Separated at Birth

DID YOU KNOW KIRK HAMMETT’S FAMOUS AND HISTORICALLY SIGNIFICANT 1959 GIBSON LES PAUL, GREENY, HAS A SIBLING? AND THAT IT’S OWNED BY HIS FRIEND, GIBSON BRAND PRESIDENT CESAR GUEIKIAN? NEITHER DID THEY! UNTIL VERY RECENTLY...

- Richard Bienstock

THERE ARE FEW, if any, electric guitars as coveted as the sunburst 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard. And the ’59 burst known as Greeny — made famous by Fleetwood Mac legend Peter Green, later played by Irish blues-rock great Gary Moore and, since 2014, owned by Metallica’s Kirk Hammett, who has made it a staple of his work with Metallica — is one of the crown jewels of what is already a beloved model. With its trio of esteemed owners, heavily weathered appearance (and backwards-installed neck pickup) and coveted out-of-phase middle-position tone, Greeny is, no doubt, one-of-a-kind.

“I’ve always thought of Greeny as an anomaly, just as a result of the way it looks and sounds and everything it’s been through,” Kirk Hammett says. “It’s a unique, solitary instrument.”

Indeed it is. And yet, the guitar no longer stands entirely alone: Greeny, apparently, has a sibling. And that sibling belongs to Gibson Brand President Cesar Gueikian. “We realized the two guitars have sequential serial numbers,” Gueikian says, “and our minds were blown.”