Man of The World

IN HIS HEARTFELT TRIBUTE TO PETER GREEN, METALLICA’S KIRK HAMMETT EXPLAINS HOW THE FORMER BLUESBREAKER AND FLEETWOOD MAC GUITARIST'S VIRTUOSO PLAYING, EAR FOR DARKNESS, AND LEGENDARY ’59 LES PAUL – AKA GREENY – CHANGED HIS LIFE, AND WHY IT WAS SO IMPORTANT THAT HE TOOK IT ALONG FOR A SPECIAL REUNION

- Jonathan Horsley

Kirk Hammett knew that paying 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 the late Gary Moore in 1970 for $300, 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 geebies.

“To be honest I was a little bit nervous and... Scared!” Hammett laughs. “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 is written all over the excitable cadence in Hammett’s voice some six months on.

“When we first got there and we walked in, it was kind of, like, he was looking at me, I was looking at him,” Hammett continues. “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! [Laughs] 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.”