top hat” control knobs a little reminiscent of the skirted dials you’d find on a Fender Stratocaster.

The body and neck are mahogany, the latter a three-piece build, shaped into a “thin artist profile” with a volute, and it is topped with a 12” radius rosewood fingerboard.

You’ll probably find a manual in among the case candy, telling you how to adjust the Tune-O-Matic bridge and access the truss rod via the black-and-white cover heat-stamped with the Gibson logo because this being a smaller Flying V headstock there’s not much room elsewhere.

But really Michael Schenker, particularly his work with UFO, is the only source material any player needs to study when picking up a guitar like this.

Like the great man says, wedge it in between your legs, turn up your guitar amp – perhaps have a cocked wah pedal in front of the amp to let those tonal sweet spots bloom – and then have at it. As he advises, whatever you do, don’t hold back, don't compromise.

“A guitar is the best self-expression tool that one can have,” says Schenker. “I had my own dream. I can go all the way my own way, and that was my mission in life – still is my mission in life – and it is all about pure self-expression.”

For more details on the Michael Schenker 1971 Flying V Collector’s Edition, head over to Gibson.

Gibson has launched a limited edition Custom Shop replica set of the Greenybuckers, the iconic PAFs found in Greeny, the 1959 Les Paul Standard owned by the late Peter Green, then the late Gary Moore, and now Metallica’s Kirk Hammett.

These electric guitar pickups have been aged by the Murphy Lab to be exactly the same as those found in the original guitar, and have been developed in close collaboration with Hammett.

Available as a set of two, priced £/$449 and strictly limited to just 100 sets worldwide, available exclusively via Gibson, these are the exact same pickups that you would find on the mega-bucks replica of the Murphy Lab Greeny Les Paul Standard, list price $19,999.

Now, this is not the first time Gibson has launched a humbucker cloned from the original holy grail PAF blueprint created by Seth Lover in the mid ‘50s. But there’s something a little different about the Greenybuckers. There’s something different about Greeny.

It is one of the most storied electric guitars of all time, battle-scarred, modded, and one of the few vintage guitars that seems all the more valuable because it is quote/unquote player grade, with its original tuners swapped out for Sperzels, the mismatched control knobs… And all that distress to the finish.

But its magic lies in its pickups and that sui generis out-of-phase tone that comes from the neck pickup’s reverse magnetic polarity. In the middle position, it gives it a sound all its own. Speaking to MusicRadar in 2016, Hammett said it made him think of a Fender Stratocaster when he first tried it out.

“I plugged it into the vintage Marshall amp, turned it up and played it. After about 30 seconds, I thought to myself, ‘Wow, this is not your standard Les Paul…’ and I went to the middle position, because, you know, that’s the revered sound and I started ripping out and I thought to myself, ‘Holy shit, this is a total contradiction.’ It sounded like an incredible Les Paul in the bridge position and in the neck position, but when you put it in the middle position it kind of sounded like a Strat through a 100‑watt Marshall stack!”

The Aged Greenybucker set is not cheap. But say you have one of the Gibson USA Greeny replicas, or even the Epiphone Greeny, and you have begun to put your own wear and tear on the finish and hardware; these could be a primo mod.

Or forget about the Greeny replicas, any Les Paul – and especially any Murphy Lab Les Paul – would be a prime candidate for these.

Under the aged nickel housings, you’ll find a pair of humbuckers with a pair of black bobbins, designed around Alnico II magnets, with two-conductor wiring, unpotted as per the originals. They have a DCR reading of 8.3k at the neck humbucker, 8.7k at the bridge, mojo off the scale.

And they’re available now. For more details, head over to Gibson. And if the price is a little steep, or if you miss out on the limited drop, fear not, the Gibson Pickup Shop still carries the regular Greenybucker Set for $299/£319.

Original Metallica bassist Cliff Burton would have turned 64 this week and the man currently holding down that position in the band – Robert Trujillo – has been honouring him and talking about some of the band’s biggest songs on the Metallica Report podcast.

Talk turned to Master Of Puppets and the eight-minute instrumental track Orion. Trujillo let slip a little nugget, that the bass solo on the track was originally supposed to a Kirk Hammett guitar solo.

"He was originally supposed to play the solo there, Kirk was," Trujillo said of the track. "And he was away from the studio, came back the next day and Cliff had laid the track. He played the solo there, and there was no solo for Kirk."

Trujillo said that it was Hammett that explained the story of Orion’s bass solo to him.

"Not that Kirk doesn't get enough solos, but Cliff took his solo, which I think is just so cool."

Metallica still play Orion live occasionally and Trujillo noted that it remains a favourite not just of fans, but of the band members themselves: "This is a song that automatically brings us together and it has to do with the emotion and the personality of the song," he said. "It's so infectious that you have to be together and you also have to be together with the fans."

Part of that is that it reminds everyone of Burton. "Is it the spirit of Cliff? Absolutely. The song is probably the closest thing to the spirit of Cliff, and that's why you need to be together."

Meanwhile, back in 2026, Metallica recommence their M72 world tour, which has been going on for three years now, in May in Athens. They return to the UK in late June for dates at Glasgow’s Hampden Park, the Principality Stadium in Cardiff and two nights at the London Stadium on July 3 and 5.

Vernon Reid and Jack White running into one another at the airport in Memphis and agreeing to swap signature guitars was one of the great feel-good stories of 2024 – and the Living Colour guitarist promises it was not a one-off.

Speaking to MusicRadar, he says he has already swapped signature models with “Captain” Kirk Douglas of the Roots, offering up his Reverend in exchange for Douglas’s SG, has more swaps in the pipeline, and he wants to officially make it a thing among his fellow pros.

“Yeah, man, that whole thing of doing the trades with other players who have signature models, it’s a really nice thing,” said Reid. “Kirk Douglas, who’s the guitarist with the Roots, we’ve had a trade between the two of us, so it’s really lovely. His is a beautiful SG from Gibson.”

But maybe Reid has already officially started a trend. Not long after he and White exchanged guitars, there was Kirk Hammett of Metallica ordering up a thinline Custom Shop version of White’s Fender Triplecaster for himself, and getting one for White in the process. As White said at the time, he was fully onboard with Hammett’s choice mods – especially seeing as they revealed a hidden truth about the Triplecaster.

“Kirk asked me if I approved and I of course fully endorse ANY mods done to any of my designs, let alone from the great Hammett,” said White. “And this one is especially cool because a lot of folks don’t know that the Triplecaster is already chambered!”

All of this warmed Reid’s heart, and he said he had Testament’s Alex Skolnick in mind for his latest swap – and one of his peers from the Reverend artist roster.

“I was really gratified that Kirk Hammett traded a signature model with Jack White,” said Reid. “So I traded with Jack White, and then Jack White traded with Kirk Hammett, and I’m about to trade signature models with Alex Skolnick, who is a dear friend, and I just did a podcast with Billy Corgan, and we’re both Reverend artists, so we’re gonna trade internally. And that’s a very lovely thing. I think it’s a fun thing.”

Skolnick told MusicRadar that he was totally up for Reid's offer, and had ear-marked one of his ESP/LTD AS-1FR single-cut electric guitars ready to swap.

“It’s the ESP/LTD in Lime Burst, new colour, new neck,” said Skolnick. “This guitar is very high quality. LTD is considered the more affordable imprint of ESP but I honestly think the quality has gotten so good that it easily stands up. This is the third one they have made for me and they are all amazing.”

By the time you read this, these trades might have taken place, though sadly they did not happen in time for Reid’s jam with Alex Skolnick when he joined his trio in New York in September 2025 for a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Up From The Skies.

“We had a great jam,” said Skolnick. “He sang. He actually does a great version as a vocalist. And, yeah, we're, yeah, I think we're determined to do that [swap]. He had his new signature and it is so cool, his Reverend, so I’m excited to get one.”

As for Reid, that Triplecaster White sent him as already seen some action onstage.

“Yeah! I actually brought it with me,” he said. “Living Colour was playing in Long Island, and I used it on… it might have been Glamour Boys or Love Rears Its Ugly Head.”

So that’s Reid and White, Douglas, Skolnick, and Hammett is in on the action, too. Who else from the world of guitar should swap signature models?

What Cesar Gueikian is doing is highly unusual. It is not unheard of for a guitar maker to migrate to the boardroom and take on an executive role. But the Gibson CEO is moving in the opposite direction.

Every week, typically on a Friday morning, he clears some precious calendar time, puts on a pair of safety glasses, and gets hands on in the Gibson factory, and with a little help from his team, he builds an electric guitar that he designed to his one-of-one custom specs – and he has been doing this for nigh-on four years now.

“Definitely, my favourite time of the week is when I am in the factory building,” he says, joining MusicRadar over Zoom from his Nashville HQ.

Gueikian has been playing the guitar since he was 10 years old, but it was only after he became Gibson CEO that he decided that it was time to learn how to make one from scratch.

“I had tinkered anchored with them, changed things, opened [them] up, changed parts and things like that,” he says. “But I had never built one.”

If you have been following Gueikian on Instagram, you will have seen his handiwork. If you caught Metallica’s set at Black Sabbath’s farewell show at Villa Park in July, you will have seen and heard it in action.

Metallica’s lead guitarist, Kirk Hammett, played CEO#4, an custom SG, during a cover of Sabbath’s Hole In The Sky – and that guitar, along with CEO#8, a custom Flying V that Gueikian himself played onstage with Mana, are going under the hammer at Julien’s Auctions, alongside a trove of artist-played and signed guitars. All proceeds from the auction of CEO#4 and CEO#8 be going to support Gibson’s charitable arm, Gibson Gives.

The question is why did he decide to build the instruments himself, what has he learned from working alongside Gibson’s master luthiers, Jim DeCola and Tom Murphy, and their teams, and will we ever see a Cesar Gueikian signature guitar? Here’s his take on it…

What was the first guitar you built at Gibson?

“The first one was actually a Les Paul Standard that I built maybe a little bit over three years ago, three and a half years ago or so. That was a Les Paul Standard, a purple-looking quilt top Les Paul Standard [with] almost like a velvet looking top. That’s what I was going for.

“I remember I started it in September, and I finished it in December. It’s going to be four years ago almost. That was the first one and it was a big learning process.

“I mean, that one was really difficult to make and it has several cosmetic flaws. It plays well. And that one I called CEO#0, and then from there on, CO#1, et cetera. Some of them have been auctioned.”

Why did you start building your own?

“My intention, originally, was I wanted to learn how to build a guitar from the beginning to end, and then have it, because I wanted that finished product.

“And during the process, between September and December, building with the help of all of our craftsmen and craftswomen in the factory – and we call them craftories, I labelled our factories craftories from the very beginning because I couldn’t get my head around the name factory – you know what? What I really enjoyed was learning from them, and putting myself in a vulnerable situation and having the team in the craftory teach me how to do something. That was my favourite thing.

“And so, since then, what at the beginning was, ‘I want the guitar that I built’ is no longer about the guitar. It’s about spending time in the craftory, working with my team, learning from them, having them teach me.”

“I really, really enjoy that, and it’s been one of the most powerful moments, I think, for me as a leader, for lack of a better word, at Gibson. I realised that you can talk, you can say and do things, and you can inspire people, but this was the most powerful one in terms of my craftsmen and craftswomen, because I feel like I earned a different level of respect from them. It was ultimately a process that taught me a lesson in leadership.”

And like you say, it’s humbling to put yourself out there. These CEO builds are getting more and more ambitious…

“They get more ambitious, yes! Yeah, one thing I was going to tell you about the first one… I worked all those months. We give time off to where people between Christmas and New Year’s. They get time off. But I happen to be in Nashville then, so with Jim DeCola, my master luthier, him and I went to a craftory between Christmas and New Year’s. It was just the two of us. And I finished buffing it and I was going to assemble it that day.

“I finished. It took me about three hours to buff the guitar, which probably takes the team members there about 15 minutes for a guitar. It took me three hours. And that was done.

“Then I noticed a little something, a little orange peel from the lacquer on the headstock, and when I put the headstock on the buffing wheel, it threw it out of my hands, and in a fraction of a second, it was on the floor with the broken headstock. That day I learned how to fix a broken headstock.”

I was going to ask if you had Jim DeCola on speed dial for this. We’re concerned for his work/life balance here.

“He taught me how to fix the headstock. We fixed the headstock, and then I assembled it – later, of course, because we had to then do retouches with more lacquer on it. And I [still] have that guitar. That guitar is with me, and that’s the only one I keep. The rest, everything after that, has been auctioned off, has been sold, proceeds to the foundation, or will be auctioned off soon.”

Talking about the builds getting more ambitious, have you attempted a Murphy Lab Custom Shop build – or what about a semi-hollow electric like an ES-335?

“Yes! In my office here, I just got it today, [and] I just finished a Murphy Lab Les Paul. I worked with Tom [Murphy]. I was working with Tom on his desk, and I can’t remember if it was four or five days working on the ageing, and I just completed that one. I will be doing more Custom Shop Murphy Labs.”

I want to get onto CEO#4, because it’s seems right that someone has put an SG into Kirk Hammett’s hands, especially given that he’s almost playing through Angus Young’s rig on the last Metallica album, with the SoloDallas boost and the Marshalls.

“He has a ’61 Les Paul, the one that’s on the cover of the record – the white one, the two pickup white SG-shape Les Paul that belonged to Les Paul. He owns that guitar.”

I feel like he should be such a natural SG player. Did you have Kirk in mind when you made it?

“Well Kirk and I talk all the time, at least weekly, so we knew that the show Back To The Beginning was on – before it was announced – when I started building it, so I had that show in mind with this SG. And I will walk you through the specs in a second but I did have that show in mind.”

“I knew that somebody from the artists that we work with was probably going to be interested in playing it, and it was more sort of natural, because I speak with Kirk regularly, we are very good friends, we talk about guitars, we talk about shows, when we are going to see each other, when we are going to have dinner, and just in conversation with him, I brought it up.

“He was the first one I brought it up with, said, ‘Hey, this is what I am building and I think it’s going to be great if someone uses this at Back To The Beginning. Would you like to be the one?’ He said, ‘Yes, I’m in. I definitely want to do that.’ I sent him the picture when I finished it, and he was very excited. So that’s how that happened.”

What were you thinking with regards the specs?

“I wanted to build something that would have a bit of a hybrid sound between an SG and a Les Paul, so I used maple, so a mahogany and maple body, with a highly figured maple top. And I’ve always loved the… They’re not called this but I call them Super 400 inlays.

“We use them also on the Supremes, and they've been used in many other acoustic instruments as well, acoustic Gibsons. So it’s those inlays. And I love the the headstock of the Les Paul Custom with the split diamond. That has always been my one of my favourite Gibson looks, and so that’s what I decided to do – have a bound fingerboard with the Super 400 inlays, and a bound Gibson Les Paul Custom-style headstock.

“For the hardware, I went with not fully black but slightly darker hardware, and I used pretty high-output ‘80s-style Gibson pickups, which are the same pickups that we use on the 80s Explorers and Flying Vs. They’re a modified version of Burstbuckers, still passive, but higher output. So you have the Burstbuckers, the ‘70s pickups which are little bit hotter, and then the ‘80s pickups that are a little bit hotter so I went ‘80s, overwound.”

And we have to talk about the finish, the Ghost Burst.

“Well, how that happened, I also talked to another dear friend of mine, Adam Jones from Tool, and I sent him the picture of the finish – of the guitar already finished – because I knew he would like the finish, and he replied immediately saying, ‘I love that finish! It looks like a ghost burst.’ And so I told him, ‘That’s the name. I love it. You named it.' And that’s what we call it.”

We also see this finish on CEO#8.

“When I did #8 and #9, that’s the Flying V and an Explorer [respectively], I did them based on the same finish. Now, CEO#4, I wanted it to be a perimeter burst, so it was very much on the perimeter, but I didn’t do it the way I wanted.

“I mean, I had something in my head, and when I went to execute on it with a spray gun, I went in a little more than I wanted, and so a CEO#4 has that look. Now with more practice, #8 and #9 are very much perimeter bursts, which is how I envisioned it.

“And so we’re going to be releasing this finish next year, and they’re gonna look a little bit more like CEO#8 and #9.”

You anticipated my next question. Because this is also a great testing ground for new products, what you could add to the Made To Measure programme and so on.

“Yeah, we are going to be releasing several models, different shapes with the Ghost Burst finish. I don’t know exactly when. It might late summer of next year. But, yeah, I’m excited about making them available because we’ve had a lot of comments from people saying, ‘Please release this finish.’ People seem to have liked it.”

It’s a great finish. How did you feel when you saw Kirk Hammett, with Metallica, playing a Black Sabbath cover with this guitar? It must have been mind-blowing?

“I guess there are many reasons why the answer to that question is yes. First, because of Kirk; he’s like a brother to me now. We’re really close. I love him. I really, truly love the human being that he is. He’s such a kind, amazing person.

“So, beyond all of his musical accomplishments, to have him who is, obviously, the lead guitarist of Metallica, with everything that he and Metallica have accomplished, but also such a close friend of mine, play it, but then also that he played it at Back To The Beginning, which is the tribute to Black Sabbath, where everything started, and paying tribute as a result of that to Tony Iommi, who is the reason why I play guitar.

“I picked up a guitar because I heard Black Sabbath when I was 10 years old. So, all of that coming together, the guitar that I built with the help of all of my staff, in Kirk’s hands for Hole In The Sky, Metallica’s song on the set, paying tribute to Tony and Ozzy, and Black Sabbath, everything was amazing and strange, humbling and epic.”

These guitars are going up for auction, CEO#4 and CEO#8. How much to you think they will fetch?

“I have no idea. Honestly, I don’t know what this will get. I hope it raises a lot of funds for the foundation. One hundred per cent of what we get out for this will go out.

“I really hope that, because of everything that we just talked about – the historic moment, Kirk, Metallica, Black Sabbath, Back To The Beginning, the fact that I built a guitar – I hope that because of all of that this becomes a highly coveted, highly bid guitar in the auction. I hope it’s the one that raises the most of all of the CEO builds. [currently it is sitting at $17,500]”

It almost feels like, like we’re kind of building up to the point where you might have a signature model in the Gibson collection. Is that something that you would be interested in?

“I don’t know. I don’t think I will do a signature model, but the ones that we’re going to be releasing are going to be based on these guitars that I built, with these features, in the Ghost Burst finish, and so I guess it’s not a signature model, but they are built on the basis of the specs of what I did.”

It’s like you are caretaker of that series almost, because we can see your design aesthetic running through them.

“I didn’t want to name them the Cesar line or CEO line. So what we agreed with the team is that we’re going to call them DES, which is what I love on everything, which is ‘Do epic shit.’ So they’re gonna be the DES collection. And then that, one day, if it keeps going and it keeps growing based on other things that I build, hopefully it will outlast me.”

• For more information on the Gibson Gives auction, which sees CEO#4 and CEO#8 go under the hammer, head over to Julien's Auctions

The one-of-one custom SG that Gibson CEO Cesar Gueikian built from scratch and loaned to Kirk Hammett to play during Metallica’s set at Black Sabbath’s farewell show, Back To The Beginning, is officially heading to the auction block – and it’s in pretty good company.

Gibson and its charitable arm, Gibson Gives, have joined forces with Julien’s Auctions for its Played, Worn & Torn auction – an annual event that puts some bizarre, brilliant, and holy grail lots under the hammer.

Expect super-rare guitars, amps, and all manner of rock ’n’ roll ephemera – and this year in particular, some true Gibson rarities.

You want bizarre? This year’s event gives Elvis fans the chance to by the King’s service bayonet from his time in Germany. Brilliant? How about a Gibson Custom Explorer, in Ebony, full-on tuxedo mode, signed by Cheap Trick? That is just one of the Gibson lots supporting its Gibson Gives fundraising drive.

There is also a stage-played Kramer Lzzy Hale Voyager, with Hale's signature guitar signed and resplendent in Black Diamond Holographic Sparkle finish. The Halestorm frontwoman has also signed the guitar case.

This is also your chance to own a custom Dave Petillo semi-hollow once owned by Danny DeVito, and the Penguin has signed it too.

But back to the Gibsons. There are some special artist-signed Les Pauls; a Les Paul Custom ‘70s signed by Rise Against and played onstage by Zach Blair, and another signed by Gibson signature artists Sergio Vallin of Maná.

And then, headlining the auction, you have those unique electric guitars made by the Gibson supremo himself, the SG CEO#4 and the Flying V CEO#8. Both have a finish that Gueikian developed himself, Ghost Burst. Adam Jones of Tool gave it its name.

“I sent him the picture of the finish, the picture of the guitar already finished, because I really I knew he would like the finish,” says Gueikian. “And he replied immediately saying, ‘I love that finish. It looks like a ghost burst.’ And so I told him, ‘That’s the name.’ And that’s what we call it.”

You’ll notice the difference in the finish between CEO#4 and CEO#8. Gueikian tells us that he had always envisioned it as more of a perimeter burst, and has perfected it on the latter model, and in CEO#9, another of his custom builds.

Gueikian says he knew that one of the Gibson artists would be into this and Hammett declared his interest.

“I created it as a tribute to Tony Iommi, the father of heavy metal, who defined the genre with a Gibson SG,” says Gueikian. “After the show, Kirk signed the guitar, and it remains untouched since strings included. The guitar also comes with my backstage pass from that historic event.”

Seeing Hammett play it at Villa Park, honouring Black Sabbath, playing the guitar he made, was kind of mind-blowing all things considered.

“To have him, obviously, the lead guitarist of Metallica, with everything that he and Metallica have accomplished, but also a close friend of mine play it [was incredible],” says Gueikian. “But then also that he played it at Back To The Beginning, the tribute to Black Sabbath where everything started, and paying tribute as a result of that to Tony Iommi, who is the reason why I play guitar. I picked up a guitar because I heard Black Sabbath when I was 10 years old.

“All of that coming together, the guitar I built with the help of all of my staff, in Kirk’s hands for Hole In The Sky, Metallica’s song in the set, paying tribute to Tony, Ozzy and Black Sabbath, it was amazing, and strange, and humbling, and epic.”

Now, you can bid for that guitar. It’s officially a piece of metal history now, and Hammett has signed it too.

If CEO#4 was intended to be a cross between a Les Paul Custom and an SG, with its figured maple top, plus the Supreme-style inlays, then CEO#8, applies this hybrid design to the Flying V Custom. Again, this is a stage-played instrument, but this time it was Gueikian who broke it in in front of a live audience, joining Mana onstage at the Bridgestone Arena, Nashville

It’s a particularly gnarly build that gives the V a Les Paul Custom headstock, and you can check it out and the Gibson lots – and bid if you’re feeling flush – over at Julien’s Auctions. Bidding is open now with the auction event happening on 20-21 Nov at 10:00am CST, Nashville.

Gibson and Kirk Hammett have expanded their signature guitar lineup with a seasonal update on the classic Hummingbird acoustic guitar that channels Edgar Allan Poe at his most morbid.

It’s called the Raven, and it is really rare bird. They are only making 100 of these, and they come hot out of the Gibson Custom Shop at Bozeman, Montana, in a custom black guitar case with a raven skull inlay, foreshadowing the necro mother of pearl headstock inlay on the guitar itself.

Fundamentally this is a Hummingbird and we won’t be told any differently. It has the solid Sitka spruce top, mahogany on the back and sides.

Scramble around for it in the dark and you will feel something – a shape in the gloom – quite familiar, square shoulders, a dreadnought-sized body. But it if is a Hummingbird, well, this one was found some way down the Left Hand Path.

It’s like the Hummingbird only evil. Of course, rosewood would have been too bright for a guitar like this. Hammett’s Raven swaps that out for ebony, and we have star inlays here. There is also a double pickguard and tailpiece accent that’s just too cool. The mahogany neck has a rounded profile – happy days for chord work.

The Metallica lead guitarist is reported to have been heavily involved in its design, and it shows. As we all know, Hammett is a horror movie fanatic. His number one ESP signature model features graphics from The Mummy (not the Brendan Fraser one, the original from 1932 featuring Boris Karloff). Pre-code horror is a theme on his electric guitars.

He also has ESP signature models with White Zombie and Bride Of Frankenstein graphics. This approach would not have worked on an guitar like the Raven.

Again, we’re working with Hummingbird DNA. But the aesthetic is very on brand with Roger Corman’s The Raven, Boris Karloff and Vincent Price and all that. Play some spooky chords on it.

Or lean into the considerable lung power from its build – that scalloped advanced X-bracing under the spruce top – and hit an open G chord with gusto. When you do you’ll appreciate some more of Hammett’s custom appointments.

This has a flatter fingerboard radius than your common or garden variety Hummingbird, 16” as opposed to the Gibson standard 12”. It’ll be a good player. Like the Hummingbird it has a 24.75” scale length.

Other details worth noting include the 43.82mm nut width (Graph Tech TUSQ), the nickel Rotomatic tuners with kidney bean-style buttons, the compound radius dovetail neck joint, and the LR Baggs Element VTC +4 acoustic guitar pickup and preamp system, with its controls nested in the soundhole. Lovely.

Priced £4,399/$4,999, the Kirk Hammett Raven is available now. See Gibson for more details.

Kirk Hammett has done the impossible; he might just have made Jack White’s Fender Triplecaster even cooler.

The Metallica lead guitarist ordered up a custom version of White’s factory-Frankenstein’d Tele signature guitar that reworked the Triplecaster’s body as a Thinline in the classic fashion, i.e. complete with f-holes. And Hammett had the Fender Custom Shop make one for White, too.

White has been building himself an arsenal of bespoke electric guitar gear in the past few years, with his Third Man Hardware brand racking up collaborations with the likes of Donner, Anasounds, Coppersound, MXR, Gamechanger Audio, Eventide and of course Fender – a collection that also includes an PanoSonic hybrid acoustic electric guitar and the Pano Verb tube amp combo.

But the former White Stripes frontman has been sharing the wealth, offering swaps and gifts of his Triplecaster with whomever he meets. When he bumped into Living Colour’s Vernon Reid at the airport, they agreed a swap; White’s Triplecaster for Reid’s Reverend Totem Series signature model in Mystery Tramp graphic finish. Reid was a childhood hero of White’s.

White then had Joe Glaser install a G Bender in one Triplecaster before darting off across Tennessee to drop it off with country phenom Brad Paisley. Paisley then let him play his original Broadcaster. When he was in Tokyo, White gave one to Yoyoyoshie from Otoboke Beaver. The man can’t stop giving them away.

So maybe it was fitting that someone would get one for him, too. Enter, Hammett. White had Olivia Jean demo this Hammett custom job on his Instagram and explained how this gnarly Triplecaster remix came into his possession.

“Notice something different about this here Fender Triplecaster that the Detroit style guitar slinger Olivia Jean is riffing on? This was dropped off to me yesterday by the Fender Custom Shop in Nashville,” wrote White. “Why? Because Kirk Hammett (another great Filipino American guitar player like Mz. Olivia here, you may have heard of him) asked them if they could make him a Thinline version of the Triplecaster and if they could also ‘Make one for Jack too.’”

That, they did. What’s kind of cute in all of this, besides the joy White is taking in this guitar, is that Hammett felt the need to ask White’s permission first. For the record, White does not simply approve of modding his signature creation – he actively encourages it. And he wants to see others embrace the modding spirit and make this their own.

“Kirk asked me if I approved and I of course fully endorse ANY mods done to any of my designs, let alone from the great Hammett,” continued White. “And this one is especially cool because a lot of folks don’t know that the Triplecaster is already chambered!”

As it ships straight from Fender’s Corona, California facility, the Triplecaster has a body of chambered ash, a bolt-on maple neck with a Soft V profile, no f-holes, but thereafter it gets weird. It gets very Jack White.

There’s the trio of electric guitar pickups, from which it gets its name, with a CuNiFe humbucker at the neck, a Custom Jack White JW-90 single-coil in the middle, and a Custom Jack White humbucker at the bridge, and the controls are pretty far-out, too.

There is a “Stutter” switch, an arcade-style kill-switch for staccato effects. We also have a three-way switching that lets you mute the guitar, run it as normal, or bypass the tone/volume controls to send it direct to the jack for extra oomph.

But there’s a lot of bespoke hardware on this design. There’s the Bigsby B5. Those Fender-branded tuners have been augmented by a Hipshot Xtender drop D tuner – a sort of of Eddie Van Halen powermove from White, drop D on the fly. There is also a metal banjo-style armrest, all of which is finished in powder white. That’s a lot of metal, hence why White had it chambered to bring the weight down. This made Hammett’s mod easier.

“All that was needed at the Custom Shop was to get the patterns out for the F hole and voila,” writes White. “Cool mod, and thank you Kirk for getting me one too, a great match with the CuNiFe wide range pickup like the old ’72 tele. Can’t wait to dig into this today (that is IF I can snag it back out of Olivia’s hands though!).”

Are these modifications sacrilege? This is a radical overhaul of the Telecaster – the world’s first mass-produced electric guitar, one with a ton of history behind it – and this is guitar, ergo, some of the cork-sniffers might take umbrage at all this radicalism. If so, good, says White. He wants you customise his guitar as you see fit.

“I hope this pisses off some more Tele purists!” says White. “We have enough 'regular' boring guitars out there right folks? Haha, Y’all send me photos of your Triplecaster mods, I want to see them, and maybe I’ll post ‘em here too.”

Just remember, at £3,499/$3,679 street, it ain’t cheap. If in doubt, leave the serious mods to the pros. But wait, that fourth pic shows Hammett also kitted this out with a Glasser G/B Bender, too – and that Fender has called it the "Fender Triplecaster Whammett". Incredible.

With Bigsby, a Glasser Bender, three pickups, kill-switch, Hipshot Xtender… This guitar can do anything. And it’s still in keeping with what White said when the Triplecaster got launched last year.

“We found the best of the old, with the best of the new and mixed innovation with the history of Fender to do something that we think Leo Fender would have been very proud of if he was alive today,” said White.

It’s looking increasingly likely that Metallica will be the next big name to play a residency at Las Vegas’s Sphere venue.

Nothing has been confirmed as yet. But Vital Vegas has suggested that the band could be eyeing up a run of shows in autumn 2026.

Cut to Lars Ulrich being interviewed by Howard Stern on his SiriusXM show last night (6 August) and when Stern brought up the possibility of playing the Sphere, the drummer didn’t exactly distance himself from the rumours.

“I’m not going to confirm anything, because there’s nothing to confirm,” Ulrich told Stern. “ But I’m not going to deny it, because we’re all such fans of this venue. It’s something that we’re considering, [but] nothing is etched in stone or green-lit. It’s something that we’re looking at at some point when the 2026 tour is done.”

Ulrich said that he had seen the opening night of U2’s run at the venue in 2023 and had been “blown away” by what he saw. “It’s not signed, sealed and delivered, but speaking to me and asking my opinion I would fucking love to do it.”

This comes a few months after guitarist Kirk Hammett was interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter and suggested that he was open to playing the Sphere. “Oh, heck, yeah!” he exclaimed. “That’s a great example of how venues are changing. That’s using modern technology to the fullest, to really up the levels of production and entertainment, connected to AI and making it a crazy experience.”

Stern also asked Ulrich about the possibility of Metallica doing the half time show at next year’s Super Bowl, which will be in the band’s hometown of San Francisco. And he seemed positive about that too, saying, emphatically: “Fuck yeah of course we would. First of all we would do it. Second of all to do it in San Francisco would be a dream come true and would be the right fit.

“Certainly as somebody who’s represented San Francisco all over the world and shouted for decades about San Francisco and our love for the Bay Area, that part of it is the right fit. Ultimately it’s not our decision.”

Kirk Hammett’s guitar collection is getting a lot of attention these days. Gibson made a feature-length YouTube video about it, and is documenting it in a deluxe coffee-table book. His most-famous electric guitars – Greeny, the Mummy, his ‘Factory Black’ 1959 Les Paul Standard et al – are household names.

But the Metallica guitarist has a problem. It’s a problem that many some players might relate to, an occupational hazard in Hammett’s instance. He has too many guitars. So many that he admits he has been selling them anonymously online to shrink his collection.

In a recent interview with Metal Hammer, Hammett says he has been sneaking onto eBay and Reverb to thin out the herd.

“I’ll list them on eBay or Reverb and I don’t say they’re mine,” says Hammett. “I get anxiety because I believe guitars should be played… I don’t believe in just storing them away and forgetting about them. I feel guilty! So I have been on a quest to shrink my collection and get rid of the ones I don’t play.”

People collect guitars for all kinds of reasons. Some just can’t help it. Others might see it as an investment. Players like Hammett collect guitars to play them, to have another tool for the stage or studio.

That is one of the reasons you will always see him out on tour with Greeny, his 1959 Les Paul Standard owned by two late blues guitar icons, Peter Green, from whom it takes its name, and Gary Moore.

Speaking to Total Guitar in 2020 for a tribute to Green, Hammett insisted that Greeny needed to played, shared with the world. When asked what should happen to it after he dies, Hammett insisted that the guitar should be played.

“I don’t know, but I hope it is someone who can keep on playing it, and keep on recording with it, and keep on touring with it, so that people who love the guitar can go see it and hear it in real time,” he said. “If I could find someone who was capable enough and qualified enough, sure, then by all means. This guitar needs to be out there. It’s a gift to the music world and I should just keep giving that gift.”

Back to the issue at hand, giving away the guitars is one solution, too. Hammett has been there, done that.

“I try to trade them off because it’s better than just doing a cash deal,” he says. “Everyone leaves with a smile on their face and has something they want! Another way is to just give stuff away.”

The guitars Hammett has been selling off are probably not the ones you will see in The Collection. He won’t be getting rid of his vintage Gibson Flying Vs any time soon. He owns is another Les Paul Standard that was once owned by Moore, and Moore said that this one sounded even better than Greeny. We are not going to find that on eBay.

But maybe if you see some ESP KH-2s on sale, and the seller is posting it out from Hawaii… Well, then maybe, just maybe that KH-2 Hammett’s signature guitar and go-to electric for all Metallica business is coming from the man himself. This, of course, is all guesswork. All we know is that a lot of the guitars came were from the Death Magnetic era.

“I played them on that tour, then as soon as that tour stopped they went into storage again as I’m not playing those songs,” says Hammett.

Looking back on that era, there was a black Jackson Rhoads with the gold pickguard. We haven’t seen that in a while. He was also rocking a black KH-2 around then with a mirror pickguard and metal control knobs. Or could some of these guitars come from his stockpile of custom graphic ESPs? Speaking to Gibson’s Mark Agnesi, Hammett said he might have up to 40 of them.

You can find out more about Kirk Hammett: The Collection at Gibson. The book was written my MusicRadar alumnus Chris Vinnicombe (who also wrote Slash: The Collection) and features exclusive photography from Ross Halfin.

The first time Blackberry Smoke frontman Charlie Starr saw Metallica live in concert he was 14 years old. It was at the Lakewood Amphitheatre in Atlanta, the year 1989, and Metallica were tearing it up on the Damaged Justice Tour. It was a “very profound” experience. Starr remembers it to this day.

But maybe the second time he caught the Bay Area behemoths live will live even longer in the memory. Speaking to Otis Gibbs for his YouTube channel, Starr says it was not only a date with metal royalty, but a chance to play one of the most iconic electric guitars of all time.

Starr was attending Metallica’s 2019 show in Birmingham on the invitation of his friend, Richard Brent, the curator of the Allman Brothers Big House Museum in Macon, Georgia.

“He’s a guitar nerd like the rest of us also, and so that’s perfect because he – basically – was the caretaker of Duane Allman’s ’57 Goldtop, and the guy who owned the guitar at the time, and the guy who owns it now, will allow Richard to take that guitar and be played by people they approve,” says Starr.

If you are in Macon, look up the Big House. You will no doubt see the 1957 Goldtop on display. This is the guitar Allman bought in ’69, developing the archetypical southern slide guitar sound on it. Allman played it extensively during the tracking of Derek and the Dominos’ Layla.

Few guitars and their owners wrote themselves into music history in such a brief period of time. Allman swapped it out not long after Layla, trading it plus $200 and a 50-watt Marshall tube amp for a cherry burst 1959 Les Paul Standard. Tragically, Allman would die in a motorcycle accident in 1971, aged just 24.

Very few players are on the approved list. Billy Gibbons has played it. Derek Trucks has played it – he actually owns one that is one serial number away from Allman’s. Vince Gill has played it. Starr is lucky enough to have played it many times. “Great guitar,” he says. “Definitely, you feel a ghost in that guitar.”

This was a day in which Hetfield was going to get to play it. With Metallica having fully embraced digital amp modellers for their live show, Starr and Brent thought they’d take something suitably old-school to complement the Goldtop. Grabbing a Fender Princeton tube combo, they set off for Birmingham.

“We go in and James, the tour manager, and James’ tech, Chad [Zaemisch] come in and they’re fantastic, so friendly, and great hosts. We play the guitar and pass it,” says Starr. “James Hetfield and I are passing Duane Allman’s guitar back and forth – it was crazy.”

People might point to the Mesa/Boogie MK11c+ head, or the legendary – and sadly missing Marshall – as the secrets to Hetfield’s tone. Having watched him up close, playing backstage on the Goldtop, Starr says its all technique. “He sounds like James Hetfield playing through a Princeton,” he says. “On that right hand it was just like [tails off].”

Starr and Hetfield had a moment. They were swapping pictures of guitars on their phones. Hetfield had something cool with him to show Starr, too, and gets Zaemisch to bring in a ’58 Gibson Explorer. Starr’s mind is so blown he doesn’t even notice Kirk Hammett has arrived. He wants to have a shot on the Goldtop, too.

But he also might just have one of the few Les Pauls that can rival it for historical significance, Greeny, the 1959 Les Paul Standard that was once owned then named after the late Peter Green, then owned by the late Gary Moore, before Hammett picked it up in 2014 and has been playing it onstage and in the studio ever since.

When Hammett asked if he would like to play it, Starr was taken aback. In the moment he forgot Hammett even owned it. When he picked Greeny up, it did not disappoint.

“I said, ‘You’re kidding?’ He said, ‘Yeah, go get it.’ So his tech goes and brings it in,” says Starr. “Man, it was just this surreal experience. That guitar is so worn, and loved, and broken and repaired. And so the first thing I do is put it in the middle position and play Oh Well. That’s what you do! Then we took pictures.”

At the time, Hammett’s purchase of Greeny – which has led to a whole line of Gibson and Epiphone replica signature guitars – was the subject of much conjecture. Just how much did Hammett pay for it? Some people had suggested crazy money. Hammett put the question to Starr.

“He goes, ‘What do they have me paying for this guitar?’ I was a little like, ‘I’m not supposed to say. You’re not supposed to ask me that,’” says Starr. “‘Shit, man, I don’t know.’ But I think at the time people were like [whispers] four million. ‘I dunno, man. Lots.’”

“Well I can’t tell you what I paid for it,” replies Hammett. “But I can tell you what I didn’t pay for it, and it ain’t what you’re all saying!”

We can say how much Allman’s Goldtop was worth that day. It sold at auction in 2019 for an eye-watering $1.25 million via Gotta Have Rock and Roll.

If you’re not on the list of approved players, that’s okay. You can still check it out if you happen to be in Macon, Georgia. Just head to the Big House Museum. You can hear more from Otis Stiggs and Starr at Stiggs' YouTube channel

Kirk Hammett has recorded some of the greatest solos in metal guitar. He is Metallica’s lead guitar power-up, and while there are leitmotifs in his work – he is a flamboyant proponent of the wah pedal – there’s all kinds of solos in his discography.

You’ve got the gnarly energy of the Kill ‘Em All era, Metallica’s Megaforce debut exploding out the gate with face-ripper from The Ripper on Hit The Lights. You’ve got the magisterial display of melody and fretboard pyro on Creeping Death, similarly dark magic performed on Master Of Puppets, and there was all kinds of modalities being referenced on …And Justice For All.

Then The Black Album came along and freed up all kinds of avenues for expression. Enter Sandman gets all the attention for the riff but that solo is scorching. But which of Hammett’s solos is his greatest work?

Guitar World recently put that question to him and, with some difficulty, Hammett had an answer, and it was from the Load era.

“I think I’ll say it’s the one from Hero of the Day. Every note counts and fits perfectly,” said Hammett. “I feel like everything is in its right place and the solo lifts the song to another level, which I always try to do – even if I’m not always successful. The track has a different level of intensity afterwards.”

Not for nothing, his solo on One, recorded at the 11th hour, would be a contender in our book. It, too, takes the track to a different level of intensity. …And Justice For All is the sound of Hammett in full force.

The Shortest Straw has to be in the conversation, but if pushed, Master Of Puppet’s downtuned doomer, The Thing That Should Not Be would be take home our Palme d’Or, just for the sheer Lovecraftian horror of it, that electric guitar tone – and it’s concise.

Hammett had other solos in contention. Fuel, from Reload, was one. “The solo in Fuel was done on the green Strat from the I Disappear video,” he said. “I love that guitar so much. I still have it; that thing just feels like an old friend. So I really love how that solo came out.”

Unforgiven III, from 2008’s Death Magnetic, was another. But Hammett admits he can’t play it anymore; the recorded is a little out of time and recreating something that’s out of time is too counterintuitive to get his head around.

Hammett bringing up two Load era solos might be where his head is at right now. A couple of weeks ago, Hammett told the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast that he had 767 riffs stockpiled away and that maybe now was the time to revisit a sound that divided opinion.

“It’s interesting, ‘cos nowadays I run into fans and they love that era – they love Load and Reload,” said Hammett. “But when those albums first came out, it was, like, ‘Fuck Load!’ Fuck Reload!’ Fuck Metallica!’ But nowadays we play [Reload song] Fuel and people go nuts.”

Metallica could have packed it all in and walked away after the tragic bus crash that claimed the life of bassist Cliff Burton on 27 September 1986. But they didn’t. They persisted, recruiting Jason Newsted from Flotsam And Jetsam, and putting together the most audacious – perhaps the most brilliant – album of their career.

…And Justice For All was never going to be an easy record. Not for the band. Not for the audience. Even now, it sounds audacious. Never before or since have James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett committed such a hostile electric guitar tone to tape.

With its dense, byzantine arrangements, tricksy time signatures, and a mercilessly bleak atmosphere, …And Justice For All stands as the apogee of Metallica’s musical ambitions – at least as far as thrash metal was concerned.

Their debut album Kill ‘Em All helped inaugurate that art form in the summer of 1983. Ride The Lightning (1984) would widen the canvas, testing the hypothesis that headbanger savagery and a burgeoning appetite for musical progressivism could be held in perfect equilibrium, and two years later, the crystalline front-to-back perfection of Master Of Puppets presented material evidence that this hypothesis would hold true.

…And Justice For All doubled down on all that came before. It had to. And the album’s centre-piece, the anti-war epic One, realigned the stars for Metallica. Alternating between fatalist balladry of the verse and the rhythmically unwieldy riff violence of the chorus, before going full metal jacket on its rat-tat-tat second act, its explosive dynamics shattered the glass ceiling for underground metal bands.

Anything was possible now. In 1990, One even won Metallica their first Grammy for Best Metal Performance, after Jethro Tull famously usurped them the year previous. They broke their own rule, too, and shot a promo video.

But if it was instrumental in finding a wider audience it would do so on Metallica’s terms. One is all kinds of brutal, lyrically and musically. We could see One as the thematic successor to Disposable Heroes, or For Whom The Bell Tolls, or as completing a thrash power ballad trilogy that started with Fade To Black and Welcome Home (Sanitarium).

The song itself was inspired by the catastrophically injured protagonist in Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun, a war veteran who loses his limbs, sight, hearing and speech while his mind remains sharp, wishing for death. Hetfield’s lyrics give him a voice and they could scarcely be darker.

As with all the best ideas in metal, the inspiration for the melody came from Venom, whose B to G chord progression on Buried Alive [from the seminal 1982 album Black Metal] had been stuck in Hetfield’s brain, and he would find a use for it during the opening section for One. The thrash violence came after the fact.

“The kick drum machine-gun part near the end wasn’t written with the war lyrics in mind, it just came out that way,” Hetfield told Guitar World in 2009.

But the most significant modulation on One is not from B to G; it’s from those pristine clean tones those scooped EQ thrash tones courtesy of a Mesa/Boogie Mark C++ head.

By this point, Hetfield was a devotee of the Roland JC-120 Jazz-Chorus, the solid-state combo with onboard chorusing and a credible claim to being the best clean guitar amp of all time.

Would Hammett have used one too? Perhaps. But as he remembers it, in the same Guitar World interview as Hetfield's, the A/DA MP-1 preamp rack module was responsible for his cleans.

“I used an ADA preamp and an A/DA MP-1. It was a programmable digital amp that had tubes in it, with a separate rack-mounted Aphex parametric EQ,” said Hammett. “I remember blending that thing with the Boogies for lead sounds and clean sounds. The clean sound on One was done almost exclusively with the A/DA MP-1.”

Hammett’s guitar for the one sessions was his ESP KH-1, the all black first-generation S-style signature guitar from the brand with the skull-and-crossbones fretboard inlays. When speaking to Mark Agnesi for Gibson TV’s The Collection, Hammett described his KH-1 as a “Flying V in a Strat body” with one particular modification mandated by the demands of performing One live.

“All my ESP guitars have had the same specs ever since 1988 or ’89. It’s just paint jobs. That’s the only thing that changes,” he said. “There’s a slight scallop from like the 17th fret. It’s only so I can do the guitar solo for One. [Laughs] The only reason why it’s scalloped! That’s the only reason why. Nothing else. Because I am not a right-hand [tapping] technique guy.”

And yet on one he is, tapping out a pentatonic arpeggio in the upper registers. Hammett told Guitar World that he might have sweated over his lead parts on One but that tapping came easy. With Ulrich working those double kick drums, the staccato strobes and pyro of it all, how else could he play it?

“The main guitar solo at the end, with the right-hand, Eddie Van Halen-type tapping, came almost immediately,” said Hammett. “That guitar solo was just a breeze; what was going on with the rhythm section in that part of the song was just very, very exciting for me to solo over.”

The other solos, not so easy. Hammett credits Hetfield for inspiring his first solo. It came from a melody the Metallica frontman was playing around with. The clean picked arpeggios in the first solo came from a chord exercise but sounds anything but. As for the solo in the middle of One? Hammett was going to suffer for that. But this was never going to be an easy album.

…And Justice For All had a difficult birth. Mike Clink, who had produced Guns N’ Roses’ incendiary debut, Appetite For Destruction, was in the control room, only to be replaced by returning Master Of Puppets producer Flemming Rasmussen. The finished mix would immediately be controversial on account of Newsted’s bass guitar being all but inaudible.

Speaking to MusicRadar in 2016, Hetfield admitted that a relentless touring schedule, epic sets at high-volume, had fried their hearing and this ultimately affected the mix – especially with Hetfield and Ulrich more involved in the control room.

“I know there’s quite a few people that love that record; there’s a real punchiness to it, and because it’s somewhat progressive, that does fit with it a bit,” said Hetfield. “You can hear things a little better.

“Obviously there’s not much depth to it as far as thickness goes and, you know, it is what it is because that’s Lars and I trying to venture into producing ourselves and discovering… Well, you can tell who produced it because the guitars and the drums and the vocals are really loud.”

The walls were closing in. Metallica were running out of time, and mixed …And Justice For All during their run on the 1988 Monsters Of Rock Tour, where they where sharing a bill with Van Halen, Scorpions, Dokken and German hard-rockers Kingdom Come. Hetfield said this was fine while they were on the East Coast. As the tour ventured westwards it proved to be a logistical nightmare.

“On a day off, Lars and I would fly… well, fly or drive. Most of the times, drive,” he said. “I remember at the time limos were a big deal and it actually had leg room for me.

“Sleeping on an eight-hour drive in a limo to wherever from somewhere in Iowa or wherever when we were mixing this thing in upstate New York. So we were pretty fatigued, ear-fatigued as well. That’s a big factor in it, I think. There’s a lot more high-end and it had to cut through our deaf ears at that point.”

Physically, they were on their feet. Hammett had not yet finished all of his solos and time was of the essence. He, too, had to make the commute back to the Hit Factory in New York to track lead guitars under Rasmussen’s guidance.

“When we were recording that album I really didn’t have as much time to do the solos as I’d wanted to,” said Hammett. “I think we had to leave for the Monsters Of Rock Tour on a Saturday and it was Thursday but we were still recording guitar solos. I can remember showing up at 10 or 11 in the morning and working on solos and that leading to two or three o’clock in the morning the next day. It was just ridiculous: 15 or 16 hours of recording. And I had four or five days of that.”

Monsters Of Rock would have been an occasion to try out some of the new material but only Harvester Of Sorrow made it onto the setlist – which is ironic considering just how much trouble it was giving Hammett. That was one solo that he just couldn’t put away, and Rasmussen was not going to push him for it.

“I was so tired, it was so late at night and my fingers and hands were so fatigued that I had trouble bending a note in key to another note,” said Hammett. “I remember Flemming saying, ‘Okay, just bend it this much. Just bend it a half-step and I’ll take it up with the harmoniser for the other half-step.’ And I remember thinking to myself, ‘Is this really necessary, or can we just stop and do it all over again properly tomorrow?’ But there wasn’t a tomorrow. We had to do it that way.”

That middle section solo to One was still haunting Hammett. “I must have recorded and rerecorded it about 15 million times,” he told Guitar World. “I wanted a middle ground between the really melodic solo at the beginning and the fiery solo at the end.”

He didn’t get it. What he did get was more air miles and more late nights. He finally tracked it on the eve of their performance at the RFK Stadium, in Washington DC, on 10 June. He had the solo, a piece that could sit between the melodic grandeur of One’s first act and the artillery fire of the outro. The Washington show sucked but so what. One was complete.

It would make its live debut on 11 September 1988 at the MTK Stadion, Budapest, Hungary, on the opening night of the Damaged Justice tour, when Metallica, similarly damaged but renewed, would open a new chapter for the band.

…And Justice For All was the ne plus ultra of thrash metal progressivism. There was no way to top it. Maybe this was reason enough for Metallica to seek Bob Rock’s counsel and engineer a box-office refresh of their sound on 1991’s Black Album. But the momentum towards mega-stardom and the conquering of the world’s stadia was gained on the battle to finish One. Just as well. If you are going to perform it live, then you need a big venue with all those flash bombs and pyro going off.

• ...And Justice For All is out now via Rhino/Blackened.

Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett says that the band’s next album could be a return to the style of their late ’90s albums Load and Reload - a style that drummer Lars Ulrich liked to describe as “greasy”.

Speaking in the latest episode of the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast, Hammett responded positively to the idea of Metallica making another record in that vein.

"Who knows?” Hammett said. “We might just say, 'Okay, let's go back to the '90s again.' It's not a bad idea.”

But he added for clarity: “We haven't said that to each other yet.”

Hammett says that the Load and Reload albums have been reassessed in recent years.

“t's interesting, because when Load and Reload came out, there was a lot of derision, there was a lot of backlash.

“It was too much change. We changed our appearance, we changed our sound, we changed the way we recorded.

“I was even playing different guitars and fucking tuning to E flat and listening to a lot of blues and jazz.

“And so all those factors came out on Load and Reload… and [those two albums] are so different from anything that came before it.

“It's interesting, 'cause nowadays I run into fans and they love that era — they love Load and Reload. But when those albums first came out, it was, like, ‘Fuck Load!’ Fuck Reload!’ Fuck Metallica!’ But nowadays we play [Reload song] Fuel and people go nuts.”

In the same interview, Hammett also claims that he has an enormous stockpile of new riffs for the next Metallica album.

"Oh, it's ridiculous, bro,” he says. “Because, okay, let me see how many riffs I have at this point. Okay. Oh, man. All recordings — 767. New ones. New ones, bro!

“Oh God. It is such a nightmare going through this stuff, too. I can't do it. And I'm the one responsible for all of it, and I can't do it.”

He says that the band’s bassist Robert Trujillo helps him sort through the material.

“Rob Trujillo is an extremely patient individual, and he doesn't mind taking on a task like that, and I just shake my head and say, 'God bless you, man! You're my bro. There's a reason why you're so much my bro,' because it's just a lot of material to go through."

Hammett says of his songwriting process: "I've found over the years that the stuff I don't think about is usually the best stuff, because it just comes to me, and if it just comes to me in a natural way, there's kind of like an organic sort of feel to it.

“And so that's how I come up with everything these days. I just sit there with my guitar and see what happens.

“I refuse to work hard on anything. I mean by 'working hard', just like analysing it and trying to see, 'Oh, if I change this note' and 'this has to work with this' — it feels like I'm doing algebra after a while.

"I don't want it. I failed algebra two years in a row. I'm not gonna fucking wanna do algebra when it comes to music. I wanna sit there and see what the universe and the muse sends me.

“And, bro, in the last 10 years I've gotten great results. And all I really have to do, and I do this practically every day, I go, okay, I sit here, clear my mind and start just moving my fingers, moving my hands, and inevitably something comes. And it's a beautiful thing.

“And I feel so blessed and lucky that this is happening, 'cause I'm 62 fucking years old, and a lot of artists, when they're 62 years old, they're winding things down.

“I feel like I'm still fucking climbing the summit, bro. I haven't reached the top of the mountain yet. I still feel like I'm improving and I still have a lot of fricking creative momentum and energy in me, to the point where it's just, like, I'm creating more work for myself.”

Hammett also reveals that he is making more solo music to follow on from his 2022 E.P. Portals.

"Right now I'm just actively getting ideas together,” he says. “And I guess the best way for me to describe it is it's gonna be a fusion of all sorts of styles, but not necessarily a fusion album. It's not jazz fusion…

“All of a sudden I'm writing fucking classical progressions and all of a sudden I'm fucking writing more heavy stuff and all of a sudden I'm writing like a funk thing. I'm like going, 'Okay, I guess this is what it is. This is what it is.' It's a fusion of different styles.

“And it's gonna be a full-length album. There will be vocals, because the songs that I wrote just scream for vocals this time around. So I'm, like, 'Okay.' Who's gonna be doing the vocals? I don't know. I hope I'm not, 'cause I already have too much to do on stage.”

He continues: “It's interesting because I started to read Ancient Greek. And I've been obsessed with a lot of ancient Greek texts.

“Pythagoras, he's the father of fucking musical theory!

“And so there's so much reference to music in the ancient text in regards to rite, ritual and magic, and it's so interesting to me because I see parallels. The Greeks used to use music to augment the rituals, their secret rites. And music was so highly regarded back then.

“And I'm reading all this and I'm shaking my head going, 'Yes, I can see how they would use all this.' 'Cause I firmly believe that if there's any true, real true example of what magic is in this world, it's music, bro.

“Music is magic. Magic is music.

"Music is magic, because all you need to do is sit in front of someone and play an instrument and they're moved by it.

“You have the ability to change the situation in the room by playing music. When people hear certain types of music, they're transformed.

“If you don't think that's magic, what is it? Science. Come on, give me a break. It's more than that. And so I spend a lot of time thinking about stuff like this. Sorry to say!”

Gibson Publishing has launched a 400-page coffee-table book documenting Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett’s epic gear collection, photographing his most famous electric guitars and telling the story behind them.

The Collection: Kirk Hammett is written by MusicRadar alumnus Chris Vinnicombe and features photography from Ross Halfin, including some deep cuts from Halfin’s archive.

And it features a lot of guitars that Metallica fans – not to mention Fleetwood Mac and Gary Moore fans – will be more than familiar worth. Never mind Hammett, the star of the show here is Greeny, the legendary 1959 Les Paul Standard previously owned by the late Peter Green, then the late Gary Moore, and has been owned by Hammett since 2014.

We say owned but Hammett himself will say that he is just its present custodian – a guitar he describes as “his Excalibur”.

Speaking to the Metallica Report podcast in October 2024, he says he is consistently inspired every time he picks it up and plays it.

“Every day she’s really great to me. I play her every day. Riffs fall out of that guitar pretty much every single day,” he said. “I really feel like that guitar was calling for me and I answered the calling. And once that guitar and me got together, great things started to happen for both of us! It’s a magic piece of wood. It’s blessed! It’s beyond words. I can’t even begin to fully describe the guitar’s effect on me.”

Gibson has released a number of Greeny replicas in recent years, offering it as a Kirk Hammett signature guitar from the Custom Shop’s Murphy Lab, as a standard Gibson USA model, and as a more affordable Epiphone model – and Hammett has said that the Epiphone guitar is his favourite of the production runs.

As with Slash’s 2022 book from Gibson Publishing, The Collection: Kirk Hammett follows Hammett’s appearance on GibsonTV, where brought out some of the rarest and most unique pieces in his collection (a signature ESP KH S-style with an actual theremin!?) to show Gibson’s Mark Agnesi.

And having gathered all those guitars together for the shoot, it made sense for Hammett to sit down with Vinnicombe to talk about them, and for Hammett to get Halfin to shoot them for posterity.

“I’ve worked diligently on this curated collection of vintage and modern guitars for the book,” says Hammett. “I feel the book captures the rich history and artistry behind each of these unique and rare instruments.

"Every picture tells a story and thanks to Ross Halfin and his exceptional photography, every picture in this book is worth a million words! This book could not be possible without the help of Gibson, so I’d like to thank them for making my passion for Greeny, and guitars a reality. I hope all of you enjoy this journey as much as I did.”

This being Hammett, there will be a lot of Flying Vs. Besides Greeny, there will be Les Pauls. And there will be some guitars that have lived a full life before coming into Hammett’s possession. We rarely think of Hammett as an SG player a la Tony Iommi or Angus Young and yet that’s what he was using when Metallica tracked Load.

And here, Hammett reveals that he owns the 1961 SG Custom that John Frusciante used to record the breakdown section of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Californication cut Otherside – it’s also in the video for Fortune Faded. Better still, he owns Les Paul’s SG Custom, a true unicorn dual-humbucker version in white that Paul appeared with in publicity photos.

There are more doozies where that came from. Vinnicombe says Hammett has “one of the coolest guitar collections on the planet”. It’s not all electric either; Hammett’s 1964 J-180 Everly Brothers acoustic guitar also makes an appearance.

Gibson president and CEO Cesar Gueikian says the project has been years in the making.

“It was a thrill to put this together and it took a village to get it done!” he says. “I hope everyone appreciates the work that went into this book and enjoys every story behind the guitars.”

The Collection: Kirk Hammett is being offered in three hardback editions: Standard (£129/$149), Deluxe (£249/$299) and Custom (£649), the latter two both signed by Hammett.

The Custom Edition is limited to 300 units worldwide and arrives in a presentation box, measuring 19” x 14.5” and has a lenticular cover. Inside there is a framable print of one of Halfin’s portraits of Hammett, and Axe Heaven mini-replica of the Metallica man’s Flying V, plus a guitar pick tin and COA.

The Deluxe Edition ships in a presentation slipcase decorated with pictures of Greeny, inside which you will find an exclusive 33” by 23” A1 poster and COA.

The Collection: Kirk Hammett is available now. See Gibson for more details.

If there is one Queen song that Metallica’s Kirk Hammett loves above all others, it’s a deep cut from 1980.

The song is Dragon Attack, written by Queen guitarist Brian May for the band’s eighth album, The Game.

“I love that song!” Hammett said. “Brian’s guitar sounds so overly saturated on that song, more so than other songs. It’s like he walked over to his fucking tone booth and just turned it to eleven!”

In a 2024 interview with Total Guitar, Brian May revealed how he was inspired to write Dragon Attack during a “wild time” in Munich when the four members of Queen were regulars at a decadent nightspot known as the Sugar Shack.

“Dragon Attack started off very spontaneously,” May said. “It began with me and Deaky [bassist John Deacon].

“Probably it was more Deaky’s riff that mine, to be honest. But I took hold of it and built it into the song that it became.

“We were in that funk place, but this song has a real kind of rock funk feel. It came out of spontaneity and wanting to play the kind of music which was inspiring us when we would go down to the rock disco after working in Munich every night.

“We used to go to a place called the Sugar Shack, and it was definitely a sort of rock club, a rock dance club if you like.

“Generally they would play Queen music. But when Queen music came on it didn’t work so well - it didn't inspire people to get up and go nuts on the dancefloor, whereas a lot of other things did, songs that had a lot more space in them.

“So what I tried to do with Dragon Attack was make it the kind of track which was going to work in the Sugar Shack. That’s totally what it was about, which was to get girls excited and make boys want to get up and go nuts with them on the dancefloor there.

“So it's very spacious. The song doesn't have the usual kind of rhythm build-up. It's just the riff - bass, drums, guitar. Very open, very stark.”

May added: “The lyric also comes from the Sugar Shack.”

He explained: “The dragons are in the sugar shack. It's about that strange twilight world where where you stay till the lights come on in the morning, and you come out and it's dawn!

“It was a pretty wild time for us, and that's what I attempted to put in the song. It's all about us and the way things were, and the sort of sexy side of the peripherals of rock.”

Dragon Attack was the second track on The Game, following on from the disco-influenced mega-hit single Another One Bites The Dust.

“Dragon Attack was designed to be uniquely a dance track,” May said. “So you have Another One Bites The Dust and Dragon Attack which are both big departures from the way Queen had come up.

“I remember touring after we finished the record, and American radio picked up on those songs. We never expected they would. We thought they would want just the rock tracks. But they picked up on that stuff and it was all over radio!

“Every time we got into a limo or car or a restaurant or whatever, they would be playing those tracks.

“And it's interesting - it was the same time as The Rolling Stones put out Miss You, which is also very funky, very different for them. So there was a whole thing going on - rock was becoming funky for a while. And it worked!”

May reckoned that Dragon Attack and Another One Bites The Dust set the template for Queen’s following album - the controversial Hot Space, which was released in 1982.

As he told Total Guitar: “A lot of people said that the Hot Space album didn't work, but it actually did.

“It brought people to a new place. And it gave birth to Michael Jackson doing his incredible stuff - and later, Michael Jackson inviting Slash to play on a track with him.

“It was that fusion of funk and rock which I think lives with us to this day…”

Metallica rocked the YouTube Theater in Inglewood, California, on Friday night, headlining the Helping Hands Concert and raising money for their All Within My Hands Foundation, and took the opportunity to play fast and loose with their songbook.

Or should that be slow and low with the songbook, because this was an opportunity for Metallica frontman and rhythm guitar kingpin James Hetfield to demonstrate exactly what he meant when he told MusicRadar that the Load and ReLoad era was a time when the thrash pioneers were letting their blues guitar influences show, by reworking Fuel as a slack-tempo’d groover in baritone tuning.

Hetfield’s white Flying V copy, his Gibson Les Paul Custom, and arsenal of ESP signature guitars could sit this one out. Instead, he leaned upon a bona fide MusicRadar favourite, and a notorious purveyor of low-end twang, Danelectro’s ’58 Longhorn Baritone.

Presenting Fuel in a lower register is not something we had on our Metallica bingo card but then over the years the Bay Area behemoths have been full of surprises. The original, tracked a half-step down in Eb, is all high-energy – the music to match the lyrics. In baritone tuning, it sounds more Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Maybe this was how they wanted to do it all along.

“On Load and ReLoad we tried to get a little looser, a little bluesier,” said Hetfield in 2009. “Greasy is the word. I love to riff, to down-pick, alternate-pick, gallop… That’s what I’ve always wanted to do.”

With Hetfield working this muscular redux of Duane Eddie’s electric guitar tone, clearly Kirk Hammett wanted to get in on the twang, choosing a Fender Esquire. We’d have expected him to play “Greeny”, his 1959 Les Paul Standard, previously owned by Peter Green and Gary Moore. Or maybe his factory black 1959 Les Paul Standard. But the twang was the thang and the tone was on the money.

The performance was streamed via YouTube, but there is some cool fan footage that captures the reworked Fuel. The band was joined by San Francisco-based multi-instrumentalist Avi Vinocur, who also played on a rare performance of The Unforgiven II, which hadn’t been played live for nine years, and on ReLoad deep cut Low Man’s Lyric – that really is a rarity. The last time that was played for an audience was 1998.

That one had not been played since 2015. Though, in fairness, we can’t remember being at too many Metallica shows where the crowd has been crushing cans of beer on their foreheads and baying for Low Man’s Lyric.

There were more guests. Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam joined them for Kill ‘Em All rager Hit The Lights. Master Of Puppets closed the set. Delivered straight-up. No messing around.

Kirk Hammett invited Gibson’s Mark Agnesi into his home to show off some of his favourite electric guitars in his collection, and it might just be the best episode of GibsonTV’s The Collection yet, and like Slash, Metallica’s lead guitar maverick is documenting it all in a forthcoming book.

There are some astonishing vintage instruments on show, such as his 1958 Les Paul Standard, custom ordered in transparent Cherry before Gibson even shipped guitars in Cherry. “That is definitely something that’s rare,” says Hammett. “The popular term at the at the moment is ‘unicorn.’”

It’s in mint condition and it is exquisite. Hammett’s ’52 Gold Top with P-90s and a trapeze tailpiece is not very practical for his day job on stage with James Hetfield and co, but it is a beauty. And as eBay purchases go, they don't get any better than that.

And there are some great revelations in the interview too, like the fact that ESP has made him one of his KH-1 signature guitars with an onboard theremin that has a telescopic antenna that allows him to play guitar and operate the theremin at the same time. He has yet to play it in public but we live in hope that he does, or at least uses it in the studio.

Some of these guitars are studio guitars, and many of them he wants to use in the studio, to “document their sound” on a Metallica record. Some have already done so, such as Greeny, the 1959 Les Paul Standard once owned by and named after Peter Green, that was subsequently owned by the late blues-rock icon Gary Moore, and has been in Hammett’s possession since 2014.

Buying Greeny has been a life-changing event for Hammett; he uses it live, in the studio. He says it is “the ultimate player’s guitar”. But here Hammett reveals that he owns a 1958 Les Paul Standard that was previously owned by Moore, that Moore said sounded even better than Greeny. Hammett is not so sure about that. He'd still go for Greeny but that's no shade on this one.

“This was his other guitar, which, funnily enough, he went on record to say that this was a better-sounding guitar than Greeny,” says Hammett. “But I think Gary was just bored of Greeny, maybe, and was just wanting something new to play – because he had Greeny for 25 years or something.”

As Hammett has learned, buying golden era Les Paul Standards is like waiting for the bus, you wait for ages and then two come along one right after the other. And after buying Greeny, Hammett couldn’t pass on this one.

“Well, I am a big Gary Moore fan, and I already have Greeny! My friend said he had it and I said, ‘Send it over!’ I plugged it in and of course I fell in love it with,” says Hammett.

It was appropriate that this episode of The Collection went live on Halloween, not least because Hammett is a massive horror fan but he, as a working musician, uses these vintage instruments as tools, and the collector community at large might not approve of some of the measures he has had to take during the course of a working day.

Some nervous viewers might require the fainting couch at the sight of all that blue electrical tape around this ’58 Les Paul’s output jack.

“I can tell that this has been in the studio with me because when I am really desperate to record and I am in a hurry, I will do anything to get the job done!” says Hammett. “No [that tape] is not factory, and it was not put there by Gary Moore. [Laughs] Something was probably happening with the jack, and I was impatient, ‘Gimme some tape. I’ll put the jack in and we’ll record the track.’

“We recorded the track. I was happy. I took the guitar off and put it in the case, without taking the tape off, and the tape is still on there now. And I apologise because that’s probably going to make people mad.”

“But you’re using it,” says Agnesi. “You use the damn thing!”

“Also, when I see this, I’m thinking, ‘Well it’s kinda messed up theres blue tape on a really, really cool Les Paul, but at the same time it’s part of its story,” reasons Hammett. “I’ll leave it on there for now. But Gary used this, and recorded a bunch of singles on this guitar, and it’s really, really great. It’s got a buzzy sort of sound to it. Add some gain and it’s got this weird kind of chainsaw distortion that I love – and this is the only one that I have that sounds like that, and so of course I feel in love with it and had to have it, and it has been played a lot.”

You can see more of Hammett’s guitar collection in the video above, and in the forthcoming deluxe coffee table book that will be published via Gibson on 29 November. You can sign up for pre-order info as and when it drops at Gibson.

In the latest edition of The Metallica Report podcast, the band’s lead guitarist Kirk Hammett talks about the inspirational qualities of the famous guitar that came into his possession 10 years ago - the 1959 Les Paul Standard named after its former owner Peter Green, who sold it on to another legendary player, Gary Moore.

“I’m having a long running love affair with a guitar called Greeny,” Kirk says. “Every day she’s really great to me. I play her every day. Riffs fall out of that guitar pretty much every single day.

“I love that guitar! Somebody said about three years ago - they pointed at me and pointed at Greeny - and said, ‘That’s your Excalibur!’ And you’re absolutely right - it is my Excalibur. I really feel like that guitar was calling for me and I answered the calling. And once that guitar and me got together, great things started to happen for both of us! It’s a magic piece of wood. It’s blessed! It’s beyond words. I can’t even begin to fully describe the guitar’s effect on me.”

Kirk goes on to describe his role as custodian of this unique instrument. “People have known about that guitar longer than I’ve known about it,” he says, “and that’s not a guitar that is content to be in any kind of retirement situation. That guitar has gone through Peter Green and Gary Moore and now it’s come to me.

"I’ve played it on the last two Metallica albums and I’ll continue to play it. And when people say, ‘Can I play Greeny? Can I take a picture of it?’ Absolutely! Cos who am I to deny them? It’s the people’s guitar! I just came into the situation as a caretaker.”

If Michael Schenker is to be believed in our new interview, he hasn't actively listened to music by other artists in over 50 years. Still, it's hard to avoid radio and television, and once in a while the German guitar icon will hear things – including self-confessed Schenker fans Metallica.

“Do I ever listen to Metallica and hear my own licks? Not intentionally," he tells us, "But I’ve accidentally heard amazing songs by Metallica like The Unforgiven. They're a fantastic band." That Black Album song features one of Kirk Hammett's finest solos, and Hammett has never been shy in namechecking Schenker as an inspiration. So what does the former Scorpions and UFO man hear his influence?

"I think Kirk is very good at the classical stuff," Schenker tells us. "It’s maybe not so much to my taste when he plays electric lead guitar… 

“To my ears, it sounds like me when I was 15 years old, when I was playing on [Scorpions debut] Lonesome Crow," he adds. "People who copy that particular style will sound a little undeveloped because my vibrato wasn’t right. But some people liked how I played early on and copied that style. When I listen back to what I did now, it feels like a very different stage of my development to where I am today. It took me years to develop a more natural vibrato and get my guitar to sing the way I like it!"

The theme of reflecting on his own progression is something the guitarist touches on elsewhere in the chat. “If I listen back to my recordings from the beginning of my career, they almost sound undeveloped, you know?" notes Schenker. "It’s easier when there’s nothing to compare to. A vintage car that once really stuck out won’t be able to compete with the cars made today.”

Schenker's new album My Years With UFO – released 20 September as part of a new three-album deal with earMUSIC – sees the guitarist revisiting his seminal '70s era, this time with a host of special guests including not only Slash, but surprisingly his bandmate Axl Rose too.  

“It’s a bit of a coincidence, just like everything else," says Schenker of the coup in securing the elusive vocalist. "Life is all about circumstances. Slash came into the studio in Frankfurt for recording. While he was getting ready, he told me that he’d mentioned the collaboration to Axl Rose and Axl said ‘I want to sing on this album too!’ So I told Slash to help make it happen.  

Slash obliged. 

“In the end, Axl ended up singing three songs – Too Hot To Handle, Only You Can Love Me and Love To Love – but he didn’t like his performances on the first two, so we decided to just focus on the latter," Schenker reveals. "He did a fantastic version of that song, I really like how he sang it. All of the musicians on this album are fans and friends. It’s like I did for them what Led Zeppelin did for me. And it keeps going. Guns N’ Roses ended up doing things for the next generation. It’s a very natural thing.”

Check out the full interview with Michael Schenker and preorder the new album My Years With UFO, here. 

Some years are watershed moments in musical history, and 1991 was one of them. It was the year that grunge broke and that hair metal was given a shove out of the mainstream. It was also the year that Metallica released Metallica. Forever known as The Black Album, it was the record that capitalised on the success of their previous release, And Justice For All, and established the San Francisco quartet as the biggest metal band in the world.

Although it featured five hit singles – Nothing Else Matters, The Unforgiven, Sad But True, Wherever I May Roam and Enter Sandman – it was the latter that really caught the public’s imagination, reaching No. 5 in the UK chart. 

“It’s a riff and a song title pretty much,” James Hetfield revealed on a 1991 documentary about the genesis of the band’s songwriting process. “Especially since this time we’re doing the simpler tunes. One of the songs is like two riffs in the whole song with different singing over it, which is pretty cool.”

He’s talking about Enter Sandman. With its doomy, clean-picked minor-key riff, haunting lyric and massive sound, it was the track that set the template for the rest of The Black Album, both in sound and in atmosphere. 

Getting Bob Rock in as producer was key to Metallica’s maturing sound. The aptly named Rock was the man behind both Mötley Crüe’s Dr Feelgood, The Cult’s Sonic Temple, and he had mixed Bon Jovi’s massive Slippery When Wet and New Jersey albums. At first glance he was not necessarily the best bedfellow for a Bay Area thrash band, but as drummer Lars Ulrich explained Metallica had “not been too happy with any of the mixes on the last three albums, and we thought one of the best-sounding albums we’d heard in the last few years was Dr Feelgood. Bob seemed to be able to bring out the best in whatever bands he was working with”.

And he certainly did with Metallica. Decamping to One On One Recording Studios in North Hollywood, Rock insisted on the band playing together in one room instead of recording their parts individually.

“Originally, I was doing all the rhythms in the studio – the right speaker, the left speaker. It was a giant wall of guitar on every album until The Black Album,” Hetfield told Total Guitar later in 1999. “I played pretty much all of it except for solos. There was a lot of colouring, whether it was little hits or harmony guitars. Kirk would come in and do all the ripping stuff, which is out of my league.

“Before then I used to work on the rhythm with Lars without Kirk and Jason,” he continued. “That time we played as a band in the studio, and it gave us much more of a vibe. We were able to watch each other. That helped a lot, especially with some of the bass and lead stuff.”

Enter Sandman was the first song they began work on, born from a riff that Kirk Hammett brought in. “The riff that’s on the record and the way it exists today is not really the way he wrote it,” Ulrich relates on the Classic Albums documentary. Kirk’s initial idea was the first five-note refrain morphing straight into the power chord breakdown. But by chopping and repeating the first clean riff, and doubling it up on the bass, Sandman as we know it was born.

In 2023, the band appeared on Howard Stern's SiriusXM show and elaborated on how Hammett's 3 am riff idea morphed into the hook we know today, with some input from Lars Ulrich.

"He came up to me and said repeat the first part three times and then play the chords afterward," recalled Hammett. "So I said, 'Ok'". 

The drummer's role in songwriting for the band is often overlooked by those seeking to highlight perceived shortcomings in his drumming, but by James Hetfield's own admission, it was he and Lars who were the primary songwriters and arrangers for much of Metallica's history. It's only on recent album 72 Seasons that really began to change and the duo were more open to Hammett and current bassist Rob Trujillo's ideas. 

"Lars doesn't know how to play guitar and he will arrange stuff and he'll just say, 'Hey can't you do that thing in another key'", Hetfield told Stern – elaborating on Ulrich's role in Enter Sandman's writing. "Something that I wouldn't do, like Sandman for instance [plays Enter Sandman's arpeggiated clean part] and it changed the key. It's like, 'I wouldn't do that [usually], I can't pick that. Then it  would be a challenge, 'Ok, I can do that.' So there's a lot of pushing of each other. Same with drum stuff too."

Ah yes, we nearly forgot Mr Hetfield plays drums as well as everything else he's good at. "The main thing, thankfully with this bunch of guys, is when we go into a songwriting situation we leave our egos outside and it's not, 'It's my guitar – don't tell me what to play' or 'Oh, I'm the drummer – stay away,'" Ulrich told Stern.

"James will help out this part, help out that part –'Why don't you try on the toms'", added the Dane. "Of course! And I'll throw things back to James, 'Why don't you try a different key, why don't you down pick it or try galloping it, chugs instead of double-picking'… or whatever. There's that freedom because of trust, and when there's the trust, there's the love. Then you know there's nothing that's gonna happen by getting in everybody's stuff that's gonna affect the relationships, and that's a great thing."

Outside the band and despite initial resistance from the band to Bob Rock’s fearlessness at telling them what to do, the results swiftly had the band on-side. “We tried to expand every sound to the max,” remembered Rock. “We tried to get the guitars as big as possible, the bass as big as possible, the drums... You know, big and weighty.”

Metallica weren't initially enthused by the prospect of playing in one room. “They thought it was a lot of work,” Rock told Mix magazine, “and they didn’t understand it. This was the only way I knew how to make a record. To me, it was about capturing the feel that they wanted. I thought there was just this weight and size and heaviness in them that I never caught on their other records. 

"I’m not saying it wasn’t there," added Rock. "I think Kirk had the hardest time with it because he had to play solos for each take. But when it came time to do the solos, we listened to everything off the floor, and he got a lot of his ideas for his solos off of those.”

The producer also explained to MusicRadar in a track-by-track interview on the Black Album about how his fearless approach extended to Jason Newsted's bass approach and the prickly subject of Hetfield's lyrical themes.

“On Sandman, I asked Jason to play more like a bass player and less like a guitarist," he reflected. "Put that with the new perspective Lars had on drums and we had a song with a killer groove.

“At first, based on the music and the riff, the band and their management thought it could be the first single. Then they heard James’ lyrics and realised the song was about crib death. That didn’t go over well.

“I sat down with James and talked to him about his words. I told him, ‘What you have is great, but it can be better. Does it have to be so literal?’ Not that I was thinking about the single; I just wanted him to make the song great. It was a process, him learning to say what he wanted but in a more poetic and open sort of way. He rewrote some lyrics and it was all there… the first single.”

In those days, both Hetfield and Hammett were primarily ESP men onstage, but guitars including a Telecaster, Danelectro/Coral electric sitar and Gretsch White Falcon were employed for various clean parts throughout the album. Hammett would go on to buy some iconic Gibson models later, but already had an armoury at his disposal in the early '90s. 

Hetfield used a ESP MX-220 and MX-250 with active EMG 81 (bridge) and 60 (neck) humbucker pickups. This Explorer-esque shape was later renamed the EXP but would be discontinued due to Gibson's objections. Hammett, meanwhile favoured guitars including his (since sold) ESP Custom Shop KH-2 Ouija Board, 1989 black Gibson Les Paul Custom alongside a '61 Strat for cleans and ESP Les Paul-jr style guitar with EMG pickup. 

For the Black Album sessions there was a lot of guitar track layering involved, but Hetfield returned to his old favourite 'Crunch Berries' amp that's still a mainstay to this day.  “We tried a bunch of amps, but I ended up using the same Mesa/Boogie Simulclass Mark II [C++] that I've used on the last three albums," he told Guitar World in 1991. "In Los Angeles there are a million amps you can try out, but none of them were up to snuff. 

“Bob also brought in a bunch of crappy-looking vintage amps," added Hetfield. "We gave everything a shot and ended up with the same old shit. [Laughs] I must admit, though, it was a lot of fun trying out all those little '60s and '70s amps – they really sounded unique."

But it seems there was more to Hetfield's rig for the album than he was letting on in 1991. Engineer Randy Staub elaborated to Mix that there were more elements to the signal chain than the tried and true Crunch Berries: “We ended up building this huge guitar cabinet for him,” Staub remembered. “It might have had an old Marshall head, and that would be just one part of the sound. I think his standard setup was this Mesa/Boogie head and then all these other amps were there to fill in the sonic picture. It would generally have a scooped kind of tone.

"I think we had nine or 11 cabinets, Staub added. "Some stacked on top of each other, some on the floor, some baffled off from each other – and then we’d get this huge tent around this pile of cabinets curtained because as we were getting James’ guitar sound, he kept saying, ‘I want it to have more crunch!’”

Hammett's rig was a pricier affair. "I used a [Bob] Bradshaw preamp for the lows and mids, and a couple of Marshalls for the nice clean highs," he told Guitar World. "We EQ'ed it through the board a little bit, and it worked out great."

Neither is a sound the band can simply recreate live – which is perhaps one reason they've leaned into the use of the Fractal Audio Axe-Fx for Mesa and Diezel-inspired models in more recent years.

My live sound does not work in the studio, which is a completely different animal," Hetfield told Guitar World in 1991. "Every little thing is detrimental to the sound. And if someone moves a mic, you've lost it. It's pretty much a case of ‘lock the door and set up a police line.’”

Epiphone Kirk Hammett "Greeny" 1959 Les Paul Standard: What is it?

When we think of mythical creatures, a few immediately jump to mind: the Basilisk, Chimera, Banshee, Griffin and, of course, the fabled '59 Gibson Les Paul. Now, unlike those other folklore legends, you can actually get your hands on Gibson's most sought-after singlecut – you just require friends in high places and a small fortune at your fingertips. 

As far as "bursts" go, we'd argue that "Greeny" is the most famous example of them all. This beat-up '59 Les Paul has not only been owned by one high-profile artist, but three! 

The guitar was initially purchased by blues guitarist extraordinaire Peter Green – that's where the Greeny nickname comes from – in the '60s. The legendary instrument would then go on to be used by Green extensively while performing with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers as well as Fleetwood Mac. Gary Moore purchased the guitar from Green in the '70s, and the guitar's legend continued, being used to record the iconic solo of Parisienne Walkways and throughout the Irish guitarist's long career. 

Jumping to 2014, and Metallica shredder-in-chief Kirk Hammett would become the new custodian of Greeny – reportedly spending a cool $2,000,000 for the privilege. Hammett can be seen putting the vintage Les Paul through its paces on tour and in the studio to this day. 

Now, as you expect, Gibson has paid tribute to this historic guitar countless times, with the most recent versions including a £19,599 Custom Shop iteration and the more affordable £3,130 version from Gibson USA – but for the first time, Greeny has been given the Epiphone treatment, and that's what we're going to look at today.

Featuring the same Gibson USA Greenybucker pickups found in the Gibson Standard version, a long neck tenon, Switchcraft switch and output jacks, CTS potentiometers, Mallory capacitors, Grover Rotomatic tuners, mother-of-pearl inlays and Gibson's "open-book" headstock, Epiphone has pushed the boat out for their tribute to the most iconic Les Paul of all time – but does it deserve the £1,499 price tag? Let's find out. 

Epiphone Kirk Hammett "Greeny" 1959 Les Paul Standard: Performance and verdict

Aesthetics and features

Lifting the lid on the appropriately retro brown case, we were greeted with a rather striking-looking Les Paul. The sunny yellow hue of the body and the tight pinstripe flame top veneer looks every bit as good as we'd hoped. Travelling up the neck, which is peppered with real mother-of-pearl inlays – as opposed to pearloid, typically used on Epiphone instruments – and you get to the open-book headstock, which proudly displays the Epiphone logo. 

The Gibson-inspired headstock will always divide opinion – but this isn't the first time Epiphone has used this design. It was most notably used on a few sought-after Japanese exports. I'll be the first to admit that I don't usually like this headstock style on an Epiphone instrument – not because I feel it should be reserved for Gibson models, but because I think the Epiphone moniker can sometimes look too large for this design. 

That said, after living with the guitar for several weeks, it's something I quickly got used to – and it's certainly a feature that sets the guitar apart from other models in the vast Epiphone catalogue. 

Moving on to the finish, and Epiphone states that it's an aged gloss, but in reality, it feels like a full satin affair – which isn't a bad thing by any means. The finish is smooth and feels particularly good on the neck. So, if you were put off by the thick, over-glossy finishes Epiphone is guilty of using in the past, we think you'll be pleasantly surprised with the approach they have taken with this model – we certainly were. 

Playability and tone 

Okay, so this Epiphone looks the part, but how does it play? In a nutshell, pretty damn well. The neck opts for the Custom Greeny Profile, which, despite being based on a '59 Les Paul, is pretty slim – even slimmer than our own trusty '60s reissue Gibson Les Paul Standard. This made the guitar easy to navigate and ideal for shredding our best pentatonic blues runs. 

We are happy to report that the fretwork was on point, and there were no set-up-related issues to report. Straight out of the box, the guitar's action was nice and low, and there were no dead spots or sharp fret ends to speak of. If we were to nitpick, we'd expect the frets to be polished to a more glistening shine – especially at this price point – but we can live with them how they are. 

There was just something so inviting about the feel of this guitar. The satin finish on the back of the neck, coupled with the slight profile, definitely helped create a lightning-fast neck that was a joy to hold – in fact, I don't think I've had so much fun playing an Epiphone guitar in a very long time. 

The tonal heart of the Epiphone Greeny is a set of Gibson USA pickups. This model makes use of the Greenybucker set, which is present in this guitar's flashy big brother from the Gibson USA factory - and yes, just like the original guitar, the neck pickup is reversed mounted and utilises reverse magnetic polarity to achieve Peter Green's legendary middle position tone. 

This guitar sounded incredible – and may just be the best-sounding modern Epiphone I've ever played. Now, Gibson has made many versions of their historic PAF pickups, but this particular iteration isn't simply another attempt at capturing the general essence of the pickups of the late '50s, but instead a courageous shot at mimicking the exact pickups in Peter Green's original electric guitar. Featuring asymmetrical coil windings and Alnico 2 magnets, these unpotted humbuckers are as close as you'll get to nailing the mythical sound of that famed '59 Les Paul. 

In the neck position, the tone was thick, creamy and buttery, with a smooth attack and plenty of note definition. Flick the switch to engage the bridge pickup, and you'll be greeted with a bright, snappy tone that sounds every bit as good covered in copious amounts of distortion as it does laid bare with a sparse, clean tone. 

Of course, in the middle position, you'll gain access to Peter Green's instantly recognisable out-of-phase tone. With both pickups engaged, the guitar is notably thinner, with a nasal quality that cuts like a knife. 

It's fair to say we were mighty impressed with these pickups, and with the set being available to purchase directly from Gibson for £319, it's got us wondering if our Les Paul Standard is due an upgrade. 

Verdict

There's a lot to love about the Epiphone Kirk Hammett "Greeny" 1959 Les Paul Standard. This collaboration between Epiphone and the Gibson Custom Shop has resulted in a stellar guitar that both companies can be proud of. With effortless playability and the credentials to absolutely nail those iconic Peter Green, Gary Moore and Kirk Hammett tones, this Les Paul is one of the best Epiphone guitars we've played in a very long time. 

That said, there's still the pesky question about the price. Is £1,499 too much for an Epiphone? The argument that gets levelled towards this pricey tribute guitar is that you could just buy the Epiphone 1959 Les Paul Standard and a set of the Gibson Greenybucker pickups and save a couple of hundred pounds – but really, you won't get the same guitar. Sure, it would certainly be close, but the spec sheets won't line up perfectly. 

It could be argued that you'd be better off spending your money on the newer Gibson Modern Lite, which comes in at the same £1,499 price tag. That way, you'd get an American-made instrument with Gibson on the headstock. But again, if you are looking for the Greeny specs, you won't be getting anywhere close to them with that modernised singlecut – you’d need to jump up to the USA Standard Greeny which will set you back around £3,000. 

So, yes, this Les Paul is more expensive than many of the other models in the current Epiphone lineup. Still, whether the long neck tenon, real mother-of-pearl inlays, Grover machine heads, open-book headstock, and a vintage-style hard case are worth the extra cash is still up for debate – but it can't be denied that Epiphone has made a stunning guitar that more delivers on playability and tone. 

MusicRadar verdict: This collaboration between Epiphone and the Gibson Custom Shop has resulted in a stellar guitar that both companies can be proud of. With effortless playability and the credentials to absolutely nail those iconic Peter Green, Gary Moore and Kirk Hammett tones, this Les Paul is one of the best Epiphone guitars we've played in a very long time.

Epiphone Kirk Hammett "Greeny" 1959 Les Paul Standard: The web says

"It’s quite simply the best-quality-level Epiphone Les Paul we’ve had in our hands and, to be honest, a considerably better proposition than some of Gibson USA’s low-end models. There’s some excellent craft here, a great finish and plenty of sounds to explore."
Guitar World

Epiphone Kirk Hammett "Greeny" 1959 Les Paul Standard: Hands-on demos

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Epiphone Kirk Hammett "Greeny" 1959 Les Paul Standard: Specifications

• Body Style: Les Paul
• Body Material: Mahogany
• Top: Maple with AAA Flame Maple Veneer
• Body Finish: Aged Gloss
• Neck: Mahogany (Long Tenon)
• Neck Profile: Custom Greeny Profile
• Frets: 22 Medium Jumbo
• Inlays: Mother of Pearl Trapezoid
• Nut Width: 43.0 mm / 1.692 in
• Bridge: Epiphone Tune-O-Matic
• Tailpiece: LockTone Stop Bar
• Tuning Machines: Grover Rotomatic with Spade Button
• Bridge Pickup: Gibson USA Greenybucker
• Controls: 2 Volume, 2 Tone, 50s Wiring, CTS Potentiometers, Mallory Capacitors
• Case: Vintage-style Hardshell with Tan Exterior, Pink Interior, and Custom Artwork
• CONTACT: Epiphone

NAMM 2024: NAMM 2024. Gibson has announced its latest collaboration, with Kirk Hammett with Nashville-based brand’s Custom Shop unveiling a stunning replica of the Metallica lead guitarist’s “blacked out” 1989 Les Paul Custom.

This heavily modded Les Paul Custom is fresh from the Murphy Lab, where Tom Murphy’s team has meticulously reproduced all the wear and battle scars on the original electric guitar. 

This is a Les Paul Custom for sure – there’s the block inlays, the split-diamond headstock detail, seven-ply binding on the body’s top, five-ply on the bottom and headstock, and a bound fingerboard tying the whole thing together. But this is a Les Paul Custom that has been through the mill, and has been augmented by Hammett over the years.

You’ll notice that the hardware is not regulation LP Custom colour. It has been swapped out for black hardware, with Grover Rotomatic tuners with kidney bean buttons on the headstock. 

The bridge, too, is worthy of closer inspection. Like the Jerry Cantrell Wino Les Paul Custom, this model has been fitted with a Fishman Powerbridge, giving players a piezo acoustic voicing to complement the two humbuckers.

Inside the guitar case you’ll find a COA and some more hardware options, with a set of black Schaller S-Lock locking strap buttons inside should you choose to fit them. And there’s the standard five-ply black Les Paul Custom pickguard in there, too. The body has already been drilled for it.

Hammett’s 1989 Custom is fitted with a pair of T-type humbuckers, both have been left uncovered. There is a 498T at the bridge position and a 490R at the neck, with the usual dual volume controls for both pickups, plus a master tone and a volume pot for the Fishman Powerbridge piezo system. Speaking of which, that is powered by a 9V battery that is secreted out of the way in the control cavity.

Elsewhere, you’ve got a SlimTaper neck, a solid mahogany body with a maple cap, and there’s a long neck tenon helping that neck join the body. There’s also no weight relief here so do avail yourself of a generously proportioned guitar strap. 

The nut is Corian. The ebony fingerboard has a 12” radius, with Reissue fret-wire used for the reproduction job. Other details are as you’d expect, e.g. the 24.75” scale length, the 42.85mm nut, the Black Speed knobs for the controls.

The Kirk Hammett 1989 Les Paul Custom ships in a Gibson Deluxe Protector guitar case, and a good thing, too. At $8,999 this is one high-end electric guitar. For more details, see Gibson.

Kirk Hammett has been responsible for some of metal guitar’s most incendiary guitar solos, with his hyper-kinetic style, laced with the squawk of wah pedal, as good as a thumbprint in recognising a Metallica song. But Hammett has news for anyone who thinks this is the be all and end all – he says most people will forget them.

In a recent interview with Total Guitar, Hammett said it was one thing for guitarists to obsess over their solos but only fellow musicians and guitar players are really going to remember them.

“People are not going to remember a great guitar solo,” he said. “I hate to say it for all your readers out there. They will remember a great melody. They will remember a great song. And I am not talking about musicians. Yeah, musicians will remember a great guitar solo but non-musicians, who are the majority of the fucking listening world, they are not going to remember guitar solos.”

What everyone else wants – what the rest of the world wants – says Hammett, are hooks, melodies, and songs, and the more transformative the better. 

“Yeah, they are gonna helluva remember a great melody and they’re really gonna remember a great song,” he added, “especially a song that’s gonna bring them to a different place from where they were five minutes previously.”

But does he have a point? He did not say that people did not enjoy solos, did not enjoy them being performed, but only that they would not remember them, not like the legions of players who have followed in Hammett’s footsteps and tried to bring a little bit of his fire to their own lead style.

Metallica’s 72 Seasons brought a sea change in how Metallica operated. When it came time to track his solos, Hammett would take the song, tracking dozens of solos all written off-the-cuff, and then send them to drummer Lars Ulrich and producer Greg Fidelman to pick the best. 

He had done this before but never on this scale. His guiding principles were classic British blues-rock players – all of them – but also, and especially, AC/DC’s Angus Young.

“I wanted the solos to be more ‘70s rock solos, or in a nutshell, Angus Young!” he said. “Because I love Angus’ groove, and over the last couple of years or so I have found a bigger appreciation of his playing because Angus always plays for the song. Some of his solos are crazy and wacky and out there but they always, always are in that context of the song, and it never, ever sounded like Angus worked anything out. It sounded like he just went in there and went for it, and so that’s what I did.”

And you can hear exactly what Hammett is talking about on tracks such as Shadows Fall, where he takes a rhythm-lead approach with double-stops, or on Crown Of Barbed Wire, which in a sense circles back to what Hammett was talking about with the melody, because for all the improvisational intent behind these solos he does return to the leitmotifs of his signature style, one of which is referencing the song’s melody in his lead guitar. Or then there are other occasions when he walks the solo off the edge of the fretboard. 

“I had to do it this way because it was how I felt inside,” he said. “I wanted spontaneity. I didn’t want picture perfect solos because some of my favourite players’ solos were kind of rag-tag and I love that.”

Hammett has also admitted that he couldn’t remember some of his solos on 72 Seasons, which might well give him the permission he needs to mix them up each night and embellish them. Something that he can’t do on classic Metallica material, such as Master Of Puppets – a solo he confesses that he is “freaking bored” of performing note-for-note.

But that may well be because people remember it, musician or non-musician, Stranger Things fan or not. That the Master Of Puppets solo – one of metal’s great, unimpeachable solos – became a breakout pop-cultural phenomenon in its own right after the Netflix show’s success is perhaps evidence that Hammett underestimates the guitar solo’s reach, or evidence at least that a great solo, and the song that hosts it, are one in the same, inseparable when it is all done right.

You can read the full interview with Kirk Hammett in the latest issue of Total Guitar.

After some high-profile sightings in the wild, on Gibson big boss Cesar Gueikian’s Instagram page and at a Metallica stadium show in Detroit, Epiphone has officially launched its replica of Kirk Hammett’s ‘Greeny’ 1959 Les Paul Standard – and it is one for the ages.

These top-tier Epiphone signature guitars are big news in and of themselves, offering pro-quality specs and closing the distance between their entry-level Gibson USA counterparts. But Hammett’s Greeny takes things one step further by debuting an actual Gibson USA headstock on an Epiphone build. You might even call it a Gibson in all but name; and the spec and the price would back that up.

At £/$1,499 street, Hammett’s new Greeny is marginally more expensive than, say, a Gibson Les Paul Tribute. But you get a lot of guitar for your money. This comes equipped with Gibson USA Greenybuckers, with the reverse-mounted neck pickup’s reverse polarity magnet allowing players to access those those out-of-phase sounds from the pickup selector’s middle position. It is a big part of what makes the original so distinctive.

Following the super-limited edition Custom Shop models, then a Gibson USA version, this presents Greeny to a wider audience than ever before, which is in keeping with Hammett’s whole philosophy with the instrument.

Famously owned by and taking its name from the late Peter Green, then owned by the late Gary Moore, Hammett bought the famous ‘Burst in 2014 and made a point of playing it all the time. It is the electric guitar he plays the most. The people deserve to hear it played, he said. Now they are able to get their hands on one.

“I think Greeny is a guitar of the people and this is an amazing opportunity for more players to experience the spirit of Greeny,” said Hammett.

The project was a two-hander between the Gibson Custom Shop and Epiphone. The level of detail extends to the mismatched control pots, the aged gloss lacquer on the Greeny Burst finish, the original brown hard-shell guitar case with pink interior, but is especially trained on the essentials, such as the Custom Greeny Profile neck. You want this to feel like the original, too.

Mat Koehler, Gibson’s VP of product, says that Hammett was involved at all stages of the build, and has some good news for those who have been waiting to see Gibson open-book headstocks on high-end Epiphone models. They are coming...

“It was extremely important for him that we get it right,” said Koehler. “I know that we’ve done him proud because he couldn’t – and still can’t – stop playing the prototype. Our Epiphone and Gibson Custom Shop teams are continually collaborating and elevating materials and ideas, and our forthcoming Inspired by Gibson Custom Shop-level Epiphone models will also feature the open-book Gibson headstock shape. This version of ‘Greeny’ is undeniable, and we couldn’t be more excited to bring it to market.”

As for the fundamentals, we have a solid mahogany body with a AAA flame maple veneer, a mahogany neck that’s glued to the body with a long tenon. Single-ply cream binding is applied to the body’s top and fingerboard.

The fingerboard is Indian laurel and has a 12” radius as you might expect. The scale length is 24.75”. There are 22 medium jumbo frets, mother of pearl trapezoid inlays, and there is an Epiphone LockTone Tune-O-Matic bridge and tailpiece. Another point of difference?Those Grover Rotomatics with the nickel spade-style buttons.

As per other premium Epiphone signature models – see Bonamassa, Joe, and his 1963 SG Custom – there are premium components throughout, with Switchcraft output jacks and pickup selectors, CTS pots and Mallory capacitors. The wiring loom draws upon the ‘50s blueprint. 

And that is what this guitar is all about. It’s a high-end replica of Gibson’s holy grail 1959 Les Paul Standard, but one that passed through the ownership of two late blues and rock icons, got modded along the way, and has ultimately ended up in Kirk Hammett’s collection.

You can now add it to your own. The Kirk Hammett ‘Greeny’ Les Paul Standard is available now. See Epiphone for more details.

Cesar Gueikian can't resist a cheeky Instagram reveal – as early as last week (16 November) Gibson's CEO was revealing the Epiphone Inspired by Gibson Custom Kirk Hammett Les Paul Greeny guitar on his Instagram account, playing Black Album riffs Wherever I May Roam and Sad But True. Oh, and he was doing it through a prototype Mesa/Boogie Mark 7 (with what could be an Adam Jones Silverburst Flying V peaking just in shot). That was just the start of the big tease.

Kirk Hammett got in on the action too onstage with Metallica. But perhaps a bigger deal than all that is the fact this Epiphone model has the Gibson headstock outline. A one-off or a new line in the sand for Epiphone? Who knows at this stage! 

As for Hammett, we did some extensive sifting through YouTube footage and can now confirm the Metallica guitarist used the Epiphone Greeny to perform instrumental Call Of Ktulu with it during their second night at Ford Field in Detroit, on 12 November. Footage below – credit to YouTuber Uncle Sam - Alive in Detroit. 

Hammett has already gone on record raving about the Epiphone version of his Custom Shop version of the legendary '59 Les Paul 'Greeny' previously owned by Peter Green and Gary Moore.

"I guess I'm most excited about that Epiphone because it makes the Greeny mythology, the Greeny influence, the Greeny inspiration available to everyone around the world who was motivated to get it," Hammett revealed to Guitarist magazine earlier this year.

"The Gibson USAs are great," Hammett explained to Guitarist, "but my favourite version of Greeny is probably the Epiphone… the Epiphone Greenys, just by themselves, sound great and play great, and I was amazed at how I was playing an Epiphone and I didn't want to put it down. It's just on all levels. This was two or three weeks ago [from the time of the interview]. That Epiphone Greeny is now my couch guitar and I reach for it when I'm watching TV, like most guitar players are apt to do."

Well, it looks like it's been promoted up to arena guitar now!

While we were all waiting for Epiphone to bring us its version of Kirk Hammett’s Greeny Les Paul Standard, the Gibson-owned brand had other ideas, surprising us all with a pair of sweet Flying V signature guitars based on the iconic 1979 model that the Metallica lead guitarist used on the band’s seminal early albums.

That the news breaks on Halloween is perhaps less of a surprise. For Hammett, a dyed in the wool horror fan, it’s most wonderful time of the year. For anyone else looking for a pro-quality electric guitar at an approachable price point, it’s more like Christmas. 

Okay, this V is not cheap at £1,349 but this is a high-end Epiphone model, created in partnership with the Gibson Custom Shop. And when compared to the Gibson Custom Shop version of the Kirk Hammett 1979 Flying V, launched in April, priced $15,000, and limited to just 200 units worldwide, it is positively a bargain. And you get a lot of guitar for your money. 

As with similar top-shelf Epiphone artist collaborations – think Joe Bonamassa’s ‘Lazarus’ Les Paul Standard, with its Gibson BurstBucker humbucker pairing – the brand has dug deep for the good stuff, and here we have got an electric guitar pickup pairing of Gibson USA Calibrated T-Type humbuckers.

These are hooked up to a control circuit that includes CTS pots and Orange Drop capacitors, which is all to say that when you turn the tone and volume dials your tone is adjusted accordingly. A Switchcraft pickup selector switch and 1/4” output jack adds to the impression that this is serious instrument.

The fundamentals should give you the impression that you are playing an end of the ‘70s Flying V. Hammett’s new model has a solid mahogany body and a one-piece mahogany neck that’s glued to the body. As per the Gibsons of that era it has a rounded C profile and a volute. 

There are other neat details, such as the custom bridge, which is paired with the commonly found LockTone stop-bar tailpiece, black ‘speed’ knobs, the gold-stamped Epiphone logo on the truss rod cover, and the white ‘70s-style triple-ply white pickguard. 

Signature touches are subtle. There is a Kirk Hammett logo on the rear of the headstock. You don’t need to be a Metallica super fan to see the instrument’s appeal. This is for anyone who’s looking for a mid-priced hard rock or metal guitar.

Other specs include a set of 18:1 ratio Grover Rotomatic tuners with ‘spade-style’ buttons, a 12” radius Indian laurel fingerboard with MOP dot inlays, 22 medium jumbo frets, a 43mm Graph Tech nut, and the guitar ships in a black hard-shell guitar case with red plush interior.

The Kirk Hammett 1979 Flying V is available now, priced £1,349 / $1,299. See Epiphone for more details.

The Metallica rhythm guitar sound is a reference quality electric guitar tone for generations of aspiring metal guitar players who have cranked up and down-picked in the hope of nailing James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett’s signature style. 

There is a temptation to find a high-gain distortion pedal to help your amp along but Hammett himself would argue against it, and in conversation with Rick Beato, he has explained how the secret to his – and Hetfield’s – uncompromising rhythm tone is to use less gain, not more. 

Not everyone agrees, he says, but Hammett has sound rationale for showing a little restraint.

“My rhythm sound it is a lot cleaner than you think,” he said. “Greg Fidelman [producer, Metallica’s 72 Seasons] is always pushing me to just add more distortion but I only like a distorted rhythm sound to an extent, because I need that punch. I need to feel like the strings are hitting [me]. I need to hear every single string when I hit a chord, and I need to like one note and you can feel it.”

There is a risk there, of course. That clarity comes with an obligation to play the part right, and not just to play it right but to perform it, to give it enough oomph to make it work. 

The alternative, says Hammett, is dialing up the gain and then you lose the definition and, ultimately, the riff loses its punch.

“If you have too much distortion it feels like a sponge, it’s spongey,” he said. “I need [punch]. I need bark. I need to hit it. I need it so when I go ‘doonk!’ you physically feel it, and James is the same way. And it has always been that way. It has always been that way for him, and it has always been that way for me.”

Speaking to MusicRadar in 2016, James Hetfield said he and Hammett were always searching for that “bark”. He described it as an ever-evolving process, a never-ending quest for Holy Grail tones in which the secret is in the midrange.

“For me it’s got to be percussive,” said Hetfield. “It’s got to push air, what we call bark. It’s got to bark. But I don’t want it really abrasive, so any fake fuzz to me really just takes away from the sound. 

“And it’s tough because when you turn guitar sounds down, you really hear what they sound like and when you push them up it sounds a different way. So we’re trying to find that balance of enough mid push while still sounding big and what I’ve found is the wider and bigger you make it sound the thinner it becomes in a way, at least depth-wise.”

Hammett shared a few more insights into his signature tone in his conversation with Beato. He detailed the evolution of Metallica’s sound, from the modded Marshall that gave Kill ‘Em All its aggro crunch, to the Mesa/Boogie Mk II C+ – then state-of-the-art tube amps that would become the cornerstone of the band’s sound from Master Of Puppets to now. 

This is an amp that has become the stuff of legend, most recently in the news when Neural DSP captured the Mk II C+’s uncompromising sound and considerable tone-shaping capabilities in a VST guitar plugin. 

Hammett recalls visiting Mesa/Boogie with Hetfield in tow, getting a two-for-one deal on them and then taking them on tour in support of Ride The Lightning, learning how to dial them onstage, and setting the scene for that Master Of Puppets rhythm crunch.

“It was what we wanted, what we needed at the time, and that was the amps that we took into the studio from 1985 to now,” Hammett said. “We’re still using them.”

• Interview: Metallica's James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett on their tonal evolution, the art of the riff and justice for Lars

What you won’t find Hammett using is reverb or delay. The wah pedal is an ever present. There will always be a Tube Screamer on his pedalboard – just for the leads “because the gain needs to be tight, harmonically tight”. Delay pedals, though? No, too easy, and it feels wrong.

“I am not much for delay, or reverb,” he said. “Some of my favourite guitar players always have delay on, like Neal Schon always has his delay on. I love Neal Schon. One day I went and started playing, [though] my amp. and then adding a little delay, and I thought, ‘I like playing with delay but it kind of makes it easier. [Laughs] And I thought, ‘I’m not going to play with delay anymore.’ Y’know, there’s something about the note just hitting me. It feels like when there’s delay it’s going away from me, and, yeah, to certain extent it is.”

You can check out the full conversation above, and subscribe to Rick Beato’s YouTube Channel here. 

Metallica are on tour right now, taking their “no repeats” M72 World Tour across the US right now. Tonight (18 Aug) they are in Arlington, Texas at the AT&T Stadium, and will be back again in a couple of nights for a second – and completely different set. See Metallica for tickets details and more dates.

It doesn’t matter how many times you have played onstage, nor how many times you have played a song, sometimes you just get up there and the fingers desert you at the crucial moment, and so it was for Kirk Hammett at Metallica’s sold-out show at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium on Friday, 4 August.

The show was the first in the band’s US leg of their M72 Tour, a show that involves playing two entirely different sets, two nights apart. Even if you have been playing some of these songs since 1983, 30-plus tracks played in a stadium crowd is a big ask. 

And there was no shortage of finger-twisters there. The likes of Creeping Death, Master Of Puppets and Holier Than Thou all feature Hammett solos that push the envelope of metal guitar. 

But you would not think that Nothing Else Matters, the power-ballad from the Bay Area behemoth’s smash-hit Black Album, would be the one to flummox Hammett, and especially not with Greeny in hand, the 1959 Les Paul Standard once owned by the late great bluesmen Peter Green and Gary Moore – and now available as 

After taking a pass at it, however, Hammett called for a time out, raked his guitar pick across the strings. It wasn’t up to snuff, and he marched up to mic to apologise.

“Okay, it’s the first show. Ha ha ha! I’m going to do this intro all over for you guys again,” he said, smiling but a little exacerbated too. “It’s just not good enough for myself, and if it is not good enough for myself, it’s not good enough for you!” 

Take two. No problems. The moment was captured by fan-shot footage. It will barely be a footnote on what has been a hugely successful tour for Metallica, not least in terms of ticket sales, but the format, and how it confronts the challenges of putting a set together that gives legacy classics an airing and an opportunity to play new material. 

And then there’s the production, which manages to give a stadium show the intimacy of a club without losing any of its grandeur. Testament’s Alex Skolnick was in attendance on Friday and was effusive in his praise.

“It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve heard Metallica songs (as most of us have for decades now) this new show is a fresh, new experience; a work of art,” he wrote on Instagram. “At this point, these guys could just be relaxing, enjoying the (very) good life but instead they’ve become one of the hardest working acts, period. Trust me, you’ve never experienced a concert like this.

“Watching from the floor, sometimes they’re super close, like a club show. Then, there they are half-way across the NFL field. Then they’re back (or just one or two guys). Yet anywhere you watch, it hits just as hard, thanks to the ‘water tower’ big screens and unreal lights. 

“It says a lot that on the first ‘no repeat weekend’ show – a set that included, Creeping Death, Orion, Seek & Destroy, Fade to Black, Master of you-know-what and so much more, it felt nothing was missing, despite no For Whom The Bell Tolls, One, Enter Sandman (all no doubt saved for Sunday).”

Those were indeed saved for Sunday. Metallica's M72 World Tour picks up on 9 August in Chicago. See Metallica for full dates.

A 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard, serial #0 1490, nicknamed “Sunny” and once owned by metal guitar icon Kirk Hammett is up for sale via the Gibson Certified Vintage programme, and for electric guitar collectors with deep pockets, this is a Holy Grail. 

The only question we have is how could the Metallica lead guitarist bear to part with it? 

But if you can look into your electric guitar collection and see the infamous Greeny Les Paul, a unicorn ’59 Factory Black Les Paul Standard, plus a host of high-performance signature guitars co-developed with ESP staring back at you, you can afford to sell a few guitars on.

But even for Kirk Hammett, this one’s got to have been hard to let go. This is one you might have seen featured in Yasuhiko Iwanade's Les Paul collector’s bible, The Beauty Of The Burst – the ne plus ultra of coffee-table gear porn – and it has one of the most strikingly patterned, three-dimensional maple tops you could find.

Sunny does not have the back story of Greeny Les Paul, the famous singlecut once owned by the late Peter Green then the late Gary Moore before finding its way into Hammett’s hands – and onto Metallica’s stage each night. But it remains in remarkable condition.

Its story is the classic collector’s pathway. The original owner’s widow sold it on to a collector in the ‘80s, Hammett picked it “a few years ago”, and has put it to good use.

The tuners had been swapped out at some point but the guitar had been restored with period-correct ‘50s Kluson single line/single ring tuners. Sunny is built to the classic recipe of solid Honduran mahogany body with two-piece figured maple top, a mahogany neck with a Brazilian rosewood fingerboard.

A pair of PAF (Patent Applied For) humbuckers are controlled by  two Volume and two Tone knobs, with Centralab potentiometers and Bumblebee caps. There is the ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic bridge and stop bar tailpiece.

The top is what will get most ‘Burst fans excited. Sunny’s outer edges retain the deep red cherry when so many of the aniline-dyed Les Pauls’ finishes fades over the years. Some players prefer them faded, others not. Either way, this was something Gibson were conscious of, and would change the formula for the dye late on in 1960 to address the issue. 

The maple top itself is a work of art, more plain-topped on the bass-side, almost tiger-striped on the treble-side.

Sitting side by side it is a dead ringer for a ’59 but with the new SlimTaper neck it will offer quite a different ride. It ships in its original Lifton hardshell guitar case and goodness knows how much this will sell for. Six figures, yes, but in what order? 

If your budget stretches that far, give the Gibson Garage a call. Head over to Gibson for all the details. These guitars sound incredible. Listen to Gibson Brand Ambassador Jared James Nichols putting a nicotine-stained plain-topped '60 through its paces below.

Kirk Hammett must be pretty happy right now. Not only because Metallica have a new album out with 72 Seasons but the fact he has TWO '59 Les Pauls. And both are significant, even for the holy grail of vintage guitar models.

One isn't really a Burst at all – it's his latest vintage acquisition, and one of the rarest Les Pauls ever made by Gibson. A 1959 Factory Black Les Paul Standard that Hammett purchased from Nashville's Carter Vintage Guitars – and it's got a Bigsby. 

Carter detailed the origins of the guitar with its previous owner, a jazz guitarist named Joseph Arena. He actually wanted a black Les Paul Custom look to match his black tuxedo. But there's no explanation as to why a Bigsby was fitted later or where the pickup covers are.

“This is one unique, amazing-sounding guitar,” said Hammett. And although he used the Black '59 for his performance on the Stern Show, using it to break down the '3am' riff for Enter Sandman to the host, it was Greeny's origins that were explored elsewhere on the show. 

Hammett denied any suggestion from Stern that he paid "a couple of million dollars" for the guitar previously owned by Peter Green and then Gary Moore. "I would never pay two million dollars for just about anything," refuted Hammett.

"So the owner, Manny Hughes, came to me in financial straits. And I said to him, 'I'm not gonna buy a two million dollar guitar'. And he said, 'It's not two million dollars – that's poppycock!' So he brought it to my hotel and literally within 30 seconds I said, 'You;re not getting this guitar back' because it's an amazing-sounding guitar."

Kirk's tech then beings Greeny out to show Stern – and things get interesting because Hammett's bandmate James Hetfield is then asked for his thoughts on the guitar. And he reveals he was offered it by Hughes first.  

"I played it before he did, I don't know if you know this [Kirk]?" says James to his bandmate. "The guy brought it backstage to show it to me and I rejected it."

Now Hetfield is laughing when he says this but Hetfield's follow-up remark suggests he's serious.

"He was asking an exorbitant amount." Then Lars Ulrich suggests he played it before Hetfield, adding even more value. 

Well whatever the truth is, Greeny is now in the hands of another iconic player who cherishes it, and being used by him on stages around the world rather than locked away in a glass case.

"Where I sleep, it's literally ten feet from me, not matter where I am  I keep it where I am and play it onstage too," said Hammett.  

Find out more about Hammett and Greeny's story in our Kirk Hammett interview. 

Gibson has unveiled an all-new Custom Shop replica of Kirk Hammett’s ‘Greeny’ 1959 Les Paul Standard. Meticulously aged in the inner sanctum of the Murphy Lab, this is high-end electric guitar will set you back a cool $19,999.

That's quite the price tag but then it is cheaper than the Collector's Edition Greeny Les Paul Standard that Gibson released in September 2022, which was available only via the Gibson Garage and cost more than twice this new model. 

There is, however, more good news for fans of ‘Greeny’, because Gibson has announced that it will be making a more  affordable USA production line version of the Les Paul Standard that was famously once owned by blues guitar greats Peter Green and Gary Moore. That will be out later this year. 

Not much details have been given as to when, but we do know that they will feature custom Greeny Buckers, with the neck pickup’s polarity reversed to give you that trademark out-of-phase sound when the pickup selector is in the middle position. It also has a AAA flame maple top, a mahogany body, and Indian rosewood fingerboard. 

You will have to do the ageing on the finish yourself but by anyone’s lights it is one good looking Les Paul Standard, a little reminiscent of Slash’s Appetite Burst Les Paul Standard. It also looks as though it has the Sperzel tuners, an aftermarket mod that Moore fitted on Greeny back in the day.

But let’s look at what $19,999 buys you from the Murphy Lab. It is an uncanny replica, with the pick wear exactly as you would find it on the real thing. It has a lightweight mahogany body, figured maple top, a Custom Greeny profile mahogany neck that is glued to the body with hot hide glue. 

The neck is topped with a one-piece Indian rosewood fingerboard that has a 12” radius as per house style, trapezoid inlays, and 22 medium jumbo frets. The scale length measures 24.75”. Like the original, there are Sperzel tuners, an ABR-1 bridge and lightweight nickel stop bar. You won’t find a pickguard on it but the holes remain.

It is one of Greeny’s charms that it is the very fact it is player’s grade that makes it so special. This was not one of those 1959 ‘Bursts that were kept in a temperature and humidity controlled room for posterity. It was played; it is played. 

Hammett uses it every night with Metallica. He has always maintained that the people deserve to see it played, and now, with the release of these replicas, he hopes some more people can get their hands on its vibe.

“I am very honoured and grateful for this opportunity with Gibson,” said Hammett. “To be able to share some of that mojo which ‘Greeny’ has means a lot to me. It’s exciting to know that anyone can experience some of that ‘Greeny’ magic. I truly think these models are just as inspiring as the original and hope you do too!”

• "Jimi Hendrix has played that guitar, Rory Gallagher, Jeff Beck, George Harrison… I mean, the list goes on and on" – Kirk Hammett on owning Peter Green's legendary 'Greeny' 1959 Gibson Les Paul

Other features include the aforementioned Custom Alnico II Greeny Buckers at neck and bridge positions. There are mismatched controls, with a pair of True Historic gold knobs and a pair of True Historic gold knobs with Silver Inserts. The control loom is hand-wired with bumblebee caps, vintage audio taper pots, and the pickup selector and output jack are both by Switchcraft. 

The icing on the cake is the brown Lifton reissue guitar case, lined with luxurious pink plush. Lovely. Also included are a COA and Gibson Custom Shop Switch Plate Medallion. The Kirk Hammett "Greeny" 1959 Les Paul Standard is available now, priced $19,999. See Gibson for more details.

Stay tuned for more news of the USA production line model, and consider this: Will we see an Epiphone model further down the line a la Joe Bonamassa’s Lazarus 1959 Les Paul Standard? A similar treatment would work well; reverse the neck pickup polarity and those out-of-phase electric guitar tones would be easily achieved.

There is one sure way to start an argument and that’s to ask the most contentious questions in metal guitar: what is the heaviest riff of all time? 

The question invites generational dispute; between ‘70s long-hairs against the neck-tattooed cohort of the post-Destroy Erase Improve epoch, between those weaned on the radioactive milk of ‘80s thrash and those tuned down to nu-metal’s 7-string registers. It pits the underground against mainstream consensus, bandmate against bandmate, and Revolver has just opened this can of worms again, polling performers at Louder Than Life 2022 festival for their thoughts. 

The video segment shows you just how split opinions are, just how vexing the question is. John Dyer Baizley of Baroness looks like he’s passing a kidney stone at the very mention of it.

“This is a hot take,” he protested. “I’ve got to come up with the heaviest riff of all time right now? That’s such a hard question.”

But sitting along side bassist Nick Jost, he could just about agree that Metallica’s Sad But True, track two of the era-defining Black Album, took the cake. “In terms of power versus execution versus reach in the audience, Sad But True,” said Baizley.

They weren’t alone. Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale and Arejay Hale co-signed Sad But True, but argued that Pantera’s Cowboys From Hell and Pantera’s Cowboys From Hell should be in the conversation alongside Jerry Cantrell's riff on Alice In Chains’ Check My Brain. 

“Jerry is so famous for those heavy, sludgy, weighty riffs,” said Arejay. “I think we gravitate towards those riffs that are really heavy and weighty rather than really flashy. [But] In terms of weighty, heavy and aggressive, maybe Sad But True, yeah.”

Orbit Culture’s Niklas Karlsson and Richard Hansson were in agreement. Even after 30 years of metal’s evolution, Sad But True retained its power. It was the riff that came up the most. Metallica’s Enter Sandman got a couple of mentions. Airbourne cited Fuel. Perhaps surprisingly, given how often Metallica came up, there was not no mention of The Thing That Should Not Be or Blackened.

Speaking to MusicRadar in 2011, Bob Rock, the producer of Metallica’s Black Album, said when he first heard Sad But True he thought it was “the Kashmir of the ‘90s” but he had one suggestion to make, and it would help make it the heaviest track on the record.

“They played me the demo, and I told them I thought it was the Kashmir of the ‘90s,” said Rock. “The riff was astounding. To my knowledge, they never had anything so heavy, so punchy and powerful. Rhythmically, I could tell it had the potential to be absolutely crushing!

“We were in pre-production, which was uncomfortable because nobody had ever made them go through their songs in such a deliberate way before, and six songs in Sad But True came along. Suddenly, I realized that every song, including this one, was in the key of E.

“I brought this to the band’s attention, and they said, ‘Well, isn’t E the lowest note?’ So I told them that on Motley Crue’s Dr Feelgood, which I produced and Metallica loved, the band had tuned down to D. Metallica then tuned down to D, and that’s when the riff really became huge. It was this force that you just couldn’t stop, no matter what.”

Tuning down was a theme among Revolver’s subjects. Suicide Silence guitarist Chris Garza cast his vote for Korn’s Blind, a track that single-handedly launched nu-metal as a pop-cultural force, and reanimating interest in Steve Vai’s signature Universe 7-string guitar.

“There is something about that riff, that record,” he said. “It’s heavy. I am a rhythm guitar player. There’s a darkness to a rhythm guitar player that really has the wrist feel that way and sound that way. There’s something about that riff is darkness. And you see it live and… Korn is the heaviest live band of all time. When they play Blind, that riff? Come on.”

There was a lot of love for Pantera. Lamb Of God’s Redneck was in the conversation alongside various shouts for Gojira (Flying Whales, Where Dragons Dwell, The Heaviest Matter Of The Universe). But Courtney LaPlante, vocalist for Spiritbox, made a persuasive case for Meshuggah’s Bleed, from 2008’s obZen.

“I think, technically, the heaviest thing that I’ve ever heard would be just the opening riff from Bleed by Meshuggah,” she said. “The thing that makes it so heavy for me is just how fast the double-kick is and how low the guitar is. It’s also the way the riff speeds up and slows down when they are bending it, the way the double-kick is interfering with the guitar.”

Of Revolver’s subjects, only Taipei Houston’s Myles and Lane Ulrich went all in for Black Sabbath's Into The Void. Andy Glass, bass guitar wrangler for We Came As Romans, also cited Iron Man, though as much an afterthought to Meshuggah face-ripper Rational Gaze.

Once upon a time, opinion might have coalesced around vintage Black Sabbath. Tony Iommi at his heaviest – think Into The Void, the breakdown in Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, the eponymous Black Sabbath intro riff, Lord Of This World – remains unimpeachable.

In 2020, Metal Hammer polled pro guitarists and Iommi’s Symptom Of The Universe riff came out top. 

When Speaking to MusicRadar, Iommi said that the sign of a riff working was how memorable it was. Those that didn’t stick, got left behind. This was how Paranoid came about.

“You had to remember riffs back in the old days,” he said. “When we did get a tape machine it was a big reel to reel but in the early days we’d have to keep playing the same thing so we’d remember it, because you’d forget. We’d rehearse again the next day and everyone would come in. You’d ask, ‘Does everyone remember it?’ ‘I think so…’ and you’d have to try and drum it into yourself but you might play it slightly differently.”

You can check out Revolver’s vox pops with metal pros above. What else did they miss off? Death metal was underrepresented, though kudos to GWAR’s Pustulus Maximus for repping Dehumanized’s slept-on brutal death metal classic Prophecies Foretold, and Deicide’s superlative Once Upon The Cross, and to Anders Fridén of In Flames for mentioning Crowbar’s Odd Fellows Rest.

There was no Procreation (Of The Wicked) by Celtic Frost, no Where The Slime Live by Morbid Angel, no… oh, it’s contentious. Maybe we need to put it to the vote and run another poll. That should settle it, right? No chance...

Metallica’s Kirk Hammett has some seriously cool signature guitars in the current ESP and LTD lineup, variations on his classic S-style available at all price points, not to mention the KH-3 – the ‘Spider’ singlecut that defined The Black Album era. But there was something missing.

Kirk Hammett needed a V-style, and now he has one. Meet the LTD KH-V. Hammett has had signature Vs before, most notably from the Gibson Custom Shop, but the KH-V conforms the ESP/LTD design aesthetic, and that means the headstock is sharper, the angles more aggressive, with an asymmetric body profile making for an aerodynamic electric guitar in the shape of an arrowhead.

It is not that far removed from, say, the signature ESP/LTD V-styles that we have seen for the late Alexi Laiho, but there’s a classicism to Hammett’s design that strikes the right note between the modern and super aggressive and the vintage.

The LTD KH-V marks over three decades of Hammett an ESP artist but he admitted that it still gave him goosebumps when he saw it for the first time.

“It was like the perfect hybrid of reality and my vision,” he said. “It’s such a beautiful guitar. I strapped it on and played it later that day; just jamming out with friends for four or five hours. It’s an amazing, amazing guitar.”

The KH-V is available in Black Sparkle, Red Sparkle, and Metallic Gold, with gold hardware on the latter two finish options, black on the former. It looks the bee’s knees.

It should sound good too, with a pair of Hammett’s signature EMG Bone Breaker humbuckers at the neck and bridge positions, seated in a body of solid korina with a full-length neck-through build. 

The three-piece maple neck is carved into ESP/LTD’s preferred profile – i.e. a Thin U with off-the-charts speed – and it is topped with a Macassar ebony fingerboard. There are 24 extra-jumbo frets, curved pearloid wave inlays, reflecting the Hawaii resident and keen surfer’s affinity with oceanic swell.

The KH-V has a longer scale than the Flying V’s in Hammett’s collection. At 25.5”, that’ll give it quite a different feel. ESP/LTD hasn’t actually shared the fingerboard radius just yet but you can bet good money it will be the 350mm of the other models in the range. 

Other features include the string-through Tonepros bridge, LTD locking tuners, and this is quite the high-end electric guitar so we are pleased to see the price includes a deluxe hardshell guitar case. 

Speaking of which, the LTD Kirk Hammett Signature KH-V will set you back £2,063 / €2,260. You’ve got a few months to save for it because it should arrive in your local guitar store come June. For more details, see ESP Guitars.

The world is changing apace but some things remain the same, the iron laws of physical science remain unmoved – gravity, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, and that one that says there is no higher power in metal guitar than the unerring power-chug of James Hetfield’s merciless right-hand.

That’s right, new Metallica song, same relentless downpicking from the greatest rhythm player in metal as Screaming Suicide, the second track released in advance of the San Francisco Fab Four’s upcoming studio album, 72 Seasons, showcases pretty much everything you would expect from a five-minute ‘Tallica jam.

But with sold-out stadium shows serving as focus groups affirming this direction, why change course now? 

Screaming Suicide opens with a Kirk Hammett lead melody, an electric guitar tone teetering on the edge of squawk with the – shock, horror – wah pedal used as a filter. 

The lustrous splash of Lars Ulrich’s hi-hat keeps the count. The rat-a-tat of snare drum announces Rhythm Figure 1, all churning, midrange crunch, with the band reverting to the monochrome jugga-jugga of Rhythm Figure 2, where, suitably warmed up, that picking hand is locked in. 

The kids, as they say will love it, particularly that bridge section that allows for a little bit of baritone spoken word from Hetfield, a moment to dial it down a bit and build the dynamics for the final furlong, and the chance to bang the heads that didn’t bang. It’s textbook Metallica.

The track comes with an important message, too, with Metallica tackling “the taboo word of suicide” in the lyrics.

“The intention is to communicate about the darkness we feel inside,” reads a statement from the band. “It's ridiculous to think we should deny that we have these thoughts. At one point or another, I believe most people have thought about it. To face it is to speak the unspoken. If it's a human experience, we should be able to talk about it. You are not alone.”

• Classic interview: James Hetfield – "I’m able to show Lars some drum stuff and he’s able to show me riff stuff"

Screaming Suicide comes just under two months after Lux Æterna, and the announcement that 72 Seasons will hit record stores and streaming platforms on 14 April.

The release will be followed by a big ol’ massive tour of various stadia in Europe and North America, kicking off on 27 April in Amsterdam at the Johan Cruijff ArenA, home of Ajax. See Metallica for full dates and ticket information for the M72 World Tour.

The tour will find Metallica playing once more in the round, playing two-night stints at each venue, with two entirely different setlists, “no repeats”, and the tantalising promise of “enhanced experiences” – which include meet-and-greets, the opportunity to watch the set from the ‘Snake Pit’, or a platform by the production tower, pre-show drinks lounges, and all sorts.

Metallica will release 72 Seasons on 14 April through Rhino/Blackened Recordings.

If you're still on the fence when it comes to the appeal of Fender's Acoustasonic guitars, we think the stage is the place to be convinced. The hybrid acoustic / electric guitar design could be a genuine solution for players who need to move between earthy dreadnought tones and electric lead breaks, not just within a set but individual songs. Take Metallica's Kirk Hammett, for example…

The band's Helping Hands charity performance in Los Angles on 16 December saw them debut two new cover versions with semi-acoustic performances. Their takes on Thin Lizzy's Borderline and UFO's It's Killing Me don't just allow James Hetfield and co to shine by showcasing a softer side to their sound, but Kirk Hammett got to show off his new custom Acoustasonic Jazzmaster.

And it sounded great. 

While recently released pro-shot footage by the band saw Hetfield and guest musician Avi Vincour play dreadnought acoustic guitars with soundhole pickups, Hammett switched to his Acoustasonic's Shawbucker magnetic pickup for the leads in both songs, then back to one of the acoustic voices for the strumming parts. 

It's an effective showcase of how seamlessly the Acoustasonic Jazzmaster can cover tonal territory in a live scenario – and how cool his purple custom model looks with its ouija board inlays. The guitar's electric playability also allows him to play Brian Robertson's solo without compromises. And no wah pedal in sight.

The band's take on UFO's It's Killing Me (a request by Lars Ulrich) is equally effective. Here Vincour plays a hybrid guitar too in the shape of Godin's A 12 for twin guitar harmony duties but it's Hammett providing the electric singing sustain. 

In related news, Fender recently released a Player series model of its Acoustastonic Jazzmaster that we'll be reviewing shortly. In the meantime check out our review of the American Acoustasonic Jazzmaster. 

Neal Schon invited Kirk Hammett to guest Journey's Wheel In The Sky at the band's show in Honolulu, Hawaii on 6 October and he brought a little metal into the equation while he was there.

The band burst into a segue of Metallica's Enter Sandman in the mid-section with Hammett and Greeny (or is it a replica?) going wild with the wah for an extended solo, as one would hope and expect… 

Kirk Hammett has unveiled the first chapter of an online horror project in which a narrative has been posted to his reddit account with an accompanying soundtrack featuring a haunting blues guitar loop.

Titled I Have To Get Rid Of This Guitar I Found [Part One], the mysterious story reads very much like an internet narrative equivalent of a found footage story. It has a chain-letter quality, the story kicking off up with a lede from an Abigail Forte, who has turned a cassette of field recordings over to Hammett – who is presumably on both sides of the fourth wall here. 

Forte is in search of her brother, William. As the title suggests, there is a guitar involved, and while we have all had nightmares of trying to shift an unloved and unwanted acoustic guitar, there’s something even more sinister going on here than an ignored listing on Reverb. 

“I recently found a lead that might help in the search for my brother, William “Wills” Forte,” writes Forte. “A journal he had written, along with a cassette that was filled with what can only be described as very unusual field recordings. Seeing as the nature of these recordings seemed to push towards an evil energy, I sent the tape to a friend to help me understand the music, who in turn sent it to guitarist Kirk Hammett.”

• "Jimi Hendrix has played that guitar, Rory Gallagher, Jeff Beck, George Harrison… I mean, the list goes on and on" – Kirk Hammett on owning Peter Green's legendary 'Greeny' 1959 Gibson Les Paul

Hammett, in real life or in story, transposes the music of this fictional cassette, with the first piece of music, Crossroad Magic Blues, posted to his Tik Tok page. This is the soundtrack, and it suggests some kind of cursed story of a piece with the legend of Robert Johnson, albeit one told in the mode of M.R. James.

That Hammett would move into soundtracking and horror storytelling should come as little surprise. The Metallica guitarist is a horror superfan, whose fleet of ESP signature guitars bear custom graphics of the most notorious of Universal Picture’s monsters – Dracula, Wolf Man, Frankenstein. He also has an ESP KH model paying tribute to F.W. Murnau's seminal vampire film, Nosferatu (1922).

In July, he moderated a panel talk at Midsummer Scream, a horror convention hosted at Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center, California. His horror-inspired debut solo EP, Portals, was originally intended as background music to It’s Alive!, an exhibition of Hammett’s horror memorabilia and ephemera. 

Upon its release, Hammett spoke of his ambition to soundtrack movies, and revealed that he had spent lockdown writing in all different styles of music. Speaking to Total Guitar, he said that that writing soundtracks “was pretty much a given for the future”, and that recording the all-instrumental Portals was freeing.

“It was great that I was able to get out of that structure of riff, verse, chorus, huge middle part, then back to the riff, verse and chorus,” he said. “I’m glad I was freed of that and free to go wherever the music wanted to go. That’s pretty much how these arrangements came about. 

“The whole process was a lot simpler and a lot smoother than I expected it to be, and I can tell you one hundred percent that it sounds a lot more complicated than it was to make or record, and that really is a beautiful thing.”

You can read Part One of the story on Hammett's reddit page, and follow the Metallica lead guitarist on TikTok.

Metallica’s effervescent lead guitar player and wah pedal enthusiast Kirk Hammett has announced a debut solo EP titled Portals. The four-track release is out on 23 April and comprises four instrumentals, two of which were written with Edwin Outwater, who first collaborated with Hammett on Metallica’s S&M2 metal-meets-orchestra project.

Other guests include Greg Fidelman on bass, and Queens Of The Stone Age’s Jon Theodore and Abraham Laboriel on drums. Black Album producer Bob Rock also features on the record, alongside the Emmy-winning composer Blake Neely (Greyhound). Outwater plays keys on the record and conducts the LA Philharmonic orchestra’s contributions.

Hammett produced the record, tracking it in various locations that included Los Angeles, Paris and Oahu, in Hawaii. 

Once upon a time, the very idea that a member of Metallica could make a solo record was unthinkable, with the band described by frontman James Hetfield as a fist. But times have changed, and it will be interesting to see what Hammett has come up with. 

No music has been shared as yet, but Hammett promises Portals will have something of a soundtrack quality “This music was created with what I describe as an Audio-Cinematic approach,” he says. “They’re soundtracks to the movies in your mind.”

Portals will be released on 23 April through Metallica's own Blackened Recordings, and is available on digital platforms, CD, and as a special Record Store Day Ocean Blue vinyl release and download code.

The track titles are as follows: 

Side A: Maiden And The Monster, The Jinn

Side B: High Plains Drifter, The Incantation

How many electric guitars have been owned by three iconic players? In 2016 Guitarist caught up with Kirk Hammett to find out more about becoming the owner of the legendary 'Greeny' Les Paul, that belonged to the later Peter Green and Gary Moore. 

It’s unusual for an instrument to become as famous as the players who have made music with it. In that respect, Peter Green’s Les Paul is in an extremely select group. Originally seen on stage with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, the guitar has a singular aura around it as well as an amazing tone.

Many words have been written - some speculative, others informed - about what it was that made the instrument sound so different in the middle pickup position. Peter himself said he never touched the wiring when the guitar was in his possession and that the guitar sounded that way the day he bought it, inspiring many to believe it was inverted polepieces that were at the heart of the mystery, as opposed to the neck pickup merely being reversed. 

In any case, the Les Paul not only found notoriety within the Bluesbreakers, it also went on to feature in many classic Fleetwood Mac recordings and live appearances.

After Peter Green mysteriously quit the music scene in the early 1970s, the guitar found its way into the hands of another legendary player, Gary Moore. Gary told us in an interview that Peter just called him up one day and offered him the guitar, initially refusing payment.

In the end, it was agreed that Gary would give him the cash from selling the Gibson SG he was currently using and the deal was done. Over the years, the guitar went on to appear on many more recordings and live dates - often at considerably higher volume levels than before.

In the mid 90s, Gary paid tribute to his former mentor with the album Blues For Greeny and once again those plaintive ‘out-of-phase’ tones could be heard on re-readings of classic Peter Green material. Gary kept the Les Paul until around 10 years ago when it was sold and the guitar was temporarily retired from public life.

All that was set to change, though, when the somewhat controversial sale to Metallica’s guitar player took place. Peter Green’s precious guitar in a metal band? Whatever next!

But, setting all such prejudices aside, we have to say that Kirk is absolutely thrilled to be the guitar’s most recent owner. When we spoke he was on his way to the studio and positively frothy with excitement and extremely eager to share the details of how he came about this holy relic guitar.

“Well, you know it’s really weird because I didn’t pursue it like I have pursued other guitars in the past - really aggressively going after certain guitars and working out deals. This is more just a situation where I was sitting in my hotel room in London one day and I texted a friend of mine and he said, ‘Oh, I have a guitar I wanna show you,’ and I said, ‘Okay, sure. Bring it over.’

“And when he says he has a guitar that he wants to show me, more than likely it’s a vintage guitar and even more likely it’s a Les Paul Standard because this guy’s known for that type of guitar. So he came over with this other guy and they also brought over a vintage Marshall combo. My friend brought over the guitar case, opened it up, and immediately I knew what it was because I saw the pickup screws inverted.

“I was like, ‘Hey, hey, hey, hey. Wait a second here. Wait a second. I don’t have $2 million for this guitar,’ and my friend said, ‘Oh, that’s all poppycock. I don’t know where that came from. That was the original price maybe 10 or 12 years ago but that’s since been adjusted.’

“I said, ‘Great,’ and I plugged it into the vintage Marshall amp, turned it up and played it. After about 30 seconds, I thought to myself, ‘Wow, this is not your standard Les Paul…’ and I went to the middle position, because, you know, that’s the revered sound and I started ripping out and I thought to myself, ‘Holy shit, this is a total contradiction.’

“It sounded like an incredible Les Paul in the bridge position and in the neck position, but when you put it in the middle position it kind of sounded like a Strat through a 100‑watt Marshall stack!

“And then I got it. I got it. I understood completely what Greeny was all about. And you know the history side, the fact that it’s been on all these albums and all this great music, but aside from all that, the bare fact of the matter is that it’s just an amazing-sounding guitar. It just blew me away and everything just kind of made sense.”

How did you celebrate your ownership of the guitar?

“The first thing I wanted to do was play it on stage that night and play Whiskey In The Jar, because the likelihood of that guitar having played Whiskey In The Jar was already pretty huge. So when I played it that first time on stage it felt like I was bringing it back home to where it needed to be and wanted to be.

“And you know, to be quite honest, since then I’ve heard of other guitars, of other Les Pauls, that sold for way more than what I bought Greeny for. And so, to a certain extent, I was at the right place at the right time, because the owner needed a quick infusion of cash and I was able to do that and secure the guitar and then we worked out all the other matters afterwards.

“But having said that, once the news got out that I’d actually bought the guitar I started getting all these different emails from people I’d never even heard of or spoken to before about their experiences with Greeny.

“It’s just totally, completely amazing because this guitar has its own world, its own separate reality, completely separate to mine and I’ve never really owned a guitar that has its own personality. It’s completely independent of myself and I love that fact as well.”

What’s the guitar like to play?

“It’s fairly light for a Les Paul. I definitely own heavier Les Pauls, but the amazing thing is that the neck is pretty thick. I can play a thin neck, I can play a thick neck, I can play a V-shaped neck… I can play just about any sort of neck you give me; it’s never been a problem for me.

“When you pick up Greeny and you start playing Oh Well or Albatross, it sounds like the recording. It’s amazing. You play Oh Well unplugged, just acoustically, and it sounds like Greeny. It’s the most amazing thing. And the resonance is pretty outrageous. It’s pretty loud acoustically, it has a lot of body to it and the tone rings through even without an amp.

“Once I got the guitar into my possession, I handed the guitar to John Marshall - he was my guitar tech forever and he actually played with Metallica for a short period of time - I said, ‘Play Oh Well,’ and he started playing it and he goes, ‘Ah wow! It sounds just like it!’ and I said, ‘Exactly! Isn’t that incredible?’ And so there you have it, man. It truly is breathtaking.

Were you a big fan of Peter Green’s guitar playing?

“Yes, for sure. I really love his playing on the John Mayall albums as well as those Fleetwood Mac albums. I really, really love the track The Supernatural. I love it because when he hits those notes it says it all.

“And from time to time, I’ll pick up Greeny and I’ll play Black Magic Woman or I’ll play Coming Home or something and it feels there, the feel is just so there. I just can’t believe it. Another thing that really is amazing for me is the guitar was also played on Thin Lizzy’s Black Rose, which is one of my favourite Thin Lizzy albums.

“I just love Peter Green. I love his playing. If there wasn’t a Peter Green there might not have been a Carlos Santana. I see a direct correlation - there’s a direct influence there.”

So, you intend to keep using the guitar and not hide it away in a private collection?

“Absolutely. I’m not a guy who’ll buy a guitar just to stare at it and covet it; that is the death of a vintage guitar. Guitars are built to be played. The more they’re played, the better they sound. The more they’re played, the more reactive they are. I bought Greeny and, literally, by the next show she was up on stage in front of 40 to 50,000 people, being sweat on all over by me.

“I’m on my way to the studio right now. I texted my tech and said, ‘Have Greeny in tune, we’re using her today,’ and I’m going to try and use all of the three main sounds that are in her.”

Can you sum up what it’s like to own such a revered instrument?

“A really, really wacky thing is that whenever musicians come by and they know that I have Greeny, they always ask to have a picture taken with it. And it’s just kind of funny because it feels like how it might be if my wife was maybe a famous movie actress or something, with people constantly coming up to me saying, ‘Can you take a picture of me and your wife?’

“I’m constantly stepping aside and manning a camera. That’s what it’s like owning Greeny. I have taken more pictures of people with that guitar than just about any other guitar I’ve ever owned.

“Greeny has its own fanbase, it’s amazing. And lots of people have played that guitar: Jimi Hendrix has played that guitar, Rory Gallagher, Jeff Beck, George Harrison… I mean, the list goes on and on and on.

“The evening of the day I looked at it, I sent a message to Jimmy Page through a friend of mine saying, ‘Jimmy, what do you think of this guitar?’ And Jimmy’s reaction was, ‘I remember that guitar. You should absolutely buy it.’ So I guess I should throw that in for the record that I have Jimmy Page’s approval. When Jimmy says, ‘Yes, you should buy it, Kirk,’ then it doesn’t get much better than that!”

Mick Fleetwood: "Without Peter Green there would be no Fleetwood Mac"

Kirk Hammett has credited Kerry King for influencing the intro riff to Metallica's Black Album classic Through The Never, and insists that the Slayer guitarist is perennially underrated as a rhythm guitar player.

With his bandmate James Hetfield widely heralded as having the best right hand in metal, Hammett should know all about flying under the radar as a rhythm player. 

In a recent interview with Total Guitar, the Metallica guitarist looks back on the writing and recording of The Black Album, and he spoke extensively about his approach to riff-writing, rhythm playing, and the players who influenced him. On  Through The Never, that was quite literally Kerry King. 

“It was me trying to be fast and heavy... Like Slayer!“ he said. “Hey, I love Slayer, what can I say? They’re the greatest. Kerry King has such a smooth technique when he plays. He can move from super heavy to super fast to totally jagged, and he does it effortlessly and fluidly.“

As fellow alumni of thrash metal's so-called Big Four, Slayer got a lot of credit before disbanding in 2019. For many they were metal's greatest live band, and in the late Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King, they had one of the all-time classic electric guitar partnerships. But Hammett believes we don't talk enough about King's rhythm chops.

“Kerry doesn’t get enough credit as a rhythm guitar player,“ said Hammett. “He’s a great rhythm player and a great lead guitarist, too. He’s always aggressive and I love consistency.“

Metallica are currently celebrating 30 years of The Black Album with a deluxe reissue and all-star covers project The Metallica Blacklist, which sees artists from all kinds of styles and backgrounds tackle their favourite Black Album track.

For many players, that would be Enter Sandman. Its riff, written late at night by a sleepless Hammett, sets the table for an album that changed Metallica's lives, and rearranged the pop-cultural landscape to accommodate rock and metal in the mainstream. 

Hammett said Enter Sandman was part of his quest to write “the ultimate catchy heavy riff“ and admits he doesn't think he has done so yet, stating that Deep Purple's Smoke On The Water has a magic all of its own. “I look at my instrument and think, ‘Fuck, man, there’s still so much I need to do,“ he said.

Should he get there, his former guitar teacher Joe Satriani will have played his part. When asked about the high-intensity triplets that open Holier Than Thou, Hammett credits the picking exercises that Satch used to set him for helping him to develop his chops, preparing him for playing tracks such as Whiplash, which require an unerring accuracy, speed and no shortage of oomph to perform.

“One of the exercises Joe Satriani showed me when I started taking lessons was double and triple picking on open strings, as well as tremolo picking... And that’s Whiplash, right there!“ he said. “I would do that across all six strings and back. It was a really good exercise.

“Later on, I started looking into other exercises I could do to improve my wrist picking and found out that one is pretty much the best one you can use. It improves the velocity of your picking on one string. Then you can break it up into triplets, quarter notes, all sorts of stuff.“

This is also how Hammett gets ready for the stage each night. He'll typically pick a single-note chug and play it over and over again until he's loose enough to get through a set. And he had some advice of his own for any young players looking to master heavy metal rhythm guitar: keep practising.

“There are some rhythms or riffs that you might feel you can’t play, but after a couple of weeks or months you can play them in your sleep. You absorb them and they become a part of you, if you practise enough.“

One of Kirk Hammett’s most extensively played ESP signature electric guitars is up for auction. The KH-2 in black with Ouija Board graphics was the Metallica lead guitarist's number one guitar for a number of years, and the iconic S-Style is expected to fetch up to $350,000.

Hammett first started using the KH-2 with the glow-in-the-dark Ouija Board graphics on the Black Album, and kept it with him right through to Metallica’s S+M era.

The Ouija Board guitar, which is signed and annotated by Hammett in gold marker, is a remarkable piece of heavy metal history. It is also a triumph for the ESP Custom Shop Japan. 

To apply the finish, luthiers used the original Hasbro board game for reference, and using a copy machine and a pair of scissors they positioned the artwork on the body. 

Under the lights it looked incredible, and it paved the way for a number of Hammett’s custom graphic KH models. Indeed, ESP reissued a limited edition KH-2 Ouija in Purple and Red Sparkle finishes in 2019.

Tone-wise, you know what you are getting. You’ve seen it on stage. You have heard it on record. It has a maple neck-through build, alder body, active EMG humbuckers and a double-locking Floyd Rose vibrato. It will be interesting to play this guitar, as Hammett is not your typical shredder; he likes his action a little higher and typically uses a set of 11s once he is into the groove on tour. 

From the pictures, this guitar is in pretty good condition, which is remarkable given how many road miles are on it. 

Also included is a signed, stage-worn strap, the original hard case, and other bits of memorabilia such as photographs of Hammett signing the back of the guitar.

Bidding starts at $250,000 and opens tomorrow, 14 April 2020. Head on over to Gotta Have Rock And Roll for more details. The listing comes just a couple of days after Hammett's ESP 400 series S-Style was sold for $112,500 / £82,000. Hammett had most famously used it for the One promo video. 

If all this is a little steep for your liking, you could always go for an LTD KH-202, one of the most affordable options in Hammett's signature guitar series.

Gibson has given Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett a custom reproduction of his much-loved 'Greeny Moore' 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard – one of the world's most famous and storied electric guitars.

Originally owned by Fleetwood Mac's Peter Green, then sold to Gary Moore in 1970 for a modest 300 bucks, Greeny was bought by Hammett in 2014 from vintage guitar dealer Richard Henry. 

There was some speculation afoot about a 'new' Greeny after Gibson's director of brand experience, Mark Agnesi, posted an Instagram story of what looked suspiciously like Greeny, albeit with some different patterns of wear on the hardware and top.

Greeny is not a pristine museum piece. It has seen a lot of action, and is bearing some scars. But that's very much part of its charm, and Hammett has always been of the opinion that it should be played.

He has been as good as his word. Greeny has become a fixture in Metallica's set, typically making an appearance during Fade To Black. 

In a recent interview with Total Guitar, Hammett pays tribute to the late Fleetwood Mac guitarist, who died on 25 July, and says that owning Greeny that had helped him reconnect with his blues playing.

”Having a guitar like Greeny, you just wanna be playing it,” he said. “Truthfully, I have reconnected with my blues playing. When I first started playing guitar, I thought, ‘All right! I’ll play the blues. I’ll play the blues like Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page, Buddy Guy or BB King.’ For the first couple of years, I played blues just as much as I played rock.“

Hammett played Greeny as he jammed The Green Manalishi (With The Two Prong Crown) with ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons the Peter Green Tribute Concert, held back in February at London's Palladium.

The question is: will Gibson produce a run of Greeny Les Pauls?  After all, there are many unofficial replicas, and reversing the polarity of the neck pickup for that middle position Greeny tone is one of the most popular LP mods. There has scarcely been a time when there has been more interest in the guitar.

Or at the very least, this occasion calls for Agnesi to pay Hammett a visit for Gibson TV's The Collection and explore the Metallica guitarist's awesome trove of gear.