Kirk Hammett knew that paying a visit to Peter Green was the right thing to do and yet the Metallica guitarist couldn’t shake the feeling that it could all go wrong.
As “the caretaker” of Peter Green’s stage-weathered 1959 Gibson Les Paul, aka Greeny, the famous ‘Burst with a magical tone secret that Green sold to Gary Moore in 1970 for 300 bucks, Hammett felt it in his bones.
He would visit the former Bluesbreaker and Fleetwood Mac guitarist at Green’s home in the Isle of Dogs, London. He would take Greeny, pay his dues, and talk shop with the player whose preternaturally gifted feel and tone gave BB King “the cold sweats” and set the benchmark for British blues. And yet the whole idea was giving him the heebie-jeebies.
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Speaking to Total Guitar in 2020, he explained how it all went down.
“To be honest I was a little bit nervous and… scared!” said Hammett. “It’s hard to gauge how someone with a reputation like that was going to react to meeting someone like me. On my way over there, the unpredictability of the situation was driving me crazy the whole time.”
The psychic weight of this encounter was written all over the excitable cadence in Hammett’s voice as he recalled: “When we first got there and we walked in, it was kind of, like, he was looking at me, I was looking at him. We were just kinda checking each other out, seeing what the energy level was, what the emotional state of mind was.
“After about 10 minutes or so I started bringing up the fishing in Hawaii, and poles, fishing reels, y’know… Fish! That really broke the ice with him, and after that he was much more conversable and the mood in the room was much, much better.”
The pair had a lot to talk about. There was Greeny. The guitar is but mahogany and maple, metal, hide glue and magnets and wire, and yet it has assumed a mythological importance in pop culture.
It is the connective tissue joining three evolutionary strides in the blues-rock continuum: Peter Green’s dynamic, trailblazing style; Gary Moore’s muscular chops and molten sustain; Kirk Hammett’s hyper-kinetic leads and the spectacle of stadium metal. Greeny has been on a journey.
“It was really important for me to come in, meet Peter, and let him know that I had this instrument that he had 50 years ago that he wrote all these amazing songs on,” says Hammett. “It was important to let him know that the guitar was in safe hands and that I was a huge fan of his.”
They shared a moment. Hammett laid it all out. “I sat down and I looked him straight in the eye,” recalled Hammett. “I said, ‘Peter, y’know, I just need to tell you this on behalf of myself and guitar players all over the world, your influence is still felt everywhere, and it is just as huge, if not bigger, than it has ever been, and you continue to inspire generations of guitar players.’ And he just looked at me, shook his head, and changed the subject!”
Hammett was laughing at the memory, at underestimating the stolid reserve of a septuagenarian Englishman. “It made me feel really weird, but I could tell it touched something in him,” he protested. “It was really, really cool, and it ended up being a really nice visit.”
Green might not have been visibly moved by his tribute but Hammett is 100 per cent correct. Green’s influence is profound. In recent years, perhaps accelerated by online discoveries, or brought into focus by the 50th anniversary of Green’s departure from Fleetwood Mac, there had been a growing interest in Green’s life, and his legacy.
Peter Green bought Greeny from Selmer Musical Instrument Showrooms on London’s Charing Cross Road for £110. Having aced his Bluesbreakers audition on a Harmony Meteor, he wanted an instrument with more power.
While Clapton’s ‘Burst had a skinny neck, Greeny was a little more substantive.
The blues is creeping back into my playing. A lot of that has to do with Peter Green. Listening to him, in awe, it woke me up
Crucially, it had a hidden talent, a factory fault (alternative explanations say it was accidentally modded) that reversed the magnetic polarity of the neck pickup, offering a middle position out-of-phase tone. Joe Bonamassa has a ‘Burst with a similar ‘defect’.
When Hammett was doing due diligence on the pickups, he said it was like a Strat going through a cranked Marshall. “Oh my God! It was like I got hit by a bolt of lightning,” he said. “Everyone knows they’re not supposed to sound like that but this one had that insanely wild option.”
Greeny has undergone few changes. Gary Moore applied Sperzel tuners and swapped the bottom two controls for ‘60s-style Gibson Reflector knobs; they were taller, easier to find under stage lights. The neck was broken twice. When Hammett bought it in 2014 from vintage guitar dealer Richard Henry, he affixed strap locks, replacing – and archiving – a cracked switch cap. The pickguard remains in the case.
The biggest change is road miles. Having been listed at $2 million (Hammett did not pay that), there was a risk that it would end up embalmed in Perspex above the bar in a Hard Rock Cafe. No chance. Hammett didn’t buy Greeny; he rescued it. Now it’s onstage, in the studio. It’s where it belongs.
Meeting Green, owning Greeny, it has changed him.
“Having a guitar like Greeny, you just wanna be playing it,” said Hammett. “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.
“In the ‘90s, I got into the blues again with Stevie Ray Vaughan. But I am listening a lot more to the electric players, guys from the ‘50s and ‘60s. The blues is creeping back into my playing. A lot of that has to do with Peter Green. Listening to him, in awe, it woke me up.”
Peter Green passed away peacefully in his sleep, aged 73, on 25 July, 2020. He had not attended Mick Fleetwood’s tribute to him at London’s Palladium, on February 25, 2020, where Hammett performed Fleetwood Mac’s The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Pronged Crown) alongside Billy Gibbons.
Green dodged Hammett’s flattery. He avoided the public glare. But that’s okay. There’s still something fitting that these tributes were being paid while he was alive. Too often we never get the chance.
There’s a romance in Greeny meeting Hammett, knowing that his guitar is being played in front of thousands. Peter Green, Gary Moore; two greats, both passed. Greeny lives on. It begs the question: to whom would Hammett bequeath Greeny when his time comes?
“I don’t know,” he said, pausing. “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. 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.”
