Metallica shredder and obsessive guitar hoarder Kirk Hammett once bought one of his guitar hero’s axes for so cheap that he was riddled with guilt.
It might not be a heart-on-sleeve influence, given Metallica’s sound, but Hammett adores Journey guitarist Neal Schon. Understandably, then, he didn’t blink when the chance to buy Schon’s black 1957 Les Paul presented itself to him. But he couldn’t believe how small a price it cost him.
Granted, $87,500 isn’t exactly a bargain basement price to the everyman – and I dread to think how many Spotify streams it would take to generate that sort of moolah – but considering its pedigree, Hammett was gobsmacked.
“This guitar used to belong to one of my all-time star heroes, a huge source of inspiration, Neal Schon,” Hammett explained at the Dublin in-person event to promote his The Collection book (and spotted by MusicRadar).
“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!”
Admittedly, the guitar doesn’t have ties to a magic Journey moment, which harmed its appeal during a 2021 auction where Schon said goodbye to 112 of his guitars. His Don’t Stop Believin’ Les Paul, conversely, sold for $250,000 – and again for $254,000 in March – with six guitars fetching six-figure sums.
Meanwhile, this late ’50s, P-90 pickups equipped six-string went under the radar. Hammett struck lucky.
“I felt kind of bad about it because I should have paid a fair price,” he confesses. “But I paid a price that was lower than it should have been.”
In fact, Hammett felt so bad about the price he paid that he phoned his hero to ask if he wanted it back.
“I actually called Neal,” Hammett says. “I said, ‘Neal, do you want the guitar back?’ And he said, ‘No, man, you keep it. You buy it; you keep it.’”
Many guitars went for unexpectedly low sums when the gavel crashed down on that fateful day in 2021, a time in which COVID was still ever-present. The auction has now been described as “brutal.”
Writing for Guitarist, vintage guitar expert David Davidson, who owns New York’s Well Strung Guitars, said: “It turned out to be the worst time to do an auction because his guitars really undersold.”
Davidson also confided that Joe Bonamassa believed Schon would have been better off waiting for a more opportune moment.
