“I bought a tiger-stripe Les Paul and started playing it on stage. I broke the neck, got it back and it sounded better. Then I was even more attached to it!” Kirk Hammett on Gibsons, the magic of Greeny and why he thinks the age of active pickups is over

Kirk Hammett’s wiry, wah‑scorched lead tones have been a core component of Metallica’s sound since the band reshaped the landscape of metal in the early ’80s. Now 63 years of age, Kirk’s youthful looks mask the fact that he’s been recording at the sharp end one of the world’s biggest acts for 40 years, after he replaced Dave Mustaine in the band in the spring of 1983.

And though Metallica’s juggernaut touring and recording schedule has clearly made extraordinary demands on the band’s members, four decades of music-making has also left Hammett with enough room to reflect on and evolve his sound far more than some might credit.

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Well, Peter Green’s guitar style, even when he was improvising, every note was so perfectly played. He was a very, very thoughtful player… Every note counted with him – there were no throwaway notes and I love that about him. There’s any number of guitar players out there who just kind of throw away notes. I have a whole fucking condominium full of throwaway notes, you know, but with him, there were hardly any.

I love the way he wrote. Oh Well – Oh Well I & II… Ever listen to Part II? Fucking darker than the first part. I mean, Part II sounds like a funeral dirge, it sounds like the end of the fucking world. Green Manalishi… He wrote that sitting in his flat somewhere in London, right? It sounds like it was written in Mississippi in a shack on the edge of a swamp at two o’clock in the morning. That song is so dark without relying on elements to make sure it’s dark, like heaviness or distorted guitar.

That ageing factor really makes P.A.F. pickups individual. Even the newer type of pickups, with traditional coils, magnets and wires, even those age [eventually] – like DiMarzio pickups. I put an old pair of DiMarzio pickups in a KH [Series S-style guitar], maybe it was an LTD, and I was amazed at how good it sounded to my amp setup. I thought to myself, ‘Maybe the age of active pickups is over.’

What I love about P.A.F. pickups is the clarity of it: clarity of note, clarity in a succession of notes… the [nature of the] harmonic distortion protects sensitivity. And you can’t really get away with a lot. You have to play well and you have to play with clarity, you have to hit every note. Something like legato, it’s easier with active pickups, not so much with P.A.F.s. But when you do legato [licks] with P.A.F.s, it sounds so much better to me.

I still like that EMG active-pickup wall of sound and it works for our older material. But there was a shift in me about 15 or 20 years ago where I realised that P.A.F. pickups, and stock pickups in general… I think you can push them way more than you can push EMGs and you could almost say I had it backwards. I should have started with just a regular pickup, pushing that and going, ‘Okay, EMGs are the next level.’

I’ve realised the power that guitar has in terms of influence and inspiration. I am not elitist with that guitar and I’m not as protective as I should be. Because I think it really is the people’s instrument and so I’ll let anyone play that guitar – and when they play it, oh my God, their hands are shaking or they’re just playing differently. So I thought, ‘How can I share this with more people, outside of what I’m already doing?’

And when I say ‘80 per cent’, the bridge pickup has to have that bark, that neck pickup has to have that beautiful tone that just draws you in. And then it has to have that out‑of‑phase sound in the centre, which I call the ‘Dragon Tone’. To me, it sounds like a Strat through a 100-watt Marshall – and Les Pauls are not supposed to sound like that! But Greeny has that and I just love it.

The Gibson USAs are great, 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 and it was delivering for me. It’s just on all levels. This was two or three weeks ago. 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.

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. For me, it’s a super-powerful thing because I might be helping some young musician get a Greeny in their hands to play heavy blues like Peter Green or Gary Moore or come up with a song like Oh Well or Albatross or something.

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Jamie Dickson is Editor-in-Chief of Guitarist magazine, Britain's best-selling and longest-running monthly for guitar players. He started his career at the Daily Telegraph in London, where his first assignment was interviewing blue-eyed soul legend Robert Palmer, going on to become a full-time author on music, writing for benchmark references such as 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die and Dorling Kindersley's How To Play Guitar Step By Step. He joined Guitarist in 2011 and since then it has been his privilege to interview everyone from B.B. King to St. Vincent for Guitarist's readers, while sharing insights into scores of historic guitars, from Rory Gallagher's '61 Strat to the first Martin D-28 ever made.