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.

You might think, for example, that he still builds his sound primarily around active pickups. But, as our free-ranging conversation with the guitarist reveals, he’s more likely to get his gain sounds with much older tech these days – P.A.F.s mounted in a certain storied Les Paul formerly owned by Peter Green, of which he is the current owner and steward.

“There’s so much Greeny on the new album,” Hammett says. “I mean, when you hear a whammy bar, it’s not Greeny [laughs]. But I really only played two guitars on this album. Some albums I played, like, 16 guitars on. But on this album, it’s only two guitars: Greeny and my [ESP] Mummy guitar, that’s all I needed.

“When I put Greeny on the rhythm pickup, and I hear that neck tone, it’s just so much the neck tone that you want to hear,” he says.

“I mean, it just takes me… And the bridge pickup has so much bite and so much presence without being too trebly. It’s amazing because when I jam with other people and listen to the recordings afterwards, Greeny just stands out, you know? Put three different guitars together and Greeny will just have more presence than any other guitar.”

Kirk’s conversion to a sound based on (an admittedly remarkable) vintage Les Paul has been a long road, however, and it began long before he took ownership of Greeny, as he explored how to evolve his playing and make it as fearless, direct and honest as possible.

We join him to talk about that journey, learn more about his feeling of connection to Green’s music, and the burgeoning range of guitars inspired by Greeny that is now being built by Gibson.

How does Peter Green’s music connect to your own musical world?

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.

Literally from the first E minor chord, ‘Oh my God!’ You’re put in this place and when I hear that kind of playing, that kind of composition, instantly I go, ‘Wow, his mental makeup must have been really something for this kind of music to come out.’

Then I go to what he might have been experiencing and there’s a darkness. And I can relate to that because there’s some darkness in me, there’s some darkness in how I compose music. I totally relate to Peter in those terms, absolutely.

Greeny was obviously a pillar of Green’s sound – and now it’s become a pillar of yours. How does that feel?

It’s never lost on me that it was Gary Moore’s guitar and Peter Green’s guitar – the guitar will not let me forget that. And so in the midst of playing it, I’ll just get that impression and, all of a sudden, I’m playing a Peter Green lick or a Gary Moore lick… It’s kind of spontaneous, you know.

The thing with Greeny, it’s a unique guitar. It’s a blessed piece of wood, that’s all I can really say – somehow it’s blessed with an energy or vibration that’s super-unique. I’ve never really felt it in any other guitar.

You’re often thought of as a player who’s built their sound around active electric guitar pickups. What’s driven your move towards using Greeny with its P.A.F.s?

Well, old P.A.F.s are so much more touch-sensitive and I’ve been trying to figure out for the last 10 years whether or not active pickups age well. Because it’s a bunch of circuitry – but your traditional pickups, with [just] coils and magnets and wire, they have a tendency to age.

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.’

I’ll tell you what attracted me to active pickups in the ’80s, it was the fact that they had a higher output – a battery-assisted higher output. They’re basically less microphonic, higher output, which means lower noise. And that’s what I needed back then for Metallica: we were all about distortion, being loud, high-gain… just a fucking wall of sound.

But as I grew as a guitar player during the ’90s, I started noticing P.A.F. pickups. Man, that’s the sound that I grew up hearing with all these British guitar players that I loved. Even Michael Schenker’s Flying V had just stock Gibson pickups in it. Sometime in the ’90s, I just realised that you can push a P.A.F. pickup; you can take an amp and fully just gain it out.

That P.A.F. will just take it and take it. You really can’t do that with a high-output active pickup: you turn up the gain and then you’re lost and it’s noisy. Then the [tonal] distinction’s gone, the harmonic distortion changes, it’s not as touch-sensitive – and you can get away with a lie, it covers up a lot of your mistakes.

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.’

But no, I was, like, next-level first and then went to the more subtle thing – and I’ve discovered that the more subtle thing works for me. James [Hetfield] is the same way, he has the same opinion. He loves P.A.F. pickups and thinks P.A.F.s are great for lead – but, for him, the EMG active pickup sound is great for his rhythm sound and he really, really likes that rhythm sound.

You’re often associated with ‘SuperStrat’ style electrics. How did your path to becoming a Les Paul player begin?

When I first started playing guitar, I was listening a lot to Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton. So I got a Strat. But when I got the Strat, plugged it in, it was clean; it wasn’t full, it was that single-coil sound and it’s like, ‘Why doesn’t this sound like Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix?’ I realised it was the amp: the amp-pickup combination.

Once I figured that out then I just needed a different type of guitar. I got a Flying V, and then I was good. But I always wanted a Les Paul. I’m looking at pictures of Jimmy Page where the Les Paul looks so amazing, and I would just stare at him. I’d look at Gary Moore’s Les Paul – what a great guitar.

I always wanted a Les Paul, but it didn’t seem at the time to be the heavy metal [instrument] that I needed, which was a really fast guitar that was Strat-style, 24 frets, two humbuckers but with a whammy bar, active pickups… You weren’t going to find a Les Paul like that. And that’s what I wanted at the time to play all those early Metallica songs.

But around, I would say, …And Justice For All [1988] was when I actually started getting some disposable income and I bought a tiger-stripe Les Paul. I started playing it on stage and just loved it. I was in friggin’ heaven… I broke the neck on that, got it back and all of a sudden, it sounded better. Then I was even more attached to it!

And from then, not long after that I bought my first ’59 Les Paul Standard in about 1990, it just all kicked in for me. I love Les Pauls. I love Strats. I love ‘SuperStrats’. I love Teles, I love 335s, I love Flying Vs. And that’s about it.

What do you plug Greeny into when you’re at home? Hard to believe it’s a high-gain stack…

I have two of these Fenders [Kirk points to two Tweed Deluxe combos]. These Voxes are also amazing [he holds up what appears to be two small Nutube-based combos in front of his computer], and a new Carr amp. I’m basically plugging Greeny into anything that’s around me because Greeny likes amps, and amps like Greeny.

Greeny will make a shitty-sounding amp decent. It’s just one of those guitars. There are amps out there that like guitars… I have an amp where you plug in just about any guitar and it sounds wonderful. Just like certain mics love voices – have you heard that phrase? Greeny is the guitar that loves amps and amps love Greeny.

No matter what the combination, Greeny always sounds interesting. Because it’s in the wood, it’s in the pickups – it’s a complete package. All you need to do is a little tweak here and there on the amp and then you’re good to go.

Like I said, it’s an amazing piece of wood and it’s been played to hell. I mean, Peter Green played it a lot, Gary Moore really fucking played it to hell, and I play it to hell. And other people played it, too: Jimi Hendrix has played it, Rory Gallagher’s played it, Jeff Beck, George Harrison. I mean, the list goes on and on and on…

How does the feeling of playing the real Greeny translate to the various Custom Shop and now Gibson USA replicas of the guitar?

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?’

That’s what these Gibson reissues are doing now: it’s to try to spread that inspiration, spread that influence, spread that mojo. I mean, you’ll never have an exact Greeny copy because guitars are like human beings – so individualistic – but you can make a Greeny copy that looks like Greeny, feels like Greeny and 80 per cent sounds like Greeny.

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 first thing I check when I get these prototypes is the middle position to make sure it has that out‑of-phase sound [correct]. I have to tell you, man, I’ve tried the Gibson Custom Shops. Those Greenys are great. Tom Murphy Greenys are really great.

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.

Or maybe they’re just a Metallica fan, but then they come up with some weird, crazy, heavy metal/blues hybrid that no-one else has ever heard before. Maybe it’s because of Greeny. I don’t know.

The main thing is the power of influence and power of inspiration. To me, it leads to the music of 20 years from now. So maybe it’s just an investment – in the hope that someone will take [a Greeny replica] and make great music that we can all enjoy in the end.

Those are my intentions. It’s not fucking status. It’s not finances. It’s not to see my name out there. My motivation is mainly musical and to go out there and put guitars in the hands of musicians who will make music that hopefully I will like in 10 or 15 years’ time.

• This 2023 interview first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Kirk Hammett has expanded his guitar collection by adding Gojira guitarist Christian Andreu's brand-new Pro Plus Series signature model to his touring arsenal.

He debuted his new addition during Metallica’s triumphant return to London this past weekend for two back-to-back shows at the London Stadium – which wrapped up their mammoth M72 World Tour.

“London, you fought fire with fire!” posted Andreu on Instagram, alongside a photo of Hammett posing with his signature guitar. “Thank you Kirk for using my custom Jackson Rhoads guitar on Seek!” Gojira, as well as Knocked Loose, served as Metallica’s opening acts.

The Jackson Pro Plus Series Signature Christian Andreu Rhoads RR24 EVTN6 debuted in March.

Featuring a three-piece maple neck with neck-through-body construction, a graphite-reinforced truss rod, 24 jumbo stainless steel frets on an ebony fingerboard, a single Fishman humbucker, and an Evertune F6 bridge, it's safe to say this signature model’s built for modern metal… which includes stadium shows.

And, considering that Hammett is one of Andreu's ultimate guitar heroes and the player who inspired him to pick up the Rhoads design, seeing the Metallica icon wield his signature guitar while playing Seek & Destroy, from 1983's Kill 'Em All, was a true full-circle moment for the Gojira guitarist.

“Dreams come true,” concluded Andreu in his social media post.

Last year, the Gojira riffer made another player's dreams come true after he took Diamond Rowe's signature model out on tour.

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.

Metallica’s Load came after a period of intense reflection for the metal icons.

Following years of heavy touring between 1991 and 1993, all members broke off to explore influences outside heavy metal and the music realm, with the dynamic guitar duo of James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett taking a deep dive into hunting (for Hetfield) – and film, jazz, and Asian arts (for Hammett).

When they returned to the band, they took a fresh approach to the instrument. Hammett, who had only handled lead guitar on record up to this point, would now join Hetfield on rhythm duties across the album that would define this new phase of Metallica.

Yet Hammett's transition to rhythm guitarist was never planned. It came about quite naturally.

“It was never really something that we spoke about,” Hammett told Guitar World's Tom Beaujour in a 1996 interview. “The first mention of it came while we were recording the drum tracks.

“When we do that, we all play the songs together in a single room, but the only thing that goes onto the multi-track is the drums – everything else just gets taped. Some of the songs were sounding so good on those tapes that James was like, ‘Well, maybe Kirk should play on the final version of some of these.’”

“Later on, on a day when James happened to be away on a hunting trip, I was laying down a couple of solos, and when I finished the lead on one of the tunes our producer, Bob Rock, said, ‘Okay, tune up, and we'll do the rhythm for this song now.’ I was like, ‘What?’”

As Hetfield adds, “By the time I came back, Kirk had put down rhythm tracks on four songs.”

Hammett specifically went out of his way to come up with a second guitar part that would complement Hetfield’s, and not, as he put it, “ape it”.

“Not that the riffs weren't interesting,” he clarified. “The riffs are the riffs – they're the most important part of the song. Our parts have a really good sense of interplay. And you can actually separate the two guitars and tell who's playing what. James is on the left side, and I'm on the right.”

Was it ever a point of contention that Hammett didn't get to play rhythm guitar up until that point?

“Not really,” he replied. “In fact, on this album we argued more about the solos than anything else. But we're always arguing about something, so it was just par for the course.

“I often have a pretty specific idea of what the solo to a particular song should sound like, so it throws me for a loop when Kirk comes in with something else,” Hetfield added. “But then everyone sits down, we talk it out and work out a middle ground that everyone can be happy with.”

While the album proved controversial among Metallica fans for straying from the band's thrash metal roots – complete with a revamped, leather-jacket-clad look and (gasp) short hair – it was nevertheless a commercial success, topping the charts in more than 15 countries.

Kirk Hammett certainly didn’t benefit from the luck of the Irish over the weekend as he slipped and fell into the audience while playing in Dublin.

Metallica’s wah pedal enthusiast laughed off the incident as the band, touring with Gojira, Pantera and Knocked Loose in tow, headlined the 40,000-capacity Aviva Stadium on Friday, June 19.

He’d just launched into Seek & Destroy, from the band's 1983 debut album, Kill ‘Em All, with the roar from the crowd still audible as he failed to keep his footing and went tumbling in the gap between the band’s massive center stage and the front row of a surprised and slightly amused crowd.

Thankfully, Hammett and his Ouija Board ESP came away from the incident unscathed, with the band closing the show with Master of Puppets.

On the whole, Metallica’s latest trip to Ireland wasn’t a banana skin, with the band playing a snippet of Thin Lizzy’s Black Rose during a jam between Hammett and Trujillo. The pair visited the Phil Lynott statue the following day.

Trujillo assumed vocal duties for the spot as they paid homage to Irish rock icons, with Greeny the obvious guitar for the job. The Irish Examiner, though, called it “ropey at best,” which likely hurt Hammett more than the fall.

Metallica will next play shows in Glasgow, Scotland; Cardiff, Wales; and London, England, as they move across the British Isles before returning to the US for their Sphere residency in October.

The following feature first appeared in the November 2011 issue of Guitar World.

When Guitar World travelled to Milan, Italy, on July 6, to pull together the Big 4 cover shoot with Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax, we narrowly managed to corral everyone together for the cover photo.

But due to transportation delays, Metallica six-stringers James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett were unable to participate in the roundtable interview with Slayer's Kerry King, Megadeth's Dave Mustaine and Anthrax's Scott Ian that occurred earlier that day.

When we eventually caught up with Hetfield and Hammett after the show, they treated us to a lively discussion on the legacy of the Big 4, how drummer Lars Ulrich's nervousness helped create the fastest right hands in the business, and why Dave Mustaine should watch his back during the Yankee Stadium Big 4 show.

When I spoke earlier to Kerry King, Dave Mustaine, and Scott Ian, the consensus was clear: they never expected a "Big 4" tour to actually happen.

James Hetfield: We never expected it either!

Kirk Hammett: Definitely not. At a certain point in the Eighties, it was like we were all running neck and neck to see who could outdo each other. For me, that lasted into the Nineties. Then somehow that attitude became less important, and a certain amount of maturity set in. I think when you get older your priorities change. We started to pay more attention to the musical side of things instead of the more superficial side of things.

Hetfield: We've reached 30 years of being a band. We've hit some milestones and we're at a place where we want to celebrate those things instead of running from them. We felt that it was also important to really put this scene on the map. You always hear about the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, but what about the Bay Area thrash scene and the Big 4? Hopefully these shows will help us make an even deeper mark in history.

James, when I spoke with the other guys, Scott and Kerry said Lars first suggested the Big 4 tour idea, but Dave thought you had. Can you clarify who first had the idea?

Hetfield: I believe it was me. But my memory is pretty horrible, so Lars may claim a few different things. [laughs]

But it doesn't really matter, because it's happened. It probably came out of us talking like, "Hey, let's do a Bay Area show with all the bands we grew up with." Then, "What about the Big 4?" Obviously the business and logistical side of things is Lars' deal, but it doesn't matter. It came from the Metallica camp.

Dave said he had reservations about joining the tour. Mainly, he wanted to make sure all four bands weren't scattered across different stages or interspersed with other acts. Did you feel the same way?

Hetfield: When the idea first came into our minds, we were thinking of it as just the four of us. The first European dates already had bands on them, but they were great festivals and everyone was able to play them. So it was like, "This is a great, established festival and lots of people are gonna show up. Let's get the Big 4 in there." I mean, you can't really just throw off bands that are already booked. But for the later shows, in Indio and this last European run, it was just the Big 4 and possibly one opener.

Hammett: There were certain situations where the promoter had to put more bands on the bill to break even. I understand the economics of the situation. To me it didn't matter; it was just important that all four of us were together on the same bill.

Obviously for a New York native like Scott Ian, playing at Yankee Stadium is huge. Does that venue hold any particular sentiment for you?

Hammett: Nope. [laughs] I had no idea of the significance until Scott called me and was hyperventilating. He was more hoarse than he's ever been, going – [in a rough voice] – "You don't understand! Yankee Stadium!"

Hetfield: I think the obvious connection for us is with [Yankee pitcher Mariano] Mo [Rivera]. For the past 10 years, he's used Enter Sandman as the music that's played before he comes out on the field. He's helped keep that song alive, especially in that stadium.

And even though they're in a new building now [across the street from the location of the original Yankee Stadium, which closed in 2008], it's still great to have that connection. That's actually how we first announced the Big 4 show at Yankee Stadium. During one game, right as the song started, they cut to this video I did where I said, "Stop, stop!" and then announced the show. It was pretty cool.

Dave mentioned that he's turning 50 the day before the Yankee Stadium show. Do you have anything up your sleeves?

Hetfield: [laughs] It'll be great, and Dave better beware. [laughs] I'm not releasing any ideas at this point, but it'll be fun. What better place to celebrate than Yankee Stadium?

The press first applied the Big 4 label to you guys in the Eighties. Back then, did you feel the same solidarity with the other bands as you do now?

Hetfield: No, that definitely developed over time. Back in the Eighties there were thousands and thousands of bands, but there's not too many that have survived 30 years. The Big 4 moniker didn't mean as much then as it does today.

Hammett: Back then, Scott [Ian] and [Anthrax drummer] Charlie [Benante] were the only people I had relationships with. I had no relationship with anyone from Slayer or Megadeth. But over the years that's changed. Now these guys are my peers, and I'm really proud of all our accomplishments.

I also love that, because of the Big 4, there's a bunch of little kids out there now that think Slayer is the shit. And they'll tell their friends, and the legacy will spread even farther. It doesn't start and stop with one band. Until you see all four bands together you won't get a picture about what this is really all about.

In the early days, did you look to the other bands for inspiration when it came to guitar playing?

Hetfield: Oh yeah. There's a huge competitive vein that runs through my body. Competition has always been a very healthy thing for us. At first it started out as basically pure hatred for pop music and "heavy" radio rock. From that hatred it went on to, "Ah, Slayer released that song... We're gonna do this!" And that's still happening onstage at these Big 4 gigs, too. You go out there and see how good they're doing and how well the crowd is reacting to them, and you think, Okay, "I gotta step it up."

Scott was talking about how the four of you basically invented that signature right-hand rhythmic downpicking approach. James, is that something you and Dave developed together during the early days of Metallica?

Hetfield: It's pretty interesting that someone is trying to define the origin of downpicking. It's silly. It's like, who invented music? There's plenty of punk rock bands doing that technique.

The first time I remember seeing an extremely fast right hand was Johnny Ramone, except he was doing a more acoustic-style thing and not muting and punching it like we ended up doing. That was one main inspiration, and the other one was probably the competition between Dave and I. Like, "Here's a riff... Wait, you can't play that. Hahaha!" And then he'd come back with an even faster riff. So at that time the competition was not only between bands but within them, as well.

Hammett: Actually, I'd say Scott Ian is the king of alternate-picking rhythm playing. He can do that like no one else. He's super tight and doesn't get the credit he deserves.

But as far as downpicking goes, I was always aware of it. I remember the first time I heard [Black Sabbath's] Paranoid back in 1978, I thought, "Wow, that guy is picking all downstrokes." Then I heard Symptom of the Universe and thought, "There it is, he's hitting all those downstrokes." Then I heard the Ramones, and there it was again.

When I was in Exodus with Gary Holt, we had some songs that had that early fast downpicking. Back in the early days, a lot of the Bay Area bands were doing it. It was really integrated into that style of playing. So it was nothing new to me.

You guys just kicked it up a notch.

Hammett: Well, that was because of Lars. Back then he was very energetic and way into Motörhead and Diamond Head. So his goal was always to play fast.

But I also think that during those first few years Lars was just nervous. And when he's nervous, his tempos speed up, so I think trying to keep up with Lars' nerves was as big an influence as anything on our fast downpicking technique. [laughs]

Speaking of Gary Holt, he's been sitting in with Slayer while Jeff Hanneman is recovering from his infection. Kirk, what's it like reconnecting with Gary on a tour like this?

Hammett: It is great to finally tour with Gary Holt. We totally rekindled our friendship and started hanging out a lot and speaking the old language we used to speak to each other in high school. It's very cool and one of the best things that came out of these recent Big 4 dates.

Touring back in the early days was filled with a lot of youthful, drunken troublemaking. There's the classic story of Scott Ian and Cliff Burton pissing down laundry chutes in London...

Hetfield: [laughs] Yeah, now it's shitting down laundry chutes. [laughs]. There was certainly some childish behavior that happened on the road. There was a lot of pent-up energy back then. And I can only speak for myself, but now I'm able to channel that energy a lot better and focus it on the music.

But I will say watching my kid piss off the balcony is still pretty funny. I wasn't even the instigator, but the wife still busted me. But she's supposed to. So I have to tell my son, "Hey, don't do that again!" But it was so funny. [laughs]

Hammett: For these Big 4 shows a lot of the guys have their families out with them. So you don't get that crazy debauched rock-and-roll party scene you might have gotten 15 years ago. I hate to say it but now it's all about dealing with the family and being tired from hanging with the family. But take away all the responsibility and it would be one great party scene at every show.

Kerry was saying that the party still follows him pretty closely. James, are you still not drinking?

Hetfield: Yeah, I've got over 10 years [sober], which is great. For me, there's plenty of ways to party without getting hangovers. I'm grateful to have all my days and not feel like crap.

But it doesn't stop anyone around me from doing it. They gotta do what they gotta do. I know there's also a part of me that celebrates being a loner. So when they go out hanging and partying, I'd just rather not do that. People annoy me a lot of the time. [laughs]

The Metallica machine has grown significantly over the years. Ever get nostalgic for piling in a van and hauling your own gear?

Hammett: Heck no. [laughs] I have neck, back, shoulder and knee problems. But I do get nostalgic for the old days, when things were very simple. To play a show nowadays it means you have to alert everyone and crank up the machine. I wish we were a lot more stealthy and quick on our feet. But we're an established band that's been around for a long time. What are you gonna do? We're brontosauruses.

Hetfield: [laughs] Usually we'll hop in some vehicle together, take a little ride and realize that's good enough. There's just so much other stuff in life that is fun for us and inspires us. And you know what? Heading out on tour is still one of those things. It's hard to say goodbye and leave the family, but once you get out there you realize you really crave this guy hang time, whether that's jamming and writing together or just hanging out at HQ. We're all still a bunch of guys that need the guy hang.

The circle is just a lot smaller than it used to be, and the word party means something a little different now. We do get nostalgic about the old days, and what they meant to us. But we're making "old days" right now. Ten years from now we'll look back and wonder why we were wasting our time looking back at the previous 10 years. We're making history now, and enjoying it while we do it.

James, I noticed that you were having a good time on the side of the stage watching Megadeth's set. Is that a regular part of the hang, too?

Hetfield: Oh, definitely. I love to see what's going on if I have time. It's real nice to get up there early and see what's up. It's annoying that I don't get to stand there the whole time and watch the show. But there are a lot of other parts of touring for us, with the fan club, interviews, and actually grabbing a bite of dinner.

It's nice to see how the crowd's reacting, and it's a good sign when the crowd's up for it. Because, really, we want everyone to do well and feel the vibe. And when a crowd is anti one of the Big 4, that's no fun. We're all moving forward in the same direction, so you gotta put that stuff aside. Sure, you might like one band better than the other, but hey, you're seeing some history.

What are your pre-show rituals before hitting the stage for one of these Big 4 shows?

Hammett: I usually try to see a chiropractor, then I do yoga to get centered, and then I sit and do guitar warm-ups. I have all sorts of different exercises that I do, but basically I run through different scales. The process takes a long time, mostly because of the yoga thing. I have to unwind and center myself and make sure my thoughts are grounded.

I find that when I do yoga before going onstage my show is much better, both mentally and physically. It used to be like, "Let's do a shot of vodka and go!" But after a while that stops working. Now it's like, "Let's do a shot of espresso!" [laughs]

Hetfield: The first part of getting the vibe up for me is the meet-and-greet. Such a good vibe is created from talking with people and hearing what songs they want to hear and how music's affected their lives. Whether people are introducing me to their kids, who they've turned on to our music, or I'm meeting a Make-A-Wish kid, there's always something in the meet-and-greet that's very inspirational.

Then there's the regular stuff, like grabbing some grub, stretching, and getting our warrior gear on, which is basically putting on a different black shirt than the one you already had on. Then we go into the tuning room. I'll go through my vocal warm-up tape, which helps me get prepared. Then we go in the jam room and knock some rust off. We all trickle in at different times and find out how each other is doing.

[Bassist] Rob [Trujillo] is always there first. He's a bass player's bass player. He loves to play. Sometimes I'll sit behind the drums and we'll goof around on some tunes. It's always a good vibe and we come out pretty sweaty. Then it's right to the stage.

During the Clint Eastwood tape [Ecstasy of Gold from Ennio Morricone's soundtrack to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly] we do a little huddle and someone steps up to be the inspirational speaker of the evening [laughs], whether it's telling jokes or memories of the last time we played that city. Dude, we're human and sometimes people need a little help and a push. And when someone's not feeling it, the other guys rally around them.

These Big 4 dates are clearly significant for everyone. Can you recall a specific gig in your early career that was a similar benchmark?

Hetfield: I'd say our first time playing Day on the Green [in 1985 in Oakland, California]. I can't even tell you who else was there, maybe Yngwie Malmsteen and Y&T? All I know is that we were there, [original bassist] Cliff [Burton] was in the band, and it was a big deal, especially for Kirk and Cliff, because it was their hometown show.

Hammett: Definitely. Those Day on the Green shows had been going on since the early Seventies, and I'd seen so many bands play there. One of my all-time-favorite shows that I've ever seen was Day on the Green in 1978. Listen to this bill: AC/DC, Van Halen, Pat Travers, Foreigner, and Aerosmith.

It was so amazing. I remember coming back feeling so inspired that I played my guitar for days. So going from seeing those shows to playing on that stage was amazing. After I found out we were playing it, I was walking on clouds for months. It really felt like we hit a milestone.

Hetfield: Another memorable show was opening for Ozzy [in 1986]. Also playing in Moscow with AC/DC and Pantera [in 1991] after the coup attempt [against the Soviet Union leadership] was unbelievable.

And then there's our second gig ever, which was opening for Saxon. That was definitely a "We've made it" moment... after which we got our $19 pay, hopped back into our Pacer that constantly broke down, and drove home. [laughs]

But these moments are still happening. Playing the Big 4 in Germany was the biggest show we've done in 30 years. It's crazy to think that after 30 years we're still playing before bigger crowds.

Right now, Yankee Stadium is the last scheduled Big 4 show. Are there any plans to add more dates?

Hammett: Well, there's a lot of surf spots I've yet to hit in the world. [laughs] I think we should bring the Big 4 to Indonesia, Tahiti, the Maldives, and Tavarua. [laughs]

But seriously, the vibe at these shows is genuinely good. We'll do a slew of Big 4 shows, go do our own things for a few months, and when we come back everyone is glad to see each other. It's a super-cool thing for us, and I'm sure there are a lot of fans still out there that would love to see the show. I won't say yes, but I won't say no, either.

Hetfield: We don't know what's gonna happen. We're trying to cover the U.S. coasts, at least. Then we gotta get in and start focusing on writing a new record. But more Big 4 shows? We never say never, because obviously, this was never gonna happen in the first place.

Randall Amps is readying its “next generation” of gear after an extended period of inactivity.

The classic metal amp brand – which has been championed and beloved by the likes of Kirk Hammett, Dimebag Darrell, and Scott Ian, among others, over the decades – has faded into the background in recent years.

Randall was a major player in the 1980s and 1990s, and Mike Fortin was hired in 2011 to make new signature amps for Hammett and Ian. But since his departure circa 2016, the amp-building heavyweights have had a diminishing presence.

Posting on its newly revived Instagram page, the firm is talking up an exciting second coming.

“To the Randall family, thank you for your continued support, loyalty, and patience over the past few years as we reignite our product development and production efforts,” the statement reads.

“In the coming weeks, you'll begin to see many of our recent models become available again, followed by the return of some of the most iconic Randall products from the past – all delivering the signature high-gain Randall tone you know and love.

“As we shape the next generation of Randall gear, your feedback and support continue to motivate and inspire us,” it adds. “Stay tuned, this is only the beginning.”

Hammett’s latest signature head, the KH103, arrived in 2015, so a successor seems like an obvious choice, as do potential collaborations with Scott Ian and another Randall champion, Kirk Weinstein.

The post also hints at the revival of classic models, so could we see the return of the RG100ES and Century 200 heads used by Dimebag? Or the O.G. Warhead that the Pantera guitar great played? It remains to be seen.

Aa recent (ish) Instagram post also hints at a very different signature release being on the horizon.

The first post on its refreshed social page, 10 weeks ago, featured Dimebag’s signature guitar, the Dean Razorback, leaning against a Randall cab.

“Working on a tribute to the man who started it all for me as a musician,” the caption read. Following that were a trio of posts that confirmed the firm was back “back and louder.”

The news comes after some other surprising amp restorations, first with Gibson’s return to the amp game, and then with Dumble’s surprise comeback.

Ace Frehley’s legendary 1975 Gibson Les Paul is headed to auction and is expected to sell for as much as $600,000.

Julien's Auctions has helped sell some truly historic instruments over past few years, including David Lynch's Parker Fly, Bob Dylan and Robbie Robertson's heavily-modded 1965 Telecaster, and some weird and wonderful guitars from Joe Walsh's collection.

The auction house will be at it again in late May, with instruments from Stevie Ray Vaughan and Kirk Hammett also set for new homes. But it's the late Kiss guitarist's workhorse LP that stands as the centrepiece.

It’s being dubbed by Julien's as “one of the most historically significant guitars in rock and roll”. It was by Frehley’s side from the start of his career and was his go-to for the studio and stage, accompanying him more than any other electric guitar in his arsenal over his Kiss tenure.

The guitar, which sports a triple threat of humbuckers, shows signs of its busy life, particularly above the bridge, where its burst finish has been worn away by Frehley's forearm.

The $600k estimate is a reflection of the guitar's prestige. It is, however, a drop in the ocean compared to the $1,315,708 (£1,068,500) Jeff Beck's Oxblood Les Paul – the world's most expensive Les Paul – that was sold last year.

Other notable axes set to be sold at the upcoming auction include the 1969 Guild F-412 12-string that Stevie Ray Vaughan played on MTV Unplugged; Billy Duffy’s 1976 Les Paul, as featured on the cover of the Cult’s Sonic Temple; and Hammett’s very first Ouija ESP custom guitar, which was his main touring and recording tool throughout the 1990s.

The 1987 Gibson HR Fusion 1 that Izzy Stradlin wielded in the Welcome to the Jungle music video is also included in Julien's 800-item collection.

Highlight pieces are set to tour at three Hard Rock Cafe locations, starting at Piccadilly Circus, London, today (March 25) and running until April 13, before traveling to Tokyo, Japan, from April 27. Other items will be displayed at Times Square between May 13 and 30.

The auction itself takes place May 29-30.

Visit Julien’s Auctions for more information.

Following his passing, a host of guitar stars, including Tom Morello, Justin Hawkins, and John 5, have paid tribute to the Ace Frehley.

Butch Walker says he was offered the chance to buy the legendary ‘Greeny’ Les Paul before it ended up in Kirk Hammett’s hands, but couldn’t stomach the quarter-of-a-million dollar price tag.

The 1959 LP was made famous in the hands of Fleetwood Mac founder, Peter Green, but when he retired from music in the early ’70s, Irish bluesman Gary Moore bought it off him for next to nothing.

After Moore passed away in 2011, having significantly contributed to its history, the iconic electric guitar became available for adoption. Famously, Joe Bonamassa turned down the chance to buy it and ultimately believes it's found a rightful home with the Metallica man, who has been playing it religiously since.

But Walker, a Grammy-nominated producer and songwriter who's played a hand in a string of mammoth rock hits, was also a potential suitor at the time. He’s come to wish he stumped up the cash.

“Gary Moore was one of my heroes,” he tells Guitar World. “I had an opportunity to buy Greeny before it was really making the rounds, and Kirk Hammett bought it. But I just wasn’t ready to spend $250,000 on a guitar at that stage in my life and my career.

“My buddy was a guitar broker, and it started circulating that Gary was going to sell,” he details. “It had belonged to Peter Green as well, which was cool, but I was actually more psyched that it was Gary Moore’s. I highly regret not coming up with the money somehow. Obviously, that was just a Tuesday and a lunch tab for Kirk Hammett.”

Hammett has also proven charitable with the guitar, ensuring it got a well-used third era, while also letting a host of guitar stars run their hands across its fabled fingerboard. And everyone who’s played it, from Al Di Meola and Jack White, to Adrian Smith and Jake E. Lee, has fallen head over heels with the one-of-a-kind guitar.

“I didn't want to put it down,” Lee later confessed. “I've missed it ever since!”

More of Moore’s gear recently went up for auction, with Bonamassa this time splurging on his SLO-100 tube amp head. Unfortunately for Walker, his piggy bank was emptied as he looked to recover from two studio fires in 2007 and 2018.

“I just took such a blow financially,” he says. “It makes going out and trying to replace all that stuff not so fun these days. I just shifted my mindset a little bit; I don’t need trophy guitars. I just wanted guitars for functionality. You don’t get as sentimental when everything of sentimental value is taken away from you in one day.”

Greeny has been subject to a series of reissues over the years, with the Custom Shop model finding an unlikely fan in a British alt-rock heavyweight.

Walker’s full chat with Guitar World will be published online in the coming weeks.

Metallica is helping EMG celebrate its 50th anniversary by dropping new special edition finish options for each of their signature pickup sets.

The thrash metal giants have been powered by the firm's high-output passive and active pickups since basically day one. Their relationship predates their 1983 debut album, Kill ‘Em All, with Kirk Hammett first loading three of its single-coils into his purple Fernandes.

Hetfield was quick to follow suit, and EMG founder Rob Turner has recently said that making Hetfield's signature pickups was his most challenging and exhausting build.

And so here, Hetfield's signature JH ‘Het’ humbuckers get a special Sandblasted finish, while Hammett's KH-BB set gets a purple Spectrum colorway, and bass player Robert Trujillo's RT ‘Rip Tide’ pickups get a gilded redressing.

The limited edition sets – which, under the hood, are the same pickups that have been fuelling Metallica’s riffwork over the past few decades – are available during 2026 only.

Hetfield's set, which went through a tireless prototyping process, is unique in its use of ceramic poles, which are taller and thinner than usual. Hammett's Bone Breakers, by comparison, utilize Alnico 5 magnets, while Trujillo's take on the EMG J bass pickups are now “truly metal” thanks to their fresh new look.

“The thing I love about EMGs is that they're so consistent,” Hetfield says. “I can put EMGs in every guitar, and it's gonna sound exactly like I need it to.”

In other Metallica news, the band has just announced a residency at the Las Vegas Sphere, and their existing gig rig means they won’t need to go to the lengths John Mayer did to work around the venue’s sound restrictions.

NAMM 2026: British metal heavyweights Iron Maiden are the latest to be honored with a signature Jim Dunlop Cry Baby Wah, with a special Killers edition of the iconic pedal paying homage to the band’s earliest days.

First launched in the mid-1960s and quickly immortalized by Jimi Hendrix on Voodoo Chile (Slight Return), the Cry Baby wah has long since been a pedalboard staple for many.

Over the years, everyone from Slash and Dimebag Darrell to Joe Bonamassa and Jerry Cantrell has been bestowed with signature editions as its empire has grown, and now the band that “emerged from the rough-and-gritty streets of late-’70s London” has joined the clan.

From classic Killers cuts like Wrathchild and Innocent Exile to The Number of the Beast – the wah has been a trademark effect for Maiden’s shredders. Cue this collector’s edition stompbox, emblazoned with Killers era Eddie for a pedal you won’t miss on a darkened stage floor.

Beneath that embossed tread – which looks pleasingly grippy – the pedal is essentially a redressed version of the GCB95 Cry Baby Standard Wah.

That means there are no bells and whistles with this edition, instead focusing on the classic sound that made the pedal one of the world's best-sellers in the first place. The Killers image that takes up the entire bottom plate, and the Iron Maiden logo along its side are neat touches, though.

Wah enthusiasts Kirk Hammett and John Petrucci are among the first players in the world to get their hands on the new pedal, with the pair sent mystery boxes to open for their social media followers.

While Hammett jokingly says he hopes it's food or coffee inside the box, there's an audible gasp when he sees what's inside.

“Oh my gosh, this is very special,” he purrs. “I love Iron Maiden, and I love this album. I'm getting a warm feeling in my heart right now.”

Petrucci is similarly impressed, beaming, “How cool is that?” as he holds it up to the camera.

“This collector’s edition Cry Baby Standard Wah celebrates that sonic connection with an exclusive collector’s edition finish and custom tread inspired by that record,” says Jim Dunlop.

“Whether it’s mounted on your pedalboard or standing at the heart of your shrine, this pedal is a torch held high for rock ’n’ roll.

The Jim Dunlop Iron Maiden Killers Cry Baby wah is available now for $229.99.

See Jim Dunlop for more.

The pedal’s release comes quickly after Fender launched a band-wide run of signature guitars for Maiden, meaning Janick Gers finally got his moment in the limelight.

System of a Down guitarist Daron Malakian has reflected on his brief stint deputizing for James Hetfield in Metallica – which began after he saved one of the band's shows at the last minute.

In 2000, Malakian’s nu-metallers were the new the kids on the block. They only had one album and a few commendable Ozzfest showings to their name at that point, but they were making serious waves.

So, when James Hetfield was sidelined after a water skiing accident, Malakian was promptly sworn into the band. He and some ad hoc vocalists helped fill the void left by the band’s co-founder across a handful of shows, after Malakian put himself in the frame.

“When I was 12 or 13, I had been playing the guitar for a year. I was with these guys in my school and, in their dad's garage, we would play Metallica covers,” he says on Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast (via Blabbermouth).

“That's pretty much all we'd play,” he adds. “[It was] a big part of how I learned how to play the guitar, so I knew all the Metallica covers.”

Aside from Malakian’s in-depth knowledge of the material, his hiring was also practical as System of a Down were supporting Metallica on their Stadium Sanitarium tour that summer. But there was no time for a bedding-in process.

"I met Metallica on stage playing with them,” he reveals. “I never met them before. We're the first band. Nobody knows us. It was like, five bands on the bill [including Kid Rock and Korn].

“Jason Newsted was singing, and then they brought [Jonathan Davis from] Korn on, and they played this Cheech & Chong cover song or something. They didn't know what to do because James [Hetfield] wasn't there.

“So I turned to my tech, and I say, ‘Go tell their tech that I know a lot of their shit.’ Then my tech comes back to me. He's, like, ‘All right, come with me.’

“Next thing you know, I go on the other side of the stage. I get handed a Les Paul – I think it was one of Kirk Hammett's. I'm in my after-show [clothes], wearing Lakers sweats. I'm not even ready to get on stage.”

But on stage he went, in front of 60,000 people, many of whom may not have caught SOAD’s set.

“You gotta understand that [at the time] our band's not big yet. I'm still a kid. I'm 22 years old,” Malakian continues. “I can't even believe that we're even allowed to open up for Metallica, and they put me out there! They're, like, ‘What do you know?’ I go, ‘I don't know; Master Of Puppets,' ‘Okay. Count it in.’

“And then there's this thing that happened where, in the middle of Master Of Puppets, instead of going into that slow part, they went into Welcome Home (Sanitarium), and I didn't know they were gonna do that. You would think we rehearsed it – I didn't even know it was gonna happen.”

Malakian clearly made a good impression. He continues, “Next thing you know, Kirk Hammett's in front of me with a guitar trying to teach me stuff off Load, and they're like, ‘Hey, get your shit from your bus, because you're flying on the private jet with us now.’”

After a few shows, Hetfield was back in the saddle, while Malakian was left with lifelong memories.

In related news, Malakian stumbled across a SOAD cover band while on tour last year and proceeded to play with them.

Adrian Smith has become the latest in a growing list of superstar players to have become infatuated with the illustrious “Greeny” Les Paul.

When Kirk Hammett became the third high-profile owner of the legendary Gibson, he had no intention of keeping it as an ornament. The electric guitar, famous for its quirky and quacky middle position – and for its starring role on a host of classic blues rock tracks – is a key part of his touring rig, and he’s also been keen to share the love.

Already, Jack White’s played it, Al Di Meola has taken it for a spin, and Jake E. Lee said that when he played it at Back to the Beginning, he didn’t want to put it down.

Greeny's charm, it seems, is infectious, and Hammett’s willingness to let other guitarists play it has afforded Iron Maiden’s Smith the chance to test it out, too.

“I bumped into him [Hammett] in a hotel in Canada,” he explains to eonmusic. “We were just waiting for the lift. We're just checking in, and Metallica were there. The first thing I said to him was, ‘Oh, you bought Greeny.’ He goes, ‘Yeah. I've got it. You want to play?’”

Suffice to say, Smith – who’s just released a new signature guitar as part of a band-wide Fender drop – eagerly took Hammett up on his offer.

“I went to his room. Ross Halfin [photographer] was there as well, because he's a mutual friend, and he gave me the guitar and a little practice amp, and of course, I did [Fleetwood Mac’s] Oh Well.”

The blues rock classic is one of the most iconic tracks to be associated with “Greeny”. Gary Moore bought the guitar after its original owner, Peter Green, left Fleetwood Mac. Hammett then bought it for an undisclosed fee.

But Smith’s playing session didn’t end there. When Hammett and Halfin left for a photoshoot, Smith was left to babysit.

“He said, ‘Take the guitar’, so I took it to my hotel room, and I had a little practice amp in there,” Smith says. “I played it all afternoon. It plays great. It's the intonation, the feel, the sound.

“There's no doubt about it, that is a special guitar. The mojo is off the charts. I'm glad somebody's using it, and it's not on a wall in somebody's climate-controlled guitar locker. It's out there being played, as it should be.”

Gibson produced a reissue of the guitar in 2023, with an Epiphone version arriving shortly after. Smith is just the latest star to fall head over heels for “Greeny.” He certainly won’t be the last.

The mystery Gibson SG that Kirk Hammett played at Back to the Beginning has sold for $76,800 at auction, alongside a host of other eye-catching electric guitar sales that took place as part of Julien's Played, Worn & Torn event.

After much speculation, Hammett’s axe was revealed as a CEO-4, the fourth creation born from CEO Cesar Gueikian's passion project of hand-building guitars to raise funds for in-house charity, Gibson Gives.

Gueikian, appointed CEO in 2023, has been using the series of builds to improve his luthiery skills. The CEO-1 was a Les Paul, the CEO-2 a James Hetfield-esque Explorer built for actor Jason Mamoa's son, and the CEO-3 a Gibson Victory.

The CEO-4 was used by Hammett to play Black Sabbath's Hole in the Sky with Metallica at Back to the Beginning. The guitarist signed its Ghost Burst-finished body afterwards.

“We sent it to him so that he could put it through his rig for a couple of soundchecks before,” Gueikian told Guitar World. “He said he really loved it, and it was going to be the perfect guitar for Hole in the Sky, and also as a way for him to pay tribute to Tony [Iommi].”

It was sold as part of Julien's latest Played, Worn & Torn auction, which featured 150 Hammett-played guitars. That included a 1985 Gibson Custom Shop Michael Schenker Flying V ($160,000), his Mamma Said 1990s ESP Custom Shop M2 ($32,000), and a 1996 ESP Wavecaster ($89,000) with a clear Lucite body filled with yellow-colored liquid.

All these guitars left their estimates in tatters, with the V's $15,000 figure, the highest of the bunch, representing less than 10% of the final sale price. The CEO-4 added just over $70,000 to its upper estimate of $6,000.

Elsewhere in Julien's collection, a 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard, played by Keith Richards during the Rolling Stones' 2007 A Bigger Bang tour, which features his signature on the back of its headstock, sold for $192,000.

That made it the priciest lot of the collection, surpassing the $64,000 sale of a Warwick Streamer played on stage by U2's Adam Clayton.

There was also a Gibson Gives Ukraine Relief Les Paul, emblazoned with the country's colors, for sale. It had been played on stage and signed by Slash. It also went for $38,400.

Visit Julien's Auctions to see the final results of the 2025 Played, Worn & Torn auction.

As the CEO of one of the world’s most important guitar brands, Gibson’s Cesar Gueikian has a pretty full plate.

Between developing new models, paying homage to Gibson’s heritage, bringing back long-lost designs, teasing upcoming launches on social media, expanding the company’s physical presence through various Garage stores and more, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Gueikian would struggle to find time to squeeze a new hobby into his hectic schedule.

But that’s not the case. While spinning the many plates that come with the job of Gibson CEO, Gueikian has also committed considerable time to learning the meticulous art of guitar making.

He has, for the past four years, been honing his skills as a luthier, gaining exposure and improving his understanding of each step of the process, from spec sheet to shred ready.

These are no novelty instruments, though. Rather, they are an collection of unique high-end electric guitars borne out of Gueikian’s passion for Gibson guitars and desire to inject them with something different. Something, in his own words, “epic”.

Gueikian charts all of his builds on his Instagram, and they’ve been gaining some traction. Hollywood star Jason Momoa – or, more specifically, Momoa’s son – is the proud owner of CEO-2, a decidedly James Hetfield-esque Explorer.

There’s also the CEO-1 – a Les Paul whose creation was documented via a social media series – and the Victory-styled CEO-3.

The most notable CEO model, though, is the CEO-4 – a Ghost Burst SG that Gueikian built and gave to Kirk Hammett, who played it at Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath’s final show, Back to the Beginning, for Metallica’s cover of Hole in the Sky.

That custom double-cut – which was named by Adam Jones, admired by Tony Iommi, and played by the Metallica great – is one of Gueikian’s most prized creations to date, and recently sold for $76,800 at auction in support of the Gibson Gives foundation.

We caught up with Gueikian before the auction to find out more about his guitar-making journey to date, and how the CEO-4 ended up playing a starring role at one of metal music’s most historic events.

How did the CEO series start for you? What inspired you to get into guitar building?

It started with an interest in building a guitar from beginning to end, and that changed over time. My initial thought was, ‘How interesting would it be to build a guitar from beginning to end, and learn the process of doing that?’

That was the first one. It took me three months, because I was going to the craftories for a few hours every Friday morning. Once I finished it, I realized it wasn't about the guitar. It was about the process of learning and working with our people, getting them to teach me how to do something.

I really enjoyed the whole process of getting to know them better, getting to learn from them, and that's what triggered in my mind, ‘This is something that I want to keep doing.’ Not only that, there's an opportunity here as we can auction them off for our foundation and do something really good for Gibson Gives.

That's been really one of the most enjoyable moments for me in my Gibson career. I get to work, and I get to learn from our people, and that's been amazing for me. It just fulfills me.

I didn't think of it this way. At the beginning, I thought, ‘I want to build a guitar.’ And I realized it was no longer about the guitars, but it was about the moment. It was about being there in the craftories, working, learning from them and what all of that has done for our company, and particularly for my relationship with our people.

Were there any particular learning curves or challenges that perhaps you weren’t expecting when it came to making a guitar?

There are so many very difficult things that happen in all the steps of making a Gibson. The first real challenge for me was learning how to do binding, so that the binding would be perfect and there would be no air pockets.

Neck fitting was really challenging. That's one of the processes where – because the binding can maybe have a couple of defects and they're going to be cosmetic – if that's not done properly, then the guitar won’t be playable. Beyond that, there's so many steps of sanding.

I knew about all these processes and how long they took, because I spent a lot of time in the craftories before. But once I really started making them, then I had a very different level of appreciation of how difficult it is.

With the sanding of the neck, I made mistakes. I went a little too far, and that's not something that can be repaired once you start eating into the wood to a certain degree. And gluing – it sounds simple, but if not done properly you can end up with air pockets in many different places. They're going to render the guitar unusable.

Once I started applying finishes, that took me a long time to get right. I had to do a lot of practice sprays to be able to control my arm in a way that was not overshadowing the guitar. For example, I was doing a perimeter burst, like I did for the one that Kirk Hammett played, and that required a lot of practice to be able to apply it.

We ended up calling [the finish] Ghost Burst. The idea for the name came from Adam Jones. I sent him a picture of it because I thought it was really cool and I knew that he would like it. Then he came back to me and he said, ‘That looks like a Ghost Burst.’

How do you go about spec’ing a CEO guitar?

I wanted to do an SG that had a highly figured maple top, so that the type of finish I had in mind would really pop. I've always really liked the Super 400 inlays that we also use in the Supreme line, but then I also really love the headstock of the Les Paul Custom with the Split Diamond. So that's what I had in my mind when I was thinking about that particular guitar.

Normally, I try to think of things that we're not doing that would be unique. The ideas that I have, I socialize those with the team, and then we develop something that is unique, so that when somebody uses it, or I get to use it, on stage, not only was it built by me, but it's also a unique guitar.

How did the collaboration with Kirk Hammett for Back to the Beginning come about?

I had in my mind that this show was happening, so I knew that if I built an SG as a tribute to Tony Iommi, somebody would probably be interested in using it. It just happened to be that I was talking to Kirk at the time that I was finishing it, and I told him, ‘I have something that I think you're gonna like for the Back to the Beginning show.’

When I finished it, I sent him a picture and said, ‘Here it is. Do you want to use it?’ And he replied in all caps, ‘YES.’ We were talking about other things that we were doing together, and it just occurred to me, ‘Maybe I'll just run it by him first…’

What was his reaction to the guitar? Did he have any comments or feedback?

We sent it to him so that he could put it through his rig for a couple of soundchecks before. He said he really loved it, and it was going to be the perfect guitar for Hole in the Sky [the Black Sabbath cover they played] and also as a way for him to pay tribute to Tony.

What was it like seeing one of your CEO guitars on stage for such a historic concert?

That was the coolest. I mean, that guitar is definitely the one that is the most special in that sense because, first it was Kirk with Metallica who used it, and also at that particular show, paying tribute to Black Sabbath and to Ozzy.

For me, particularly, being so close to Tony [Iommi], personally, and having picked up a guitar because of Black Sabbath and because of Tony, that was super special for me.

Did Tony have anything to say about it?

He loved it. He loved the gesture. He loved the story that I built it. When I say I built it, I say again, with the help of everybody [at the craftories]. He was pretty excited about it.

There have been a few artist connections to the CEO series. Which one does Jason Momoa have?

CEO-2, the White Explorer. It’s an Explorer with the ‘84 wiring diagram, so it's got the toggle switch by the volume knob like James [Hetfield's] original.

I told [Jason Momoa], ‘I'm building this guitar,’ and I left it there. I knew that he would love it because he loves Metallica. He came back to me before Christmas a couple of years ago and asked, ‘Have you finished that guitar? That would be the perfect gift for Wolfie [his son].’

He ended up getting it and contributing a pretty significant amount to our Gibson Gives Foundation, for which we are very grateful. It all worked out really nicely with that one nice.

The CEO8 and CEO4 are being auctioned off for Gibson Gives. What’s the foundation’s mission?

“For Gibson Gives, we have this mission of saving people's lives through music. We can do that through scholarships and funding, we can do it one guitar at a time. That could be guitars that we donate to music schools, or it could be guitars like this that we auction off to fund scholarships and many of the other causes that we fund.

“I get really excited when we get to do things like that. We get to promote healing through music in many different variations. That’s something that's very important to us.”

• Visit Julien's Auctions to learn more about the CEO-4.

In their three decades of playing together, Kilmarnock trio Biffy Clyro have become one of the most cutting-edge and far-reaching rock acts of their generation, blessed with an ability to write stadium-conquering anthems that thrill and mesmerise in equal measure.

Their Strat-wielding frontman, Simon Neil, is someone who understands the power of the riff, as well as the importance of the musical information above it – with a proven track record for striking a perfect balance between intensity and melody.

On this year’s 10th full-length album, Futique, the group still finds new ways to stretch that formula and experiment with the equation, dazzling and surprising us without ever running the risk of losing their identity.

Early singles such as A Little Love, Hunting Season and True Believer have a familiarity that would convince any listener that these tracks have existed for years and years. In fact, the same could be said for the album as a whole.

Working with producer Jonathan Gilmore for the very first time also allowed Simon to spread his wings and innovate, moving away from the classic trio format to embrace more layers and orchestration.

When you’re building music, the singer/guitarist explains, there’s a point where it can all “start to shrink”, so it’s best to handle grand designs and high ambitions with great care…

Simon, you’ve always been a Strat man. What is it about the original double-cutaway that does it for you?

The Strat is everything to me. My favourite model is the Michael Landau signature. I stumbled across one about 10 years ago and it just spoke to me. That’s the guitar I usually play in the studio, a reissue of his 1968 original. I actually ended up buying two of them. Those Strats are absolutely gorgeous and very much the foundation of everything we do, every time we record.

That said, you’re happy to experiment in the studio…

I flirted a bit with a small and boutique UK company called Fairlane Guitars. I’ve used their Zephyr model, and I’ve also used a guitar made by Novo in Nashville. My tour manager bought one and I pinched it off him for this record. Believe it or not, one of my main guitars for this record was this wee Fender Champ…

The one with the built-in speaker?

Yeah! It was released in Japan back in the ’90s. A tech had one, which played and felt so real and right, plus the sound that comes out of that speaker is just dynamite. You can get this really sludgy tone.

Obviously it’s quiet, but we mic’d it up for a few songs to get some cheap-sounding warmth. I’ve definitely embraced a few other guitars, but the Strat is my defining sound. It always speaks through whatever’s in the mix, no matter how thick it might be.

You’re no ultra hoarder like Slash or Bonamassa, but you must have some nice guitars knocking around.

I wish I had the money to collect like they do [laughs]. But I did treat myself to a nice guitar not long ago. It was one of the Custom Shop [Kirk Hammett] ‘Greeny’ [1959 Les Paul Standard] reissues, which I picked up in Nashville. I hummed and hawed because it was a lot of money.

I’m a Fender Strat man through and through, but I’m also a big Metallica fan. I’ve seen Kirk playing it over the years and know what a big deal that guitar is. I do like the sound of Les Pauls and find them extremely useful in the studio, but the act of putting one on feels wrong for me. It’s like I’m wearing someone else’s clothes.

I have a ’77 Les Paul, which got used on a couple of records. I also have a ’63 SG that I bought from Norm’s Rare Guitars. I tried to play it live a few times, but it struggles to hold tuning. That’s my pride and joy – a work of art that makes me sound like Angus Young. I use it to write, and the same goes for my White Falcon.

Did you use the ‘Greeny’ on the record?

It popped up on a couple of tunes: A Thousand And One, It’s Chemical! and Woe Is Me, Wow Is You. But I’m nervous of that guitar because it’s so expensive. I can barely look at it. I don’t know if I’ve overstepped my limit. But I love that middle pickup position where it goes out of phase. It’s so fucked up and cool, it’s almost Strat-y.

What were your go-to effects and amps in the studio?

The main amps were a Fender Twin Reverb and a big Marshall JCM800. We also used a Sears amp, this old cheap bugger that sounded dynamite when you turned it up, loads of character, though it was a little hit-and-miss in terms of how it reacted to pedals.

I also used some Audio Kitchen stuff, like this amp they make called the Little Chopper and a pedal called The Big Trees preamp. We did more DI and post-effects stuff this time, which I haven’t done a lot of in the past. I like to hear the air moving, but because we were working with a new producer, this album ended up with more of a modern approach.

What exactly were the benefits of doing that, then?

Normally, I’m too scared to DI anything, but it actually does bring a different quality. I used a few Chase Bliss pedals for textures in the background. This was the first time I wanted to make sure that what we recorded wasn’t necessarily the sound of what was on the floor. In the past, it’s been important to mainly capture us three playing together. This time I wanted everything shifting right there at the front.

On other albums, we’ve done everything so minimally, often using one microphone and one amp making one tone for an entire song. This time, I wanted layers. I didn’t want to sound too organic. It’s Chemical! ended up sounding really chorus-effected, but it’s actually more like 100 tracks of guitar doing different things.

I’ve gone from using the smallest amount of gear to make the biggest sound, to using as much as possible with the same end goal. And, actually, sometimes you can over-record guitars and the mix starts to shrink.

That’s interesting. You can end up becoming a victim of your own ambition?

Without Jonathan’s expertise, that’s where I’ve often ended up, at demo stage. I think I can add things and grow the song, but at a certain point it stops growing and starts to shrink. Jonathan kept us on that precipice of making it sound big enough without being swallowed by its own thickness.

And even on the albums that don’t always sound like a three-piece, it’s important for the songs to work stripped-back. We still prepare the same way. I still have my Marshall and Fender, plus my Boss Metal Zone and delays. They are on everything. That’s how we check that the songs are going to work – if they can exist with a basic setup, it doesn’t matter how we record it, we know it’ll translate.

A Little Love is all about big chords and even bigger hooks. What do you remember about writing it?

As soon as I went from minor to major, that’s when I knew the song was complete. It’s in DADGAD, which is one of my favourite open tunings because it can make chords sing. With just one or two fingers, you can have such a big impact, given how the voicings can change and reflect this deep sense of emotion.

There’s something really liberating about big open sounds like that, making the earth fucking shake with just one finger. DADGAD is a lot easier than some of the open C tunings I’ve used, which guitars usually don’t like because strings go from loose to tight. It can become a nightmare!

You and your tech, Richard Pratt from Gone Fishing Effects, unveiled the first batch of Booooom Blast overdrive/fuzz pedals back in 2020. Are there any plans to do more?

Yeah. That got used as well. To everyone reading this, it’s an absolute killer, so make sure you get it on your records, too [laughs]. We’re still making them. It’s a fine line, though. We thought about doing a wider release, but I like doing smaller batches.

Richard personally builds every pedal. If something – God forbid – goes wrong, people know they can send it back, get it fixed and returned. I feel like when things go to wider manufacturing, maybe the quality level dips a little. This is all made to order in someone’s shed.

It’s interesting how higher-gain pedals can work wonders on lower settings. Eric Clapton and David Gilmour were once using the Boss HM-2, which is mainly associated with extreme Scandinavian metal…

Isn’t that bonkers? It’s the sound of bands like At The Gates and Entombed, yet Clapton was plugging into one. We all use gear in different ways, sometimes for things beyond what it may have been designed for.

I used to think you needed someone’s rig to sound like them, but actually it’s all about the expression through your fingers. I’m still enthralled by the magic of the guitar, probably because I never conquered the technique side.

It’s this box of wonder that I approach as a creative instrument. A lot of songs on this record are in standard tuning, though a couple were standard a step down. I know I’m about to go down a creative period where I start fucking with tunings. I needed a wee break from the guitar before this album.

Why’s that?

We’d released two records during the pandemic and my guitar was my companion through that [so] I couldn’t look at my guitar for a year after that; I was scared of it. I felt this responsibility, where I had to write music every time I picked it up.

So instead I went away and made some heavy metal music in Empire State Bastard [with Mike Vennart]. As soon as I came home, I picked up the guitar and the songs started to come out. It was playtime again.

Being a novice when you are creating is actually a good place to be. You can have too much knowledge. Again, it’s that battle I’m having between being a better player and not ruining the creative relationship I have with my guitar.

So how do you go about evolving as a player?

I’d like to think I’m getting better as a player, though sometimes I think I’m only getting better as a songwriter. I guess they go hand in hand. Whenever I start to advance my chops as a guitarist, I end up stumbling upon a new idea and writing a new song instead of doing my exercises. But I’m at a stage where I really want to become a better guitarist.

What would you like to work on in the future – would it be anything like jazz comping, blues noodling or classical flamenco?

Definitely nylon! I’d love to become a proper fingerpicker. I’ve learned a few folk techniques over the years, but I’ve come to realise I haven’t progressed. I’d probably need to stop writing songs for a little while. As a person in my 40s, I really should be further along, you know? I feel like I missed a few years of learning other people’s tunes. Even for our very first show, we played nine songs and seven of them were our own.

Which guitarists do you look up to, then?

It’s a cliché, but I heard about Django Reinhardt and his missing fingers early on. I tried to learn a couple of his tunes when I was around 13 and didn’t realise how much it opened up a part of my brain.

What Django did for guitar was incredible. I love the pieces he wrote, despite the hindrances. He was a bit like Tony Iommi in that regard; he overcame his injuries and basically invented a whole genre of music. They both created something essential.

• Futique is out now via Warner.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

EMG pickups founder Rob Turner has said that working with James Hetfield forced the firm to completely reinvent its methodology as the Metallica guitarist pushed its craft to the limit.

The thrash icons are one of the most notable bands to have adopted EMGs, and helped define their status as heavy metal pickups.

“Kirk [Hammett] was the first one to call up, but I had no idea who he was,” Turner says during a talk with Thomann at Guitar Summit 2025. “I don't think he knew who he was, actually. He was in a band and they were trying to get a record deal, and he had this purple Stratocaster with two single-coils and a humbucker in it.”

That first encounter between EMG and Metallica predated their debut album, Kill ‘Em All, which shows how integral the EMG’s high-output active pickups have been to their world-conquering sound across their entire discography.

“I think James [Hetfield] got a little jealous of what was going on,” Turner adds with a smile.

Before long, the guitarists worked with EMG on their own pickups, and some years later Hetfield’s exacting ways put Turner through the ringer.

“Hetfield was the toughest [to voice a pickup for],” he says. “We built 19 different models. He more or less changed what we were doing. Normally, we use a very narrow core in the pickup, and he wanted to have pole pieces.”

This created a domino effect of challenges, which forced Turner to rethink his approach.

“So then we're going to start with a larger core and a larger coil. That means [having] a larger aperture, which means there's going to be too much low-end,” Turner explains. “So then it's like, ‘Okay, we’ve got to change the dimensions of the coil. They need to be taller and thinner. We need to be able to space them accordingly.’

“The hardest one was the neck pickup,” he adds, “because it uses ceramic poles. Typically, nobody does that. They're too strong. So, we had to magnetize them to a certain extent.

“Then we showed him a tray of sample finishes, and he picked the hardest one to do, which is this black, shiny, stealth-like, and it's the hardest thing to prevent from getting scratches in production.”

Hetfield's official signature 'Het Set' ultimately reshaped what were, at their core, EMG and EMG81 humbuckers. In the firm’s promotion material for the set, Hetfield is quoted as wanting “something unique and historic.” He certainly got that.

In related news, Dave Mustaine has revealed that Megadeth will close out their last-ever album with a cover of Ride the Lightning, a song he co-wrote with Hetfield before he left Metallica.

Gibson CEO Cesar Gueikian has looked back on his experiences of building electric guitars, and has named the parts of the process that are the most challenging when it comes to assembling Gibson guitars.

It’s now been around three years since Gueikian first started building guitars under the ‘CEO Series’ project. What started out as general curiosity to find out more about the guitar-building process soon spawned into something else entirely.

Nowadays, his CEO builds are making their way into the hands of some big artists. Jason Momoa owns a White Explorer styled after James Hetfield’s original Metallica model. Kirk Hammett played a Ghost Burst SG at Back to the Beginning. More, we have been assured, are in the works.

Naturally, he’s learned a thing or two about the guitar-building process along the way, and in a soon-to-be-published interview with Guitar World, Gueikian reflects on the challenges he’s come across during his short-but-successful experience with building guitars.

“There are so many very difficult things that happen in all the steps of making a Gibson,” he notes. “The first real challenge for me was learning how to do binding the proper way, so that the binding would be perfect and there would be no air pockets. I had to learn that very specific method of wrapping binding so that it's a cohesive unit.”

However, Gueikian admits that a cosmetic flaw isn’t the end of the world. That can be redone, and the guitar itself will still be playable. There are other parts of the build, though, that absolutely cannot go wrong. If those get screwed up, it’s game over.

“Neck fitting was really challenging,” Gueikian adds. “That's one of the processes where – because the binding can maybe have a couple of defects and they're going to be cosmetic – once we moved into neck fitting, if that's not done properly, then the guitar won’t be playable. The neck fitting was really critical.”

The set neck seems to be a particularly problematic area for a budding luthier. Not only does it have to be fitted correctly, it needs to be profiled correctly. And if you go too far, there’s no going back.

“With the sanding of the neck, I made mistakes,” Gueikian admits. “I went a little too far, and that's not something that can be repaired once you start eating into the wood to a certain degree. And gluing – it sounds simple, but if not done properly you can end up with air pockets in many different places. They're going to render the guitar unusable.”

The full interview with Gibson CEO Cesar Gueikian – in which he recalls the making of the SG that Kirk Hammett played at Back to the Beginning – will be published on Guitar World in the coming days.

Hammett's Back to the Beginning SG is set to go under the hammer next week to raise funds for the firm's non-profit, Gibson Gives as part of Julien's latest Played, Worn & Torn auction.

James Hetfield might just have won Halloween 2025 for Metallica, having ripped through thrash classic For Whom The Bell Tolls dressed as a kangaroo.

Metallica's set at Optus Stadium, Perth, on October 31st saw half the band get into the spooky spirit early on in their performance, surprising fans at the 70,000 capacity venue.

Hetfield the Kangaroo, with a spring in his step, was joined by bass player Robert Trujillo in a hi-vis vest and builder's helmet. The items were likely cobbled together from crew members backstage, but he gets marks for trying. Kirk Hammett and Lars Ulrich’s casual attire, though, didn't quite nail the brief.

“Let’s hop to it!” Metallica posted on Instagram, accompanied by footage of the Ride The Lightning cut. Hetfield’s vocals are a little muffled by the costume, but, playing an Electra Guitars 2236 Flying Wedge inscribed with the band's Scary Guy logo, he handled its guitar parts with aplomb. He’s set a high bar for next year.

The guitar is a cheap Japanese copy of the Gibson Flying V, and the original featured on their debut album, Kill 'Em All. Speaking to Ultimate Guitar in 2023, the band's guitar tech Chad Zaemisch revealed that he and luthier Bill Nash had recently been tasked with tracking down several of these guitars and modifying them to recreate the tonal magic of the band's early days.

He also revealed that the original V was dusted off and put back into circulation around this time, so the one Hetfield is playing here could be the one that was such a key part of the band's formative years.

In related news, Kirk Hammett's mystery Back to the Beginning SG is headed to auction, along with more than 150 guitars from his personal collection. He'd used the Custom Shop Gibson SG to cover Black Sabbath's Hole in the Sky during the historic event.

In more recent Metallica-related news, Dave Mustaine has revealed that the last song on Megadeth's forthcoming final album will be a reimagining of Ride the Lightning, a song he helped write before leaving the band in 1983.

Kirk Hammett will be auctioning off more than 150 guitars and pieces of memorabilia from his personal collection – including the mystery Gibson SG he played at Ozzy Osbourne’s last-ever show earlier this year.

For Back to the Beginning, the Metallica guitar hero took to the stage alongside his hard rock and heavy metal peers wielding a mystifying SG that had a fair few fans scratching their heads. He used it to play one of Metallica’s two Sabbath covers, Hole in the Sky.

A few weeks later, it was revealed to be CEO4, the latest passion project of Gibson CEO Cesar Gueikian, who helped build the guitar. At the time of its grand reveal, Gueikian said the SG would be auctioned off in support of Gibson Gives.

Now, the CEO4 has edged closer to the auction block, but it’s not alone. It will be joined by a huge assortment of other guitars lifted from Hammett’s personal collection, comprising personal players and stage-played six-strings.

Owing to its Ozzy ties, the CEO4 is understandably going to grab the headlines here, but there are a few other Hammett deep cuts that will no doubt pique the interests of keen Metallica fans.

For example, there’s the Lux Æterna Black Metal guitar that can be seen in the track’s music video. In behind-the-scenes footage, Hammett can be seen carving an ‘X’ into the top. That one has an upper estimate of $12,000.

A 1985 Gibson Custom Shop Michael Schenker Flying V, as well as a 1996 ESP Wavecaster – both of which were used on stage on various Metallica tours – are in the running order. The V was used in 2008, the ESP – which is made from Lucite and filled with colored liquid – played a starring role in the Load and Reload tours of 1996-1997.

There are a fair few other, more reasonably estimated guitars elsewhere in the lot, and while none of them will come anywhere the list of the most expensive guitars to ever sell at auction, there looks to be plenty to satisfy ’Tallica fans.

“The Kirk Hammett Collection features over 150 guitars, storied awards, and stage-played instruments that shaped metal forever,” says Julien’s, which is including the Hammett collection as part of its upcoming Played, Worn & Torn auction event.

Tommy Lee and U2’s Adam Clayton will also be selling off instruments and memorabilia as part of the auction, with the latter offering up a number of bass guitars that shaped the sound of U2 over the years for the event.

“These instruments and artifacts coming directly from the artists themselves represent the soul of music history,” says Martin Nolan, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Julien’s Auctions, “with proceeds from the Adam Clayton, Kirk Hammett, and Tommy Lee collections benefiting MusiCares, with additional pieces throughout this historic auction supporting incredible worthwhile causes including Teenage Cancer Trust, Gibson Gives, and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.”

The Played, Worn & Torn auction will take place 20-21 November. Head over to Julien’s Auctions to find out more.

The Gibson and Kirk Hammett partnership has produced another signature guitar in the form of the Edgar Allen Poe-inspired Raven, which puts a distinct gothic spin on the classic Hummingbird acoustic guitar.

The Gibson Custom Kirk Hammett Raven is a nod to one of Poe’s most famous works, and only 100 are being made. They come soaring out of the Gibson Custom Shop in Bozeman, Montana.

Beyond the gothic aesthetics – which include a bold, mother-of-pearl skull inlay perched on its color-matched headstock, and intricate raven-theme pickguards and a matching tailpiece – this is really a standard Hummingbird in a Halloween costume.

There’s a solid Sitka spruce top, mahogany back and sides, traditionally scalloped Advanced X-bracing, and a round profile for the neck, which props up a 16” radius, 20-fret ebony fretboard. Mother-of-pearl star inlays, meanwhile, sprinkle something new atop the build.

Elsewhere, there are Grover Rotomatic tuners, while TUSQ components – including the nut, saddle, bridge, and pins – complete the hardware specs.

The square-shoulder acoustic is also saddled with an L.R. Baggs Element VTC +4 system. Onboard EQ comes courtesy of discreet, soundhole-mounted volume and tone controls. There’s also a 4 dB output boost for extra output.

Hammett has personally signed all 100 of the guitars on the soundhole label. The guitars arrive in a black Gibson Custom hardshell guitar case featuring a raven skull graphic that matches the headstock. Within, players will also find a certificate of authenticity and a raven-themed guitar strap. But certainly no skeletons or other spooky things.

“Availability is extremely limited,” Gibson warns of the build, which it has dubbed “a counterpart to the legendary Hummingbird”.

The Gibson Custom Kirk Hammett Raven is available for $4,999.

See Gibson for more.

This isn't the first time Hammet has dropped a limited-edition, Raven-inspired guitar. He once commissioned the pyrographer to the stars, Dino Muradian, for a run of special ESP Eclipses that did likewise.

Biffy Clyro’s Simon Neil is a self-confessed Stratocaster fiend – he even launched a Squier signature model back in 2009. But his love of Metallica, and the allure of the legendary ‘Greeny’ Les Paul now in the hands of Kirk Hammett, has seen its reissue model make its way onto the band’s latest album.

“The Strat is everything to me,” he says in the new issue of Guitar World. “My favorite model is the Michael Landau signature. I stumbled across one about 10 years ago, and it just spoke to me. That's the guitar I usually play in the studio, a reissue of his 1968 original.”

But it’s another reissue that is giving that Fender model a run for its money: a Gibson Custom Shop ‘Greeny’ Les Paul reissue.

Hammett and Gibson's finest luthiers had put the legendary electric guitar – made famous by Fleetwood Mac's Peter Green, who then entrusted it to Gary Moore – under the microscope. A detailed and highly costly reissue was the result, and, when in Nashville, where Gibson is based, Neil was seduced.

“I hummed and hawed because it was a lot of money [around $20K],” Neil reflects. “I'm a Fender Strat man through and through, but I'm also a big Metallica fan. I've seen Kirk playing it over the years and know what a big deal that guitar is.”

He also had other reservations, away from its heavier-than-Meshuggah price tag. “I do like the sound of Les Pauls and find them extremely useful in the studio,” he confesses, “but the act of putting one on feels wrong for me. It's like I'm wearing someone else's clothes.”

Across the band’s tenth album, Futique, he says the electric guitar “pops up on a few tunes,” as he put his hard-earned pocket money to good use.

“A Thousand And One, It's Chemical! and Woe Is Me, Wow Is You,” he notes of the songs it appears on. “But I'm nervous of that guitar because it's so expensive. I can barely look at it. I don't know if I've overstepped my limit. But I love that middle pickup position where it goes out of phase. It's so fucked up and cool, it's almost Strat-y.”

A more budget-friendly Epiphone version of Greeny arrived in late 2023. At $1.5K, it might be a worthy investment for when the Gibson feels too prestigious to play.

As for the legendary guitar itself, Hammett has revealed he had no intention of owning Greeny at first, but, since making the (very expensive) decision, he's been playing it regularly onstage with Metallica, bringing it to some of the biggest audiences it's ever seen.

You can read Neil's interview in full, alongside chats with Slash and more, in the new issue of Guitar World. Head to Magazines Direct to pick up a copy.

Pedal manufacturer KHDK Electronics has made a surprise expansion into the electric guitar market, and recently debuted its range of six-strings at Guitar Summit 2025.

The firm has spent over a decade making stompboxes. In recent years, there have been plenty of collaborations, with signature pedals for Deftones' Chino Moreno, Kreator’s Mille Petrozza, and Avenged Sevenfold's Zacky Vengeance, among others.

This decision to enter the electric guitar market marks a bold new step for KHDK, one that has seldom been seen before from a pedal maker.

The first batch of guitars unveiled at Guitar Summit gave fans an early glimpse of some of the brand's designs – and, while one commenter on its Instagram post bemoaned copyright laws forcing other manufacturers to make not-so-great-on-the-eye shapes, the firm was quick to respond with, “We love ugly guitars.”

That should tell you what you're getting here. It offers alternative takes on classic shapes with plenty of metal guitars included, but there looks to plenty of more traditional silhouettes, too. There's a Les Paul-like model with P-90 pickups and a Bigsby vibrato, a Z-style axe that takes cues from Gibson and ESP, and a slightly more angular imagining of an SG-inspired double-cut.

There isn't much information available on these guitars yet, but that hasn't stopped us from putting our strongest spectacles on. Intriguingly, on one of models the truss rod adjustment wheel looks to be cut into the fretboard.

Many firms put a spoke wheel for truss rod adjustments at the body-side of the neck, making it easier to access. However, conventional wisdom finds most brands cut around it – here, it feels a little more embedded into the fretboard.

There are plenty of nods to Gibson builds, too, including a TOM-style bridge and Stop Bar-style tailpiece, with block inlays and Bigsby tremolos also available.

Now the secret’s out, we expect more news to filter through in due course. It’s an exciting new chapter for the firm. Stay tuned for more and visit KHDK Electronics for updates.

Les Claypool sits comfortably in the pantheon of bass greats, thanks to his off-kilter slapping-and-tapping playing style and bold basslines that have captured the imagination of generations of players.

Yet, according to the Primus bassist himself, he only started playing bass because, growing up, “everybody wanted to be Eddie Van Halen”. That, and he received a little coaxing from Kirk Hammett.

In a recent interview with Rick Beato, Claypool reveals that the two used to jam together – back when they were a bunch of high schoolers at De Anza High School in Richmond.

“He actually tried to get me to sing for his band. We had algebra together, and he sat behind me in algebra, and he would always go, ‘Hey, Claypool. Hey, Claypool, check it out, man.’

“I still, to this day, remember this ad. It was the ad for a Stratocaster where the guy's holding it, and he's going, ‘It's a rock machine,’ and the guy behind him is going, ‘No, it's a country machine.’ And he's [Hammett] like, ‘Here's my guitar, Claypool, man. It’s the one I'm getting.’”

Hammett eventually got his Strat, and eventually attempted to recruit Claypool as a singer for his band, which didn’t quite work out. “I chickened out,” he admits. “I was a total Bobby Brady, croaking and cracking. So I chickened out.”

Meanwhile, another “guy needed a bass player,” which piqued Claypool's interest, leading him to invest in his first bass.

“There was a guy who had this bass for sale for 15 bucks, some old piece of shit, and actually [it] was 30 bucks, and I had 15. I said, ‘Dad, can I borrow 15 bucks?’ He's like, ‘Is that really what you want to do?’ And I said, ‘Yep.’ He's like, ‘Well, let's go down and talk to Al's Music’ – it was a buddy of his.

“We went down and we got a brand new P Bass copy Memphis. I got this thing, and I had to pull weeds all summer to pay for it, but then I was instantly in a band because nobody wanted to play bass back then.”

As Claypool explains, “Everybody wanted to be Eddie Van Halen. So bass players were a very rare commodity.”

Alas, “it wasn't Kirk's band, and I didn't find out till years later that he was kind of pissed at me for bailing on his thing to go play bass in this other band” he quips.

Recently, Claypool's bandmate, Larry LaLonde, revealed how the two ended up with off-the-rack gear from Guitar Center right before a show.

Metallica’s Kirk Hammett has been afforded the rare chance to play Al Di Meola’s legendary Black Beauty Gibson Les Paul – after he let the jazz icon get hands-on with his Greeny electric guitar.

The virtuosos have been striking up a friendship of late, with Di Meola on the guest list for Metallica’s launch party for their new channel on SiriusXM last week.

The event, at the Hamptons, Long Island, was quite the gathering, with Paul McCartney among those in attendance to watch Metallica perform. Di Meola and McCartney were metres away from one another as the thrash heavyweights played.

A clip from the event finds the pair discussing Greeny’s history, with Di Meola’s eyes lighting up as he asks, “Was Oh Well [by Fleetwood Mac] done on this guitar? Oh, shit!”

He then proceeds to play the song’s iconic pentatonic blues riff while Hammett reveals that another classic, Black Magic Woman, was penned on the LP.

The Greeny Les Paul got its name from its first high-profile owner, Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green. Upon his departure from the group, he insisted that Gary Moore took ownership of it. Kirk Hammett later acquired the axe, even though he wasn’t sold on the idea of it at first.

Di Meola, taken aback by the privilege of playing the time-worn guitar – its flaking paint full of stories – was eager to return the favor, and he didn’t have to wait long to do so.

“After Kirk introduced me to Greeny last week, it felt only right to return the favor by introducing him to my 1971 Black Beauty,” he writes on Instagram. “That’s the guitar you hear all over [his 1977 album] Elegant Gypsy.”

Before Di Meola launched his solo career, the Gibson had been his go-to instrument during his Return to Forever days, and had starred on Elegant Gyspsy’s predecessor, Land of the Midnight Sun (1976), too.

He also shared a picture of the pair at Blue Note, Hawaii, where their second hangout in quick succession took place.

Hammett has been in the sharing mood of late, having let Jack White give Greeny the run around, and Jake E. Lee also took it for a spin at Back to the Beginning. He said it played so well that he’s not been able to stop thinking about it since.

Few guitars have a history quite as rich as Greeny, and the fact that one of jazz fusion’s greatest ever players has now also played it will only add to its incredible lore.

Elsewhere, Meola believes guitarists shouldn't ignore their feet if they want to improve their sense of rhythm. He's also told Jason Richardson to forget music theory as the guitarist, who has announced his departure from All That Remains, weighs in on the age-old ‘theory versus ear training debate.’

When Jerry Cantrell looks back on Black Sabbath icon Ozzy Osbourne’s final stand on stage, he’s all smiles. “It was nuts,” he tells Guitar World. “We paid tribute – we did our little part to honor the man and the band. I’m grateful to have been invited, but most importantly, to share in it and see it happen.”

Fans gathered in Birmingham on July 5 with the expectation of seeing Ozzy for the final time. His death 17 days later made it a certainty. And while Cantrell didn’t get to check in with the Prince of Darkness – who helped launch Alice in Chains by taking them on tour in the ’90s – the guitarist has no regrets.

“I was on the side of the stage, surrounded by all my friends who’d just played,” he says. “We watched the man and the band do their thing in their element one final time. It was fucking epic. That’s a fine final goodbye right there for me!”

Now Ozzy is gone, has Back to the Beginning taken on a greater meaning for you?

“It sure has. It’s important to keep in the moment in life, and that’s not always easy. Just to be around that energy of that show, the anticipation, and be like, ‘Fuck, this is really gonna happen,’ it was nuts.

“Standing on the side of the stage, we were all fans, and in the prime spot. It was like the biggest rock and roll high school reunion that never happened before; it’ll never happen again.”

It must have been a trip to watch Nuno Bettencourt, Jake E. Lee, Vernon Reid, Tom Morello and others share the stage.

“I had the same conversation with all those guys you’ve mentioned! We all talked to each other before we went on – Kirk [Hammett], Zakk [Wylde] and Slash.

“When Kirk rolled in he was like, ‘I’m fucking nervous, man!’ I was like, ‘I know, dude. I am, too. It’s not our shit I’m nervous about, it’s the fucking Sabbath song we’ve gotta play. I don’t wanna fuck it up!’

“There’s a certain element of rock ‘n’ roll being a young thing, you know? It helps keep you young; you have to keep yourself rooted there to have a proper, irreverent kind of magical mindset to make good rock ‘n’ roll.

“It takes you right back to being a kid in a garage with your buddies, taking a beer from your dad’s stash, maybe smoking a shitty dirt-weed joint, and trying to learn a Sabbath song. We all talked about that – it was just fucking cool.”

Did you get to spend any time with Ozzy?

“I could have if I’d stayed after the show, because he stayed and hung out with everybody. But I was at the tail end of six weeks of touring; I just wanted to go to bed and get on the plane. So I thought I’d already had the best experience.”

Alice in Chains took part in Ozzy’s No More Tours run in the ’90s, so you’ve got a long history. How will you remember him?

“I don’t think it can be overstated how intertwined he and Black Sabbath are with all of rock ’n’ roll. If there are dominant genes for heavy rock and metal, it’s fucking Sabbath. They’re on the Mount Rushmore – that’s fucking big.

“Of course, I was very sad when Ozzy died. But upon further reflection, if you think about it, for him to rally and work his ass off for a couple of years to to do that thing, it’s perfect.

“For Morello and Sharon Osbourne to organize all that, and to pull it off let alone have it be as cool as it was… not many artists get that sort of exit. Maybe it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty fucking close. If you wanna talk about a walk-off home run, that’s what it was.”

Jake E. Lee has joked that he regrets playing Kirk Hammett’s legendary Greeny Les Paul during Black Sabbath’s blockbuster bow out, because now it’s all he can think about.

While the onstage performances at Back to the Beginning were off the scale, backstage was also teeming with rock royalty. It provided many with the chance to rub shoulders with musicians they’d never met before, or, as was the case for Jake E. Lee and his former boss, Ozzy Osbourne, reconnect with those they had not seen in decades.

In fact, while backstage at the gig, Lee also got the opportunity to play a rather iconic electric guitar.

“Kirk Hammett let me play his Greeny Les Paul backstage. I can confirm that it's a magical piece of wood,” he tells Guitar World. “I didn't want to put it down – didn't want to leave it. I've missed it ever since! It's so resonant; it just sings.

“I almost wish I'd never played it,” he laughs. “Nah – I'm glad I got to bask in its magic, if for just a while.”

The Gibson Les Paul was first made famous in the hands of Fleetwood Mac founder, Peter Green, who insisted that Gary Moore took it off his hands when he left the group. The Metallica marksman is its third high-profile owner. It's heralded for its mythical middle position guitar tone, and though Hammett was reluctant to buy it at first, it's become one of his most important six-strings.

Lee, whose health issues forced him to pivot to plan B on the night, wielded another intriguing axe onstage. It was a Charvel with a gorgeous deep purple burst, and its origins were steeped in mystery. Thankfully, Lee was happy to spill the tea.

“In the Ozzy days, I had my white one, a purple burst, and a blue burst,” he explains. “Charvel reissued the white and blue ones, and I've been hassling them about getting the purple burst out there. So when this came up, I said, ‘What better promo would there be than for me to come out with a purple burst and have people start asking about it?’ So they made me one.

“It's a sweet guitar, and it's a little different from the versions Charvel has come out with,” Lee details. “It's a Gibson-scale length, with the jumbo frets up to the 12th and then thinner frets above that. I can get a little more meat on the string and a little more wood underneath. It's a roasted maple neck, and the body – I think they call it ‘cooked ash,’ so it's lighter, and they get all the moisture out of it.”

Lee goes on to say he hopes the “beautiful” guitar will receive a proper production run, and he won’t be alone in thinking that. For now, fingers will be crossed.

Jake E. Lee’s full interview with Guitar World features in the latest issue of the magazine, which has just been released. Head to Magazines Direct to grab a copy.

Metallica’s James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett took to YouTube to wish ESP Guitars a very happy 50th Anniversary, the long-time endorsees checking in from their rehearsal room HQ, signature guitars in hand. But in the process they might just have something very intriguing indeed.

There’s an Easter egg in this video, and it looks like this could be a signature tube amp for Hetfield from Mesa/Boogie. Once you can see it you can’t unsee it. Behind Hammett, there’s a guitar amp head, sitting on a 4x12 guitar cabinet with a Metallica logo stencilled in white on the black grille cloth.

The amp is a variant of a Mesa/Boogie Mark Series that we’ve never seen before, with a decorative brushed metal plating on the grille (kind of like something you would see on a hot-rodded, supercharged automobile, which is very Hetfield), and on the top-left of the control panel we have what looks like Hetfield’s initials.

“It looks like a two channel amp with some really weird knobs in the middle,” writes one comment from Mesa Sean. “We’ve seen that [amp] in the studio for a couple years now. It would be really cool if they released something.”

If it is a Hetfield amp, it would have been a long time coming. As noted above, and in a 2017 thread on the Mesa/Boogie forum, this mystery Mesa has actually been in the Metallica HQ for years, also appearing in a video from 94.5 KATS with drummer Lars Ulrich and Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor goofing around.

The video resolution is not great, but you can see this same amp in the lower left-hand side of the frame.

This new video gives us a better look. It could be that the metal plate on the amp’s front has been updated. If it was a prototype for Hetfield, that time scale could check out.

Designing a Mark Series Boogie for one of metal guitar’s biggest stars is a serious project, and it would take some time. There would be revisions. Also, consider the upheaval at Mesa/Boogie, the takeover by Gibson, the departure of its founder Randall Smith. That could delay the project.

In July, Mesa/Boogie released the Mark IIC++ "Crunch Berries" head that Metallica used to give their tone its signature venom in the mid ‘80s.

The Mark IIC++ was initially a custom mod that only those in the know had. It was designed for Vivian Campbell, then playing in Dio, who wanted more added “gain and girth” to his electric guitar tone. Well, Metallica got wind of that. Hammett told MusicRadar that this Boogie, allied to EMG active humbuckers, was the secret sauce to their sound.

“They made very few of those Boogies and we happened to get a few. And those amps, along with EMG pickups were defining our sound,” he said. “They enabled us to get the sound that we needed to get across. If it wasn’t for those Mesa/Boogie amps and EMG pickups, I don’t know how much further we would have got with just Marshalls. With the Boogies it was something different.”

If Mesa/Boogie is going to release a Hetfield Mark Series in the not-so-distant future it would be A) Not unprecedented, after it released a signature model for Dream Theatre’s John Petrucci, and B) Foreshadowed somewhat by the “Crunch Berries” release, and its antecedent, the Mark IIC+, which was reissued last year.

Hammett has already collaborated on a couple of notable signature amps with Randall. There was the KH120RH, the RM100KH, which was a three-channel 100-watter. We can confirm that playing Creeping Death on a Gibson Flying V through this amp is a lot of fun.

But sometimes you need more fun, and Randall and Hammett had just the thing in the 120-watt KH103 head, designed with Mike Fortin, with three channels, three gain voicings per channel… The thing looked nuts. Fortin also made him the Meathead.

C’mon, Mesa/Boogie, let’s get Hetfield one, too. Or would someone at least let us know what that knob in the middle of the control panel does?

In the absence of any more details, we quite like some of the theories posted by Mesa forum user screamingdaisy: “Theory A: It’s a blend knob... channel 2/Recto, channel 3/Crunchberries, blend to taste. Theory B: it’s a chorus knob... they built the [Roland] JC-120 chorus into the amp. Theory C: it’s a scoop knob... they built James’ parametric EQ into the amp.”

And Theory D it’s a red herring just to mess with our heads. Mission accomplished. Where were we, anyways? Yeah, many happy returns, ESP.

It's safe to describe Jack White's Triplecaster as “ever-evolving”. After its highly anticipated release last year, the signature guitar has been slung by a fair few guitarists, including players as diverse as Vernon Reid, Eddie Vedder, and Otoboke Beaver's Yoyoyoshie. What’s more, a fully spec’d-out Blue Sparkle Triplecaster was also unveiled earlier this year at NAMM.

Now, the Triplecaster is evolving even further, with White himself unveiling a freshly baked semi-hollow Thinline version on social media, requested specifically by Kirk Hammett.

“Notice something different about this here Fender Triplecaster that the Detroit style guitar slinger Olivia Jean is riffing on?” writes White.

“This was dropped off to me yesterday by the Fender Custom Shop in Nashville. Why? Because Kirk Hammett (another great Filipino American guitar player like Mz. Olivia here, you may have heard of him) asked them if they could make him a Thinline version of the Triplecaster and if they could also ‘Make one for Jack too.’

“Kirk asked me if I approved and I of course fully endorse ANY mods done to any of my designs, let alone from the great Hammett,” he quips, “and this one is especially cool because a lot of folks don't know that the Triplecaster is already chambered! Which I added to the design to reduce weight from all the other metal objects happening on it.

“So all that was needed at the custom shop was to get the patterns out for the F hole and voila. Cool mod, and thank you Kirk for getting me one too, a great match with the CuNiFe wide range pickup like the old ’72 tele.”

In typical White fashion, he concludes with, “I hope this pisses off some more Tele purists! We have enough ‘regular’ boring guitars out there right folks?”

Over the years, White's Fender Low Rider Telecaster – which was later spiritually launched as the Triplecaster – has captured the imagination of many a gearhead, with mods such as its custom trio of pickups, subtly scalloped fretboard, and its B-Bender continuing to push the envelope of Tele design and engineering.

When Metallica released their fifth album, lovingly referred to as the Black Album, in 1991, they were rightly crowned the world's biggest metal band. Decades later, no metal record has yet to surpass its staggering 30 million units sold, but with its controversial follow-up, 1996’s Load, the band offered a very different sound.

Pushing a lighter, more commercial aesthetic, and chopped locks to boot, many felt the band had eschewed the identity that garnered them such lofty success. Now Bob Rock, who produced both those albums, has said it was a record that reshaped James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett’s guitar-playing relationship.

“Before Load, James did all the rhythms,” Rock tells The Metallica Report podcast (via Blabbermouth). “So the idea is Kirk was gonna play rhythms along with James. That changed everything, and some people don't like it.”

Rock had entered the fray their previous three records had been produced by Flemming Rasmussen (who has a theory for why ...And Justice For All was so light on bass guitar). Their new producer found that those experiences had left them a little limited.

“What they knew is how he put together a record, but I don't do that,” Rock says. “The way they did it, it's very mechanical. You can't go back and fix a kick drum. And you can't really realize what the whole song is until you finish it. But what you do when you record live, you get a good example of pretty much everything.”

That also saw Jason Newstead's approach to his bass parts heavily scrutinized.

“Jason wasn't playing bass like a bass player. He was just doubling the guitar,” Rock explains. “So I taught him, like, ‘Dude, be a bass player.’ So there are points where he's not playing the guitar riff; he's playing with the drums. That would've never happened if you just did it to a click and did all the guitars.

“So that opened the door, and it's my fault that I opened that door, because what they realized, through the recording of the Black Album, was there was something different about that, and in Load they embraced it.”

Rock is, in his own words, “a song person,” and he encouraged Metallica’s desire to experiment. They were getting inspired by different bands; Load is less Motörhead and Black Sabbath, more Led Zeppelin and Lynyrd Skynyrd. That set a precedent, and the way Hetfield and Hammett approached their tandem on the record was a key driver behind the band’s change of colors.

As per the band's chat with Guitar World ahead of the release of Reload in 1997, that approach changed again.

“Kirk had a little more freedom on this one,” Hetfield explained. “His only instruction was to not play what I played. We wanted a point-counterpoint kind of vibe. And we're really splitting the guitars now to get some really different things going on.

“It's not exciting to us anymore,” he added of the album's lack of high-octane thrash riffs. “It's a little more exciting for us now to figure out more fucked-up chords, things that grind, dissonant bits.”

Fernandes Guitars – the Japanese brand best known for its innovative electric guitar pickup, the Sustainer, and its range of cult affordable guitars – has filed for bankruptcy yet again, after the cessation of operations in July 2024 and initial bankruptcy filings that were later withdrawn.

However, unlike last year's report, there may be a glimmer of hope for Fernandes fans worldwide.

The company officially received a decision to commence bankruptcy proceedings from the Tokyo District Court on July 9, with Attorney Taro Awataguchi appointed as the bankruptcy trustee. According to a report released by TSR, the total debt accrued amounts to around 730 million yen [approximately $4.98 million] owed to approximately 60 creditors.

“In recent years, the company's performance has deteriorated due to the rise of the secondhand market and intensifying competition,” states the report [translated from Japanese].

“Although the company attempted to make a comeback by creating catalogs and releasing new products, sales fell to 166.08 million yen [approximately $1.31 million] in the fiscal year ending January 2022, and the company recorded a final deficit of 24.14 million yen [approximately $164,513]."

The report goes on to say that, as the company's credit declined, its cash flow reached its limit, leading it to cease operations in July 2024. However, before the court granted proceedings, according to an inside source, “part of the ‘FERNANDES’ trademark has been ‘transferred to another company.’”

Whether this could lead to a revival, a hybrid revival, or an acquisition of sorts remains to be seen – especially since the company itself hasn't issued any new statements, while its official website remains offline.

The Saitama-based company started in 1969 and evolved to receive worldwide recognition, even becoming the guitar du jour in the ’90s after being wielded by members of Metallica and Green Day – particularly Kirk Hammett and Billie Joe Armstrong.

In Japan, the guitars were often the go-to choice for players in the visual kei genre of rock, with X Japan and Buck-Tick notably championing the brand.

The company went on to produce a multitude of signature guitars over the years, with Robert Trujillo, Dave Kushner, and Brad Gillis among its artists, alongside Japanese stars like Hotei and Hide – with Keanu Reeves even being among its endorsees at one point.

Tim Henson has responded to recent comments made by Kirk Hammett, after the Metallica electric guitar hero recently gave his thoughts on the ‘boomer bends’ controversy that Henson spawned a few years ago.

Back in 2021, Henson made a throwaway comment concerning his stylistic preferences, saying he prefers to avoid “bommer-ish” bends – something that relies on oft-heard blues rock cliché’s – in his own playing.

The offhand remark sparked intense debate and it seems, three years on, the conversation still has legs: earlier this year, Hammett offered both criticism and praise to Henson over his boomer bends observations, praising his technique but questioning just how accessible his style is to the casual listener.

“I love that. Is he gonna call Eddie Van Halen a boomer guitar player?” Hammett said earlier this year. “I really like his style. It's really unique, and in terms of technique, it's amazing. It's the age old question, how relatable is it? It's good to listen to three or four times, but can you really relate?”

When asked by Rolling Stone if he’d seen Hammett’s response, Henson says, “I did! I got a Google alert for Polyphia, and I was like, ‘Oh, what’s this with Kirk Hammett?’ I click on it and I started reading and I’m just like, ‘Oh my God. This is a compliment and a diss at the same time from fucking Kirk Hammett!’”

The reaction from the band was mixed. While Henson saw the silver lining, Scott LePage – Henson’s guitar foil in Polyphia who has a rather strong bond with ’tallica – felt especially let down.

Henson continues, “Scott is a Metallica head. Scott’s father is the singer in Kill ‘Em All, which is a Metallica cover band. That’s what they do on the weekends. When Scott’s dad’s not at his job, he’s fucking doing a Metallica cover band. So Scott got sad.

“But I was happy because in an interview that Kirk Hammett was doing about Hammett activities and the world of Kirk Hammett, my name was brought up! So I’m happy about that and I appreciate you doing that. I appreciate that he even has thoughts about it.”

And Hammett certainly had a few things to say about Henson’s playing. Speaking to Rolling Stone’s Music Now podcast, he reflected, “Is he hitting on raw emotion? No, it's so complicated. It's a very distinct emotion that he's shooting for.

“Therefore, how accessible is it on a larger scale? It's only accessible to people who like that, or can understand that. It's a very small category of people. That's absolutely fine if he wants to reach that category of people.”

Still, Henson isn’t holding it against Hammett, and has even issued a public plea to have the two bands line-up together on the same bill.

“Kirk, if you are reading this one, thank you for the acknowledgement. You’re a fucking legend. Take us on tour, dude. Please. Seriously, man. Let’s talk about it over a beer, maybe.”

The ‘boomer bends’ conversation doesn’t seem to be going away, something made all the more frustrating for the fact Henson’s sentiments have been widely misunderstood and misinterpreted by guitar fans.

In 2021, Henson was forced to clarify his reflections, saying, “No-one said you couldn’t bend!”

More recently, Henson was revealed to be the guitar star who had been hand-picked by Hans Zimmer to work on the soundtrack for the recent F1 film – a secret project that Henson had discussed with Guitar World at NAMM this year.

The metal world of the early '80s had not yet encountered a bass player with such formidable and dynamic musical abilities as the late Cliff Burton. At the time, only Iron Maiden's Steve Harris had really elevated the bass guitar as an equal participant in the guitar-dominated world of metal.

Right from the beginning, Burton forged an inimitable style, both musical and otherwise. As most headbangers succumbed to the typical thrash-metal uniform of the day – black T-shirts, and leather bike jackets – Burton wore bell-bottom jeans and flannel shirts ten years before grunge deemed it cool.

“Cliff strikes me as a player who would have said, ‘This is how we’re doing it’,” said Robert Trujillo, Metallica’s bass player since 2003. “He had a vision, and he would go for that vision. Rather than a producer trying to control him.”

If you’re still sceptical about proclamations that Burton made Metallica the band they are today, look no further than Orion from Master of Puppets.

Orion begins with a multi-layered bass intro, and breaks down to a classically-inspired bassline (beginning at 03:59) that outlines a straightforward F#-A-B-E progression and supports the guitars' 3rds and counterpoint.

Burton uses the same progression as the basis for his own melodic improvisations, adding another layer to the overall contrapuntal texture.

The actual harmonic language of these sections remains easy to follow (everything is squarely in F# minor). However, the mere presence of ensemble textures characterized by counterpoint and diatonic harmony was largely unheard of in mid-'80s thrash metal.

Guitarist Kirk Hammett remembered Burton in the February 2005 issue of Bass Player, “Cliff was heavily into classical music, and he'd incorporate classical harmonies and techniques into his bass playing all the time.

“Whenever we went on tour he'd bring along his guitar, and he'd plug it into a Scholz Rockman with two little speakers and play along with songs for hours.

“He was actually on his way to becoming a really good guitar player – in fact, I picked up a few things from his hotel-room guitar playing that ended up on Master of Puppets.”

Andy Battye, who worked for Metallica on the band’s Ride the Lightning tour, also recalled Burton’s free-flowing vibe onstage. “I remember my first time seeing Cliff with Metallica. I spent the first three songs in total astonishment watching his onstage antics. After the show he told me everything sounded fine, but that I really needed to keep those drinks coming!”

It was about this time that Burton switched to an Aria Pro II bass. “We were on the Ozzy Osbourne Ultimate Sin tour and Cliff had just got an endorsement from Aria Guitars,” bass tech Eddie Kercher told Bass Player.

“After a few shows, Cliff took off the bass and started smashing it against the side-fill monitor, which made a dent at the top of the neck. He told me I'd better start ordering more basses, because he liked whacking them around!”

“Even after destroying a few side fills, putting holes in the stage, and throwing the bass out into the crowd, he was still using that instrument through the very last show he played in Stockholm. That thing never went out of tune!”

It was during the European tour for Master of Puppets that Cliff unexpectedly bid farewell to the world. What he would be doing nowadays if he’d survived that terrible coach crash in Sweden is anybody’s guess, but one thing’s for sure – it would have been awesome.

Eagle-eyed viewers of Back to the Beginning over the weekend will have spotted that Metallica’s Kirk Hammett was wielding a mysterious – and gorgeous – Moon Burst Gibson SG during the band’s spot.

Its origins have now been revealed: it was built by no less than Gibson CEO Cesar Gueikian.

Dubbed the CEO4, Gueikian's build is highly elusive at the moment, but the silver, lunar-inspired flame top colorway chosen for the twin humbucker axe is certainly unique. Fittingly, it was employed solely for one of Metallica's two Sabbath covers, Hole in the Sky.

Still, it hasn’t stayed in Hammett's possession for long, as it’s already on its way to the auction house. Proceeds made from the sale will go to the Gibson Gives charity. Founded in 2002, the charity aims to amplify the power of music through a series of initiatives, with over $4.5 million raised so far.

As its name attests, this SG is the fourth six-string Gueikian has made for his CEO series, with the last offering taking the form of a Gibson Victory. Each guitar is ultimately auctioned off for charity, but Hammett’s might be the most significant of the builds yet, playing a role in one of the most historic events in heavy metal history.

The guitar was declared finished six weeks ago, with Gueikian having posted a series of build-in-progress Instagram updates along the way. The date 12/13/24 can be seen scrawled in the neck pickup cavity, and the back plate is inscribed with: “CEO-4. You are now a member of the DES family – Riff. Cesar.”

For Back to the Beginning, Gibson has already also auctioned off Ebony and Cherry Red SG Standards signed by Iommi and other guest stars. They sold off for a combined £35,000 (approx $47,200). The SGs nod to Iommi’s famed electric guitar of choice, which wasn’t originally intended to feature on the band’s debut LP. However, a pickup issue with his preferred Fender Stratocaster forced the pivot.

The CEO4 continues the rich history shared between Gibson and Hammett, which has already yielded a Murphy Lab aged reissue of Hammett’s 1989 Les Paul Custom and, naturally, his history-steeped Greeny Les Paul.

Gueikian also traded riffs with Tony Iommi on the charity single Deconstruction in 2023, and he recently helped craft a James Hetfield-inspired Explorer for Jason Mamoa, bursting the bubble of those who thought a production model was in the works.

Work on the CEO5, a Flying V with a traditional Gibson headstock, is already well underway.

Meanwhile, Iommi has revealed that Sabbath had “six or seven” songs planned for their final performance, revealing which songs didn’t make the cut, and why their set was such short-lived entertainment.

Avid gear collector Kirk Hammett has revealed he’s been thinning out his electric guitar collection and has recently sold “a lot” of six-strings online, but there is a slight twist: he’s been selling them anonymously.

Peter Green’s beloved Greeny Les Paul is the Metallica man’s most fabled instrument, even if he had no interest in buying it at first. However, his collection includes plenty more vintage picks, and he believes an ultra-rare 1959 ES-335 to be his best-sounding coup.

Those two may currently remain in Hammett’s possession, but some of his other guitars have since gone on to new homes, after being anonymously listed on eBay or Reverb.

“I’ll list them on eBay or Reverb and I don’t say they’re mine,” Hammett tells Metal Hammer during a discussion of his overwhelming collection. “I get rid of a lot of guitars that way!

“I get anxiety because I believe guitars should be played,” he adds, saying he believes the guitars deserved better than “solitary confinement”.

“I don’t believe in just storing them away and forgetting about them,” he adds. “I feel guilty! So I have been on a quest to shrink my collection and get rid of the ones I don’t play.”

To that end, Hammett reveals how a bucketload of his guitars had been collecting dust since since the late 2000s.

“There were a few that were only ever used on [2008’s] Death Magnetic,” he explains. “I played them on that tour, then as soon as that tour stopped they went into storage again as I’m not playing those songs.” That means some of them hadn't seen the light of day in 15 years.

Putting the (sadly unspecified) guitars up for sale anonymously is something of an unprecedented move from Hammett, especially since it isn’t the usual route big-name players take when putting guitars up for adoption.

“I try to trade them off because it’s better than just doing a cash deal,” he says. “Everyone leaves with a smile on their face and has something they want! Another way is to just give stuff away.”

It’s a philosophy similarly held by Joe Bonamassa, who once helped Hammett score another rare Les Paul he’d been chasing for years. The blues guitarist says he traded one of his prized Dumble amps for a 1959 Les Paul in 2016 and got “way more joy” from it than he did the tube amp.

Hammett didn’t name the guitars he sold specifically, but a little research into the band’s Death Magnetic era gives us a little clue as to what guitars could have been sold.

Of his gear picks for Metallica's ninth album, Kirk Hammett told Guitar World back in 2008: “I’ve added more midrange to my over sound. I can still appreciate my original scooped sound, but I need to feel the ground shake when I hit a chord.”

While amps included models from Marshall, Randall, and Ampeg, guitar-wise he says: “I think I used a ’58 Paul and a ’59 Tele on some clean stuff, but overall, almost everything is done with my ESP Mummy and Caution guitar, which is the original “Skully” [KH-2 Kirk Hammett signature] guitar – the very first ESP guitar, from 1987.”

“Skully” is, of course, a prized possession, so that was almost definitely not put up for sale, but the late 1950s axes – of which he owns many – could have found their way onto the chopping block along with a number of touring guitars.

Speaking of his 100+ guitar collection earlier this year, Hammett revealed why there are no PRS guitars among the bunch. Interestingly, Jack White's signature Triplecaster can be found in his collection, following a high-profile signature guitar swap.

You could say Kirk Hammett knows a lot about guitars.

He’s been collecting them for over four decades, with many of his finest specimens exhibited on last year’s Gibson TV interview – part of an ongoing series presented by the company’s Director of Brand Experience Mark Agnesi.

Now a 400-page coffee table book takes that concept one step further, giving fans a closer look at some of Hammett’s most prized vintage rarities, which famously include the 1959 Les Paul Standard once owned by Peter Green and Gary Moore and the 1979 Flying V heard on Metallica’s most impactful releases.

If you ask the man how exactly he caught the bug, he’ll tell you it was always there deep inside of him...

“I’ve always been a collector,” he smiles, talking to GW from his home in Hawaii. “At first it was comic books, monster magazines and whatnot. I’ve always been a collector of something. When I started playing guitar, I’d look at books and magazines and see all these wonderful Flying Vs and Strats, thinking to myself, ‘Wow!’

“I remember going to Guitar Center in San Francisco and seeing a Korina V but they put it on the top rack, like 15 feet up! I was thinking ‘One day I’ll have enough of a say to ask if I can plug it in and the staff will let me.’”

If the Kirk Hammett we’re speaking to right now walked into that guitar shop, they wouldn’t just let him play whatever his heart desired; they’d close up early and give him the kind of privacy only afforded to the rockstar elite.

It would be a dream experience for the rest of us mere mortals, but just another day in the life of a Metallica member. He’s humble enough to acknowledge how times have changed, and in more ways than one...

“Back then, vintage guitars were so frickin’ cheap,” continues Hammett. “That Korina V was only $2,400. Now it would be 10 times that amount just for a cheap one and 100 times that for a not-so cheap one!

“As soon as I started touring with the resources to buy, probably around 1988 0r 1989, I started acquiring rare instruments. Me, James [Hetfield] and Jason [Newsted] would go to dealers in the Midwest and walk away with 10 cases each! The next day would be hilarious because we’d walk into our dressing room and there’d be all these random guitars.”

Not all deals are the same… What’s the weirdest situation you’ve found yourself in?

“A lot of the major guitars in this book, like the Explorer, prototype Flying V and the 1958 Les Paul Standard came from a big package deal 15 years ago. A seriously big deal. The guy didn’t want any trades; he wanted cash.

“It was so much that I had to sell guitars and movie posters to raise enough. Another part of the deal was that I wasn’t allowed to talk about it for five years. I said, ‘Whatever!’ because I was used to dealers acting in that way.

“With movie posters you deal with people and ask, ‘Hey do you have this one?’ and they deny it. You ask again and eventually they come back with, ‘Alright, what would you give me for it?’ It’s the same friggin’ game with guitar dealers.

“A lot of people don’t want others to know what they have in their collections, nor do they want people to know what’s coming in because they think it’s some kind of business strategy. I can respect that – but I don’t condone it. I think everything should be out in the open.”

So what do you think is the total value of your collection?

“I dunno... at least a nice house somewhere! Some of these guitars I’ve had for 20 or 30 years. I didn’t buy them for what they’re currently valued at – thank God, man! Now you have to be ready to spill $250,000 just to get a dealer to answer the phone.

“The time of me spending that much on an instrument is long gone. If I do find something, I’m instantly thinking about trades. It’s exactly what I used to do with comic books and movie posters. My strategy is the same: find the most unique models and coolest rarities and then just go for it.

“I would network and ask around, just doing whatever I can to find certain things. That’s how I’ve ended up with the collection I have. It’s the rarest, coolest and most unique stuff everyone wants.

“I’d rather do trades than cash deals; with trades, everyone walks walk away smiling. Cash deals don’t do that; you walk away feeling empty. It’s no different to purchasing a friggin’ milkshake or whatever.”

A few years ago, there was a story about how James had carved ‘No. XII’ onto one of his 1959 Les Paul Standards. We reckon some collectors are still having nightmares about that.

“Even I’ve gotten into the habit of doing that! Over the last five years, I’ve started carving my initials into the back of guitars I really like. I’ll look at my stand and see three purple metallic Ouijas, making me wonder, ‘Which one do I grab?’ I’ll turn them over, and if my initials are on the back, that’s the one!

“It’s started to become a bad habit. I bought a 1955 Tele – well, actually an Esquire – and I turned it over to carve my initials into the back, but then my friend screamed, ‘Don’t do that!’ I had to thank him for reminding me. I’ve got OCD and ADD. Sometimes I will compulsively do things and later wonder why.”

Another interesting guitar in the book is the 1961 three-pickup SG once owned by John Frusciante, which was played on the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ hit Otherside and used in the video for Fortune Faded. It’s a surprise because most people wouldn’t connect your bands.

“I’m honored to have a guitar that John owned. I like John; he’s a great guy that’s super-eccentric, just like I am. He’s a great player too. I’d been looking at SGs for a long time and it had been hard to find good ones. I managed to find a handful of great ones and I love them.

“I only started using SGs around the Load era. That white two-pickup SG in the book is something else. It was Les Paul’s SG – he actually played it on an album. That was crazy, because when I first got that guitar I didn’t know who’d owned it.

“It’s weird how celebrity instruments over the last 10 or so years have gravitated towards me. I have Michael Schenker’s main Flying V that he played on his first four albums.

“I used to stare at it when I was 15 years old, on the back of UFO’s Force It album. I’d be thinking, ‘What an amazing instrument!’ Well, now I own it. It’s in the book, painted like a V-2 rocket, so Michael probably wouldn’t recognize it.”

You were recently gifted a Triplecaster by Jack White. What did you make of it?

“I love that thing. It has all these nice little toys attached to it, like killswitches or whatever, so you can make the guitar beep like Tom Morello. It has what looks like a Bigsby tremolo arm – I yank on that thing hard, and it actually stays in tune. I’m so impressed by that feature.

“It has this weird combination of pickups. I love P-90s; it has one of those, and some other strange things. Jack gave me that guitar because I sent him a Greeny. He’s played the original. I turned up at one of his shows with Greeny and said, ‘Bro, check it out – play her on stage!’ And he used that guitar for a few songs.

“When the replicas came out, I sent him one because I knew he’d dig it. So a couple of months ago, I got a text from him saying, ‘You’re gonna get a package in the mail.’ He occasionally sends me his Third Man pedals, which are totally psycho; I love them. But then a guitar case showed up, and when I opened it up, I was so happy!”

Your rig has evolved over the years, just like your playing. What’s the greatest tone you’ve ever gotten?

“I would have to say my lead sound on Load is the best tone I’ve ever gotten. I’m still chasing that sound. It was the 1961 SG with PAF pickups going out to 20 amps all blended together. Okay, I don’t know if it was 20, but it was definitely more than five.

“My second favorite is my lead sound on Kill 'Em All. I talk to Lars about that killer tone all the time. It was just my Flying V with EMG pickups and my Tube Screamer going through James’ legendary fuckin’ Marshall that got stolen in Boston.

“The sound had this pureness that felt so real. It wasn’t super-processed or overworked. It sounded natural and fit the music. Magic!”

Another tough question. What’s the greatest solo you’ve ever recorded?

“The solo in Fuel was done on the green Strat from the I Disappear video. I love that guitar so much. I still have it; that thing just feels like an old friend. So I really love how that solo came out. But it’s a tough question, bro.

“I think I’ll say it’s the one from Hero of the Day. Every note counts and fits perfectly. I feel like everything is in its right place and the solo lifts the song to another level, which I always try to do – even if I’m not always successful. The track has a different level of intensity afterwards.

“There’s another solo I really like – I’ve tried to relearn it and I just can’t fuckin’ nail it. It’s the one from The Unforgiven III. Some of the playing is out of time, but it sounds super-effective.

“It can happen: you’ll play something out of time but it just friggin’ works. It’s crazy. And because it’s out of time, it’s hard for me to relearn because I always want to play in time. It feels unnatural, even though I’m the one who originally played it!

“I’m a big fan of playing from the heart. I love seeing technique – a lot of new younger players have both hands on the neck, doing all this crazy stuff. I also dig all those percussive acoustic players. I love all that stuff to death. But, man, most of all I just love hearing simple solos that sing.”

• The Collection: Kirk Hammett is available now from Gibson Publishing in Standard hardcover, Deluxe slipcase and Custom boxset editions. See Gibson.com for more info.

Kirk Hammett has played a huge amount of electric guitars over the course of his career, from uber-expensive vintage Gibsons and Peter Green’s iconic Greeny Les Paul (which he now owns), all the way to his Fernandes Strat-a-like and the Fender Acoustasonic.

Indeed, his personal collection of guitars spans well over the 100 mark (a count in 2017 put it around 150), but as the Metallica guitarist explains in a new interview with Guitar World, he's not interested in playing a PRS guitar.

Over the years, Hammett has used Gibsons, ESPs, Jacksons, Ibanez guitars and more, but never has he warmed to any of Paul Reed Smith's builds, despite the fact they've been adored by the likes of Mark Tremonti, John Mayer, and Orianthi.

“I don't think they're aggressive-sounding,” he tells Guitar World matter of factly when asked why he's never been spotted playing a PRS. “There's a part of me that always wants to scream out. My whole life there's been this inner anger or frustration, I don't know what it is. And it sounds crazy, but that's just how I play my guitar.

“I need the aggression right there at my fingertips,” he continues. “I've never been able to coax a sound that had the right kind of attack or bite out of a PRS.”

There’s another aspect to this, too: “They're basically Les Paul copies, let's be frank,” Hammett suggests. “It's a Les Paul style guitar and I already have amazing Les Pauls. So I will stick with those.”

For a guitarist who owns such a spellbinding Les Paul in Greeny – and many more mouth-watering Gibsons to boot – he simply has no need for a PRS in his life.

Of course, it should be pointed out that Hammett is an official Gibson artist, and has a number of signature Gibson guitars to his name. In fact, he recently worked with Gibson to produce The Collection: Kirk Hammett – a premium coffee table book that charts his guitar catalog.

Not only that, PRS has many other non-Les Paul-style builds on its books, such as the Custom 24 and Santana, to name but a few, that are very much their own builds.

Nevertheless, Hammett's personal style is clearly incompatible with PRS guitars: “I just feel they don't have the right kind of bite," he goes on.

“I will walk into a guitar store and I'll see all these amazing PRS models with crazy finishes with all these dragons and birds and whatnot. They look amazing but they just don't tick that aggression factor that I need.”

Hammett has doubled down on his Gibson love affair in recent years, with a Murphy Lab-aged recreation of his 1979 Flying V arriving in 2023. An “artfully aged” Gibson Custom Shop take on his blacked-out 1989 Les Paul Custom followed in January last year.

Keep your eyes peeled on GuitarWorld.com for the full interview with Kirk Hammett, in which the Metallica man also recalls the time he let Jack White play Greeny live.

Kirk Hammett made headlines in January when he shared photos of himself playing Jack White’s Triplecaster. White commented that he was simply returning a favor: Hammett had previously gifted him one of his signature Gibson ‘Greeny’ replica Les Pauls.

Now, the Metallica electric guitar maestro reveals what prompted him to give the guitar to White. In a new interview with Guitar World’s Amit Sharma, Hammett says: “I sent him a Greeny. He’s played the original.”

Not only that, but White did a gig with the legendary Les Paul previously owned by Peter Green and Gary Moore.

“I turned up at one of his shows with Greeny and said ‘Bro, check it out, and play her on stage!’” Hammett admits gleefully. “He used that guitar for a few songs.”

This performance gave Metallica’s axeman an idea: “When the replicas came out, I sent him one because I knew he’d dig it,” Kirk says simply. “He was happy and wasn’t expecting anything. So a couple of months ago, I got a text from him saying, ‘You’re gonna get a package in the mail.’”

The package, of course, was one of Jack’s personal Triplecasters.

“Then a guitar case showed up, and when I opened it up, I was so happy,” smiles Hammett. It turns out the two have an established relationship of sharing gear.

“He occasionally sends me his Third Man pedals, which are totally psycho,” Kirk comments. “I love them.”

Somehow, no footage has emerged of Jack White performing with possibly the world’s most famous Les Paul. Rest assured Guitar World will be combing the web and will share it if we find it.

Hammett has also been discussing Polyphia's Tim Henson and giving his opinion on the 'boomer bends' controversy. Jack White's latest Third Man Hardware release is a collaboration with Eventide on a sub-octave fuzz and analog synth pedal.

Keep your eyes peeled on GuitarWorld.com for the full interview with Kirk Hammett.

It is over three years since Tim Henson found himself at the heart of the boomer bends backlash – a term he first coined off-hand, during Rick Beato’s modern guitar discussion with Misha Mansoor and Tosin Abasi – yet feathers continue to be ruffled.

Now Metallica’s Kirk Hammett, prompted in a new interview with Rolling Stone’s Music Now podcast, has added his two cents to the debate.

“I love that. Is he gonna call Eddie Van Halen a boomer guitar player?” responds Hammett, when he’s asked what he thought of the term. [The US Census Bureau defines Baby Boomers as those born “between mid-1946 and mid-1964” and EVH was born in 1955 - Ed]

Nonetheless, the Metallica man is (mostly) effusive in his praise for Henson’s playing.

“I really like his style. It's really unique, and in terms of technique, it's amazing,” Kirk raves, adding: “It's the age old question, how relatable is it? It's good to listen to three or four times, but can you really relate?”

“Sometimes people just want to listen to music and not feel challenged. Some people, sometimes people just want to feel raw emotion. Is he hitting on raw emotion? No, it's so complicated. It's a very distinct emotion that he's shooting for,” Kirk argues.

“Therefore, how accessible is it on a larger scale? It's only accessible to people who like that, or can understand that. It's a very small category of people. That's absolutely fine if he wants to reach that category of people.”

“It's amazing playing, but at the end of the day, people want something that's comforting and satisfying, and is not that hard,” contends Hammett.

“They're great at what they're doing. But I also know that sound, only a certain amount of people have patience for that, or even the musical temerity to actually understand the breadth of it,” continues the Metallica guitarist.

“I love watching him play, but man, after a while, I'm probably gonna go and put on a Jeff Beck album or Stevie Ray Vaughan or maybe put on the Misfits or something. I’ll tell you, I'll get more out of a Misfits album, singing along and screaming and yelling, then I'll do out of something really technically challenging.”

Tim Henson might point out that the “very small category of people” who can enjoy Polyphia’s music is rapidly ballooning. This summer the band will support System of a Down and Korn in US stadiums, and they receive high billing at European festivals.

“In France, we were playing Hellfest, and we were like, third from headlining, and there was, like, 80,000 people there,” Tim recently told Guitar World.

Henson acknowledges, though, that stadium music has different demands than music written for smaller venues.

“It made us realize, like, ’Hey, we should start composing for it to work in these situations of 80,000-plus people,’” Henson said. “I don’t want to say tone it down in the technicality department, but sonically, making sure that it can work.”

Hammett, for his part, acknowledges that he appreciates technical like Allan Holdsworth. “I love all that really fucking complicated shit,” he admits. “You know, some people just want just raw energy or raw emotion on a plate, and they want it now, and that's what I think we deliver in droves.”

Henson has previously responded to the controversy over his comments. In 2021, he clarified “No one said you couldn’t bend!”

He is currently working on a new Polyphia album as well as a secret project with film composer Hans Zimmer.

Meanwhile, Raven, the band who took Metallica on their first US tour, recently told Guitar World that audiences initially struggled to understand the thrashers, so maybe that concept of accessibility can change over time...

Although he’s best known as lead guitarist for the world’s biggest metal band, in guitar circles Kirk Hammett has become as synonymous with collecting as he is with Metallica.

His prize piece is Greeny, the famed 1959 Gibson Les Paul named after Peter Green and formerly owned by Gary Moore. But his collection runs the gamut of vintage collectables, from ’50s Goldtops to Korina Flying Vs and, of course, his own stage-used guitars.

Now a new book, The Collection: Kirk Hammett catalogs Hammett’s rarest and most iconic pieces over 400 pages, including new and archive photography from Ross Halfin, and the history behind the guitars from Hammett himself and author, Gibson Editor-in-Chief Chris Vinnicombe.

One of many notable examples in the tome is a 1959 ES-335 in a then-almost unheard-of factory black finish. This is its unlikely story.

The following is an extract from The Collection: Kirk Hammett, now available from Gibson Publishing and reproduced with permission.

Now here’s something you don’t see every day. Although black guitars are plentiful today, back in the vintage era, unless your Gibson guitar was a Les Paul Custom, a black finish would either have to be purchased through a dealer by special order or the result of an employee request.

And when it comes to models such as the ES-335, original factory black examples are vanishingly rare, with perhaps as few as two or three known to exist.

For a collector like Kirk, these are the guitars to get really excited about. “The super-rare Gibsons, maybe one of two or three known to exist, that’s the type of stuff I tend to gravitate to,” he says.

“Low supply, high demand. As a collector since I was five or six years old of like, comic books, toys… I just know that things like that will always hold their value. There will always be a demand, and as time goes on the demand gets bigger and bigger, which means more value or more worth.

“But I don’t really think about the value or worth; I just like to think about how cool the instrument is.”

And what is Kirk’s favorite custom color from the 1950s and ’60s? None more black, of course. “If we’re talking old-school? I love black Gibsons. They’re just epic… there’s nothing like a black guitar. A black guitar is like black clothing; every time you put it on, it goes with whatever you are wearing and it just means business.”

Even the case for this guitar means business. Housed in a huge custom-fitted flightcase known as “The Monolith,” Kirk has begun referring to his black ’59 ES-335 by the same nickname, “Because it’s so big-sounding.”

Other than the addition of some gaffer tape to protect Kirk’s picking hand from the sharp bottom corner of the pickguard, which has become characteristically warped with age, the guitar is in remarkable original condition.

“When I first got it, there wasn’t as much yellowing as there is now,” he says of the guitar’s body and fingerboard binding.

“It’s only gotten more yellowing because it’s seen more time out of the case. You can tell I’ve played it onstage because it has sweat stains all over it! But it’s a killer. When I really think about it, and I’m really, really honest with myself, it’s probably my second-best-sounding guitar.”

Kirk bought the guitar from a friend in London, but its previous home in Chicago provided a breadcrumb trail leading back to the Gibson stand at the NAMM Show (the annual convention held by the National Association of Music Merchants) in 1959.

“There’s a famous picture of the 1959 NAMM Show in Chicago,” Kirk explains. “There’s a Flying V, a Les Paul, and right behind them is this guitar, sitting in the background. I’m 99 percent sure it’s the same one, because the one I have came out of Chicago.”

Thanks to a famous Luis Vuitton advertising campaign in 2008 featuring an iconic Annie Leibovitz portrait of Keith Richards in a hotel room with his original factory black ES-355, it’s impossible to talk about rare black Gibsons without Keith coming up in the conversation.

“I wanted a black ES-335 ever since I saw Keith Richards’ black ES-355,” Kirk admits. “I suspect this is the guitar Keith has been looking for all of his life! It’s one of my favorite guitars and it doesn’t feed back. I’ve played it onstage, full fucking volume, hitting tremendous powerchords – super-full, no feedback. It holds up, man.

“Great rhythm sound, great lead sound, great clean sound. You can’t go wrong with a 335. It sounds so big and full. It sounds like two guitars, really!”

• The Collection: Kirk Hammett is available now from Gibson Publishing in Standard hardcover, Deluxe slipcase and Custom boxset editions. See Gibson.com for more info.

Every aspiring band needs their big break, and for Metallica, one of their most important early milestones occurred in the early 1980s when they were invited to go on their first national tour supporting British heavy metal band, Raven.

In a new interview with Guitar World, Raven recalls how Metallica went down while on the road – and it turns out the reception they received from some of the crowds was less than ideal.

Founded in 1974 in Newcastle, England, by brothers Mark and John Gallagher, the ‘new wave of British heavy metal’ group were promoting their third album, All For One, in 1983.

For the supporting tour, they brought along Metallica – a band they perceived to be “a more refined Motörhead”. But not everyone was as enthusiastic about their music as they were.

“We came out to do our first tour of the States, and our management was the same as Metallica’s,” guitarist Mark Gallagher explains. “They were just starting out, and [Megaforce Records founder] Jonny Z [Jon Zazula], who was our manager at the time, said, ‘I’ve got the biggest band on the West Coast from San Francisco. They’re gonna open for you.’ We were like, ‘Really? Who’s that?’”

For bass player John Gallagher, the weight of Zazula’s statement wasn’t lost on him.

“When you thought of the big bands in San Francisco, it’s a long list,” he says. “I mean… there was Y&T and even Journey, but no, it was Metallica. We were like, ‘Who?’ So, they said, ‘We’ll send you a cassette.’”

When the cassette arrived, the band’s warp-speed playing left them scratching their heads.

“I put it in, played it, and I’m going, ‘Does this sound like it’s at the right speed?’” John goes on. “It kind of sounded like if you put a Motörhead album on at 78 RPM, you know?”

“We kind of dug it,” his brother takes over. “We thought it was like a more refined Motörhead, like, real kickass. But when we went out and played the shows, a lot of places didn’t like Metallica. They were like, ‘What the hell is this?’

“Other than the major markets, we played some nutty places on that tour, like Bald Knob, Arkansas, and some really weird gigs,” he concludes. “The whole thing was quite an experience.”

Even though Motörhead were already well established by the early ’80s, the velocity of Metallica’s riffs caught many by surprise. History dictates, however, that the music world would quickly grow accustomed to their sound, and following the release of 1986’s Master of Puppets, they soon became one of the biggest metal bands in the world.

The full interview with Raven will be published on the Guitar World website in the near future.

In related news, James Hetfield’s luthier has detailed his journey from crafting basses to becoming the Metallica guitarist's go-to axe maker.

Jerry Cantrell took part in a fan Q&A in the newest issue of Metal Hammer, during which he teased the possibility of a high-profile collaboration with another big-name player in heavy music: James Hetfield.

The Alice in Chains electric guitar star is no stranger to impromptu partnerships, and over the years has sporadically joined forces with Metallica specifically for a suite of collaborations.

In 1998, he featured on Metallica’s take on Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Tuesday’s Gone, which dropped as part of the band’s Garage Inc cover album, and on stage he’s linked up with Hetfield and co at a number of benefit concerts.

And, when quizzed over whether he and Hetfield would revive their partnership any time soon – be that for a one-off single or a fully fledged album – Cantrell refused to rule it out, revealing the pair have already been jamming together and discussed it... sort of.

“James and I have talked about it, kind of,” Cantrell responds. “We never had a formal conversation but I’ve jammed with him at Kirk [Hammett, Metallica guitarist]’s place.

“I’ve even spent a night or two at his house, and we’ve ended up with guitars in the kitchen and on the porch. It’s something I’d be really curious about, even to just write a song with him.

“As for whether it’d turn into something more than that, he’s got a pretty demanding day job. Ha ha! So I’d understand if it never comes to be.”

That doesn’t sound like a definitive ‘no’ to our ears, but unfortunately it’s still a far cry from an official confirmation of a future team-up.

Nevertheless, Cantrell’s enthusiasm is quite clearly there, and such enthusiasm is further bolstered by the fact the grunge hero has previously gone on record to voice his admiration for the Metallica frontman.

In fact, in a separate interview with Metal Hammer from 2020, Cantrell named Hetfield the greatest frontman in metal.

“As a guitarist, I come from the Malcolm Young school of rock, which is about rhythm and songwriting,” he said. “If you talk to anybody, I’m not really known as a virtuoso soloist. Where it’s at for me is rhythm, tone, feel and arrangement. I think James comes from that school too.

“What makes James such a great frontman is his physical presence. Nobody else commands the same kind of respect and attention without it being self-seeking or egocentric.

“Will he go down in history as a rock icon? He already has – he’s the godfather, man.”

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up the new issue of Metal Hammer.

Kirk Hammett recently gifted Jack White one of his Gibson Greeny Les Paul signature guitars, and received the White Stripes legend’s wild Fender Triplecaster in return.

White made headlines a few weeks ago when he swapped signatures with Living Color’s Vernon Reid, after the pair had bumped into each other at the airport.

Now, White has given away another one of his wild Fender Triplecasters to the Metallica guitar maestro, but this time it wasn’t as part of a random encounter in a public place – it was done “in the interest of reciprocity”.

In a post on social media, White – proudly posing alongside his new Gibson ‘Greeny’ Les Paul – explains that Hammett had kindly sent him his signature Gibson Les Paul, which immediately made an impression on the gear experimentalist.

“Guitar slaying maestro Kirk Hammett of Metallica was kind enough to send me one of his new remakes of the famous "Greeny" guitar the original of which now resides with him,” he writes.

“Owned by Peter Green, and Gary Moore, it is well known for its accidental out of phaseness from the neck pickup being upside down and wired "wrong" etc. You really can hear it up around the 15th fret in my opinion, that's where it sings.”

Now, a few different variants of the Greeny Les Paul have been reissued over the past few years, but it looks as though White is now the proud owner of the widely accessible Gibson Les Paul Standard version.

Unlike the $50k Collector's Edition or $20k Custom Shop Standard models, this particular example – which costs just shy of $3k – doesn’t come with any of the relic’ing or artificial aging that attempts to recreate the aesthetics of Hammett’s OG model. Instead, its Greeny Bust finish is entirely unblemished.

To say thanks for the gift, White parted ways with another of his own Fender Triplecasters, which was sent to Kirk Hammett – who now seemingly can’t put it down.

“Thanks so much @officialjackwhite for such a great cool innovative, fun Triplecaster guitar,” Hammett wrote in a reply post. “I love it so much Greeny is getting a bit jealous!!!”

The Triplecaster arrived last year as part of a bumper drop of Jack White signature Fender products. A spiritual remake of his Custom Shop Telecaster, the Triplecaster was one of 2024’s standout launches, with three different pickups and a host of curious specs.

Whether either guitarist will play their new instruments live on stage or in the studio any time soon remains to be seen…

Last Friday (December 13), Metallica maintained tradition by hosting their annual All Within My Hands Foundation event, which saw the heavy metal legends tap a host of special guests – and eyebrow-raising electric guitars – to perform a range of covers, deep cuts, and reimagined fan favorites.

Over the 13-song setlist, Metallica delivered both acoustic and electric sets, with lesser-played tracks getting air time, and an intriguing cast of guest musicians helping punctuate the evening's festivities.

While some tracks got live debuts and others were dusted off for their first showing in nearly 30 years, it was perhaps Hetfield’s decision to sling an oddball Danelectro Long Horn Baritone over his shoulder for a rendition of Fuel that especially stood out.

With a street price of around $550, the Long Horn isn’t exactly a wallet-thinner, but with its lengthy 29.75" scale and B-to-B tuning, it’s arguably not your archetypal trasher. However, Hetfield used it to help Metallica break out of the key of E, as they gave Fuel a heavier run-out in the key of B.

Fuel followed an impromptu guitar solo from Hetfield as he showcased his new Danelectro’s low twang. Hammett’s bonus harmonies, via a single pickup Fender Esquire, are a treat, too.

Pearl Jam bass player Jeff Ament was the most high-profile guest of the evening, featuring on a fresh take of the primal trash classic, Hit The Lights. With Robert Trujillo still playing a part – rather than simply sitting one out – Ament helped give the band’s heavy metal thunder plenty of extra oomph.

Metallica’s acoustic set had plenty to delight, too, with Low Man's Lyric reportedly getting its first live performance since 1998 (according to SetlistFM). That was followed by a live debut for their take on Bachman-Turner Overdrive's Away From Home, and a world-first acoustic rendition of If Darkness Had a Son from the Grammy-nominated 72 Seasons. They were joined by sibling strings duo SistaStrings, comprising cello and violin, for extra spice.

Hammett wielded a Fender Acoustasonic, and Robert Trujillo a Tele-style acoustic bass, for the performance as the band capitalized on the chance to arm themselves with atypical axes.

The lead guitarist also made full use of his Acoustasonic’s electro-acoustic specs by testing its soloing credentials before the band concluded their acoustic set with the superlative Nothing Else Matters.

San Francisco multi-instrumentalist Avi Vinocur of Goodnight, Texas featured extensively across both sets, wielding everything from mandolins and acoustic guitars to a black and gold Les Paul for Fuel. Taking to Instagram afterward, he purred, “Well, yesterday was nuts.”

The Unforgiven II, the sequel to a Black Album masterstroke, was played for the first time since 2015, with the band wrapping up the night with Master of Puppets. Hetfield’s iconic white Gibson Flying V and Hammett’s prized "Greeny" Les Paul also featured, standing as more typical guitar picks.

It was in Los Angeles almost 30 years ago that Lars Ulrich, a teenage tennis prodigy turned drummer, first jammed with James Hetfield, a guitarist and singer from the nearby SoCal neighborhood of Downey.

At the time, a none-too-impressed Hetfield figured that first session to be their last. He was, of course, very wrong. As the backbone of Metallica, Hetfield and Ulrich have gone on to perform countless times for millions of fans around the world and to sell many millions of albums.

All of this would not have been possible without the major players who have passed through the band’s ranks over the years, among them guitarist Dave Mustaine, bassist Jason Newsted, and, perhaps most crucial, the late, great bassist Cliff Burton. But no single musician has been beside Hetfield and Ulrich longer than lead guitarist Kirk Hammett, who joined Metallica prior to the recording of their 1983 debut, Kill ’Em All, and whose quick-fingered, melodic soloing is an indispensable element of the band’s sound to this day.

Currently rounded out by bassist Robert Trujillo, Metallica recently released their ninth studio effort, Death Magnetic. The album is being hailed as a return to the band’s thrash metal roots, which makes this an ideal moment to tell the story of those trailblazing early days.

In this exclusive oral history, Hetfield, Hammett, and Ulrich, along with some friends and former band mates, look back on Metallica’s first decade, and recount the recording of their classic first five albums. Through the eyes of those who saw it, heard it, and helped to create the timeless music, Guitar World charts Metallica’s rise from L.A. thrash upstarts to reigning biggest heavy metal band in the world.

In the Beginning

In 1980, 16-year-old Lars Ulrich moves with his family from his native Denmark to Los Angeles. Inspired by Deep Purple and New Wave of British Heavy Metal acts like Diamond Head, Saxon, and Motörhead, Ulrich puts down his tennis racket, picks up a pair of drumsticks, and decides to form a band. Among the first people he meets after moving to L.A. is Brian Slagel, a Southern California teen who would go on to found the independent record label Metal Blade.

Brian Slagel: “Lars would always say, ‘I’m going to start a band one day,’ and I’d be like, ‘Sure man, whatever.’

“He had this little drum set in the corner of his bedroom, but it wasn’t even set up. I’d always laugh when I saw it because it was just a big mess. But when I started putting together Metal Massacre [the Metal Blade compilation of local, unsigned metal bands] Lars came to me and said, ‘If I get a band together, can I be on the album?’ Since he was a good friend I said, ‘Absolutely.’”

In the summer of 1980, Ulrich places a classified ad in SoCal paper The Recycler: “Drummer looking for other musicians to jam with – Tygers of Pan Tang, Diamond Head, Iron Maiden.” Guitarist James Hetfield is among the respondents.

James Hetfield: “The first time Lars and I got together to jam, it just didn’t happen. There was no vibe. But he introduced me to a whole new world of heavy music. I had heard of Iron Maiden and Def Leppard, but not too many of the other, more obscure English metal bands.

“I would spend days just going through his record collection, taping over my REO Speedwagon cassettes with bands like Angel Witch and Diamond Head and Motörhead. I was in heaven at his house.”

Slagel: “When Lars heard about the Metal Massacre compilation I was putting together, the two of them recorded Hit the Lights on a little Fostex cassette, and they had their friend, Lloyd Grant, who was a guitar teacher, come in and do the lead.”

Hetfield: “Lars came to me with the opportunity to be on a record, and that was pretty interesting. At that point in my life I wanted to play music. I didn’t want to work.”

Ulrich steals the name Metallica from friend and radio DJ Ron Quintana, who had mentioned it as a possible title for a fanzine he was preparing to launch. Ulrich and Hetfield recruit bassist Ron McGovney, who had played with Hetfield previously in the band Leather Charm, and lead guitarist Dave Mustaine to fill out the band’s lineup.

Dave Mustaine: “Before the [first] rehearsal, I went to Lars’ house, and he played me the tape of Hit the Lights. I said, ‘This song sucks. You need more guitar solos.’ And Lars went, ‘Oh fuck, reeeeaaallly?’

“I convinced him that I should be in the band and went to rehearsal. I was tuning up when all the other guys went into another room. They weren’t talking to me, so I went in and said, ‘What the fuck? Am I in the band or not?’ And they said, ‘You’ve got the gig.’ It was as easy as that.”

Kerry King: (Slayer guitarist) “I remember seeing Dave play with Metallica at the Woodstock in Anaheim [California]. He was ripping these killer solos and riffs, and he was just glaring at the crowd – not even looking at his fingers. I was blown away.”

In the spring of 1982, the Hetfield-Ulrich-Mustaine-McGovney lineup records a four-song demo with a new version of Hit the Lights. The tape comes to be known as the “Power Metal” demo due to business cards McGovney prints up with the phrase at the time.

Ron McGovney: “Lars said, ‘What did you do! What the hell is ‘power metal’? I can’t believe you did such a stupid thing!’ He was so pissed off at me.”

In late 1982, while trying to replace McGovney, Ulrich and Hetfield spot bassist Cliff Burton onstage with his band, Trauma, at the Whisky a Go Go in L.A. The two ask him to join Metallica. Burton agrees, on the condition that the band relocate to his hometown of San Francisco.

Slagel: “Metallica had a lot of problems in L.A. because all the club owners thought they were either too heavy or too punk. They went over so much better in San Francisco than they ever did in their hometown.”

Gary Holt: (Exodus guitarist) “When they first came to the Bay Area, L.A. was known for nothing more than a lot of shit bands. And then here comes this band, and we’re all into the same stuff – Diamond Head, Budgie… Metallica came along and started playing everywhere.”

Prior to Burton’s joining, Metallica had recorded the No Life ’Til Leather demo, which featured much of the material that would eventually comprise Kill ’Em All. The demo becomes a hot item on the underground tape-trading circuit.

Holt: “The tape-trading scene was how we all got heard. You would record a demo and the traders would circulate it all over the world – to all the fans, the magazines, and the independent record labels.”

King: “Metallica’s demo got passed around, big time. We all had that.”

Scott Ian: (Anthrax guitarist) “When I heard No Life ‘Til Leather I immediately thought, ‘Wow, here’s some guys from the other side of the country that are doing the same thing we’re doing; they’re just a little better at it right now.’

“I remember being there the day Jonny Z [Jon Zazula, owner of New Jersey record store Rock N’ Roll Heaven and founder of indie label Megaforce Records] got it in the mail. He put it on, and I was like, ‘That’s fucking killer! Who are these guys?’ Jonny told me, ‘They’re called Metallica, and I’m bringing them to New York. Somehow we’re gonna make a record.’”

Jonny Z: “We hustled together $1,500 for them to rent a van to come out to the East Coast and play some shows.”

Metallica set up shop at the Music Building in Queens, New York, where Anthrax practice as well. The band live and rehearse at the space and play their first East Coast gigs.

Ian: “Metallica were opening for Vandenberg [the group guitarist Adrian Vandenberg led prior to joining Whitesnake] at L’amour in Brooklyn, and we were all down there in the afternoon, waiting for them to soundcheck. Mustaine was already shitfaced by 3:30, and he was yelling at Adrian Vandenberg, ‘Get the fuck off the stage! You suck!’ And we were all like, ‘What the fuck, dude? Shhhh!’”

Slagel: “Everybody liked to drink back then and have a good time, but Dave could go much further over the line than anyone else would, and you could see that sooner or later that was going to be a problem.”

Ian: “I showed up at the Music Building for band practice one day, and Cliff was outside smoking a cigarette. He told me they had just kicked Dave out of the band. The other guys said, ‘We had known we were gonna do it for weeks now. We woke him up this morning, and he was so drunk and hungover that before he could even realize what was going on we got him out of here.’

“I asked them what they were going to do, and they said they already had another guy on his way into town. His name was Kirk Hammett, and he was the guitar player in Exodus.”

Kirk Hammett: “I was familiar with Metallica’s music before I joined the band. I had the No Life ‘Til Leather demo, and my friends and I listened to it quite a bit. It was what everyone in the San Francisco underground metal scene was listening to in 1982. Plus, Exodus played with Metallica pretty often in San Francisco.

“The first time I spoke to Lars was after they had just finished a set and I said, ‘Thanks for letting us play. I really like you guys.’ He said, ‘Yeah, yeah, cool, cool,’ but as I was talking to him, he started taking his stage clothes off, and before I knew it he was just completely naked in front of me, and I was just shocked. I said to myself, ‘Oh, he’s European. Europeans do stuff like this.’”

Lars Ulrich: “I remember the first time I heard Kirk. He had a feel that very few young players have – very rooted in European metal. It was really nice to hear an American guy who didn’t play like Eddie Van Halen.”

Kill ’Em All

In the spring of 1983, Metallica travel to Music America Studios in Rochester, New York, to record their debut album, Kill ’Em All, with producer Paul Curcio.

Hammett: “We totally trashed the place. I felt bad. But it’s four guys, you know? There was carpet in every single room, and we drank pretty much 24 hours a day back then. So you can imagine how that turned out. Moist places shouldn’t have rugs.”

Ulrich: “The actual studio was in the basement of this huge old colonial-type of clubhouse. On the second floor there was a huge ballroom; perfect for getting a good drum sound. The problem was the place was fucking haunted. My cymbals would start spinning for no reason. Shit like that. It was scary.”

Hetfield: “Occasionally we put guitar and bass amps in the [ballroom] for ambience. I remember Cliff being in that room with all his amps and his headphones on while he recorded (Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth, his bass solo. He literally was just standing in front of his amps.”

Hammett: “The guitar stuff was recorded through James’ magical, mythical Marshall. He had it modified by some guy in L.A. who used to work on Eddie Van Halen’s gear. I used it too, because we didn’t have much equipment back then. I also used a wah pedal and a Boss Super Distortion. James played his white Flying V, and I used my black Flying V. Those were the only guitars we had.”

Hammett, who has only been in the band a few months, still has to contend with the looming presence of Dave Mustaine, who had written many of the riffs and solos to the songs.

Hammett: “Jonny Z said, ‘You know, you have to play Dave’s solos.’” I said, “‘No, I don’t really want to play Dave’s solos.’ He said, ‘Why don’t you play the opening to every solo, so that people think you’re going to play Dave’s solos, and then you can go somewhere else with them.’ And that’s exactly what I did.

“As a 20-year-old kid, put in a position like that, you don’t want to rock the boat too much – especially being the new guy. So I took the first four bars of most of the solos and changed them.”

Hetfield: “Dave brought the song The Four Horsemen over from one of his other bands. Back then it was called The Mechanix. After he left Metallica, we kind of fixed the song up. The lyrics he used were pretty silly.”

Kill ’Em All is released on July 25, 1983, on Megaforce. Though the first wave of thrash bands, including Exodus, Slayer, Anthrax, and Overkill, are up and running, Metallica are the first act to record and release a full-length vinyl album.

Hetfield: “It was Cliff who named the album. Originally we were supposed to call it ‘Metal Up Your Ass.’ We got a phone call from our manager telling us half the record outlets wouldn’t carry the album if it was called that. Cliff said, ‘You know what? Fuck those fuckers, man. We should just kill ’em all.’”

Hammett: “After we recorded the album and we came back to the Bay Area, there seemed to be 10 or 12 newer bands that were playing faster, really aggressive beats.”

David Ellefson: (former Megadeth bassist) “I remember early on Dave [Mustaine] got a fan letter from some kid in the Bay Area who wrote, ‘Can’t wait to hear your new stuff. Hope it’s faster than Metallica.’ We went to rehearsal the next day and everything jumped up 50 beats per minute!”

Hammett: “Part of the reason why we would play so fast is because we were just nervous. As a young musician, when I was nervous I had a tendency to speed things up. Joining Metallica, I thought, ‘This is great, because it can never be too fast.’”

Hetfield: “Lars was always nervous onstage, so he’d play faster and faster. Nobody wanted to wimp out and tell him. We just figured, ‘Hell, we’ll just play fast, too,’ and that’s what we did on the record.”

Hammett: “I would have been happy selling [a few] copies and being able to do a club tour across the States. To me, that was success. Then when we found out we were actually going to go to Europe and play shows there for the first time – I thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s totally unexpected.’

“For James and Cliff and myself, we had never been outside the United States. It was all very inspiring, because there were more possibilities out there than we imagined at the onset.”

Ian: “Jonny Z had been trying to land Metallica a deal, and all the guys at the big labels would put their fingers in their ears when he played them the album. They were clueless. But when they saw how many copies Jonny sold, they realized, ‘Wow, there’s thousands of kids out there who are into this shit.’”

Jonny Z: “We printed up 1,500 copies, and they went in five seconds. We printed another 3,500, and they went in a week. We just kept on building and building, and then Elektra picked them up for Ride the Lightning.”

Ride the Lightning

After completing a European tour opening for Venom in early 1984, Metallica travel to Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen, Denmark, to record their second album, with producer Flemming Rasmussen.

The result, Ride the Lightning, is issued on Megaforce on July 27. A few months later, after a gig in New York City, the band is signed by Elektra, making them the first thrash metal act to be picked up by a major label. Elektra then reissues Ride the Lightning in the fall of 1984.

Ulrich: “Cliff was responsible for a lot of the things that happened between Kill ’Em All and Ride the Lightning. He really exposed James and I to a whole new musical horizon of harmonies and melodies. [Our] whole way of writing songs together was very much shaped around Cliff’s musical input.”

Hetfield: “Touring definitely made us a little more worldly. We started to see other things that were going on in the world. And that’s when more of the punk-oriented, opinionated kind of thoughts began to appear in our lyrics. And actually having to sit down and write an album made a difference, because Kill ’Em All was just songs we had been playing in clubs for the two years before we recorded it.”

Hammett: “I tracked the whole album with Marshall amps and my Gibson Flying V, and by then James had his Gibson Explorer.”

Hetfield: “That whole album was a real huge step for us. Creeping Death was our first big, chanting, gang-vocal thing. There was almost some production value to it!”

Hammett: “When we did the crunchy ‘Die by my hand’ breakdown in the middle, we sat in the control room after we did the gang vocals, and everyone was just going nuts!”

In addition to thrashy cuts like Creeping Death, Fight Fire with Fire, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, the album features the song Fade to Black, which many consider the first thrash-metal ballad.

Slagel: “Metallica really pushed the boundaries with Fade to Black. That was the first time any of the bands tried something like that. I remember some of their hardcore fans accused them of selling out with that song, but it’s pretty obvious that it’s just a great, extremely well-written tune.”

Hetfield: “It’s a suicide song, and we got a lot of flack for it; kids were killing themselves because of the song. But we also got hundreds and hundreds of letters from kids telling us how they related to the song and that it made them feel better. It was also pretty much our first ballad, so it was challenging, and we knew it would freak people out.”

Hammett: “For the extended solo at the end I wasn’t sure what to play. We had been in Denmark for five or six months, and I was getting really homesick. Since it was a somber song and we were all bummed out anyway, I thought of some depressing things when I did the solo – and it really helped!

“When that was finished, I went back and did the clean guitar parts behind the verse. James played an arpeggiated figure while I arpeggiated three-note chords. We ended up getting a very Dire Straits–type of sound.”

Hetfield: “Bands like Exodus and Slayer don’t do ballads, but they’ve stuck themselves in that position, which is something we’ve never wanted to do. Limiting yourself to please your audience is bullshit.”

With the support of Elektra, Metallica begin to make inroads to the mainstream. Throughout 1984 and 1985 the band tour the world, embarking on the ‘Bang the Head That Doesn’t Bang’ tour across Europe and playing the U.S. with W.A.S.P. and Armored Saint.

In August of 1985, Metallica appear at the Day on the Green festival in Oakland, California, where they perform before an audience of 60,000. That same month, they play to more than 70,000 at the Monsters of Rock festival in Donington, England, where they’re sandwiched on the bill between Ratt and Bon Jovi.

Hetfield: (onstage at Monsters of Rock) “If you came here to see spandex, eye makeup, and the words ‘Oh baby’ in every fuckin' song, this ain't the fuckin' band.”

Master of Puppets

After touring for much of the year, Metallica return to Sweet Silence Studios in September 1985, to begin work on their third album, Master of Puppets, again with Flemming Rasmussen at the helm.

Hammett: “By that point, we had been playing together for a few years. We’d toured a ton; we knew each other musically and personally; everybody was contributing amazing ideas, and it was just a culmination of all the right spots and all the right notes at the right time. Maybe the planets were aligned or something, I don’t know, but that’s what it felt like.”

Hetfield: “We started getting into the longer, more orchestrated songs. It was more of a challenge to write a long song that didn’t seem long.”

Hammett: “I’ll tell you how the main [descending] riff to Master of Puppets came about. On the Ride the Lightning tour, James would always play the riff in the dressing room, but on the D string, and I’d play it simultaneously on the G string as a parallel-fourths harmony line. It sounded really dorky and funny.

“Then, one day at rehearsal, James said, ‘Let me show you this really heavy song intro,’ and proceeded to play that exact riff on the low E string. I said, ‘Ah, so you finally found a use for that dorky little thing!’ It’s anything but dorky now.”

Hetfield: “The riff for the title track was pretty messy – constantly moving. But it works good live. People love to scream Master! a couple of times.”

Hammett: “I used a Mesa/Boogie Mark II-C head and my Jackson Randy Rhoads V on that song. When you listen to the solo, there’s this weird sound right after the mellow part where it sounds like I’m hitting a super high note, like I’m fretting the string against the pickup.

“What happened was, I accidentally pulled the string off the fretboard, and it fretted out on the side of the neck! I heard it back and was like, ‘That’s brilliant! We’ve gotta keep that!’ Of course, I’ve never been able to reproduce it since.”

Master of Puppets is released on March 3, 1986. In addition to the epic title track, the album features incredibly aggressive material like Battery, Damage, Inc., and Disposable Heroes, as well as a second ballad, Welcome Home (Sanitarium).

A Sticker that appeared on the cover of early pressings of Master of Puppets read: “The only track you probably won't want to play is Damage, Inc. due to the multiple uses of the infamous ‘F’ word. Otherwise, there aren't any ‘Shits,’ ‘Fucks,’ ‘Pisses,’ ‘Cunts,’ ‘Motherfuckers,’ or ‘Cocksuckers’ anywhere on this record.”

Hetfield: “The idea for Welcome Home (Sanitarium) came from the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Fade to Black worked well, and we wanted to have another slow, clean, picking type of song, this time with a chorus. I had trouble singing that chorus – it’s really high. And the riff for the song was lifted from some other band, who shall remain anonymous.”

Master of Puppets peaks at #29 on the Billboard album chart, and within a few months of its release sells more than 500,000 copies. With no help from radio or MTV, Metallica earn their first Gold-certified album. The band receive a large amount of mainstream exposure from their opening slot on Ozzy Osbourne’s tour in support of his Ultimate Sin album.

Hammett: “Going on the Ozzy tour really made a difference, because all of a sudden we were playing Master of Puppets to a pretty mainstream audience. Your typical Ozzy fan might not have gotten Metallica, but two or three years later, they were all saying, ‘Yeah, I saw Metallica with Ozzy, and they blew him away!’

“We converted people night after night. Suddenly we were selling albums, and a lot of it had to do with playing our asses off, putting on a great show, just bringing the music to the people in that way, because radio wasn’t having us.”

In the fall of ’86, Metallica embark on the European leg of the ‘Damage, Inc.’ tour, with Anthrax supporting.

Dan Spitz: (Anthrax guitarist) “The aura each night when they got onstage was incredible. I imagine Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath had that same vibe. Seeing Metallica back then, you just knew something big was about to happen. Master of Puppets was the changing of the guard.”

On September 27, while en route to a gig in Copenhagen, Metallica’s tour bus skids off the road near Dorarp, Sweden, and flips over several times. Cliff Burton, asleep in his bunk, is thrown through a window. The bus falls on top of him, killing him instantly. He was 24 years old.

Hetfield: “I saw the bus lying right on him. I saw his legs sticking out. I went to pieces. The driver tried to take Cliff’s blanket to give that to someone else. I just screamed, ‘Fuck that!’ I wanted to kill the guy. I didn’t know if he was drunk or if the bus had skidded on ice. All I knew was Cliff was dead.”

Hammett: “A part of Metallica was lost forever when he died.”

Hetfield: “The only thing I could think was: ‘The band? No way! There ain’t no band. The band is not the band right now. It’s just three guys.’”

Ian: “It was a terrible time. You just don’t imagine something like that happening to one of your friends, especially when you’re on tour, because there’s this feeling of invincibility. But I know that the rest of Metallica never considered ending the band. Their attitude was, ‘Why would we stop? That’s the last thing Cliff would want us to do.’”

A few weeks after Burton’s funeral, Hetfield, Ulrich, and Hammett begin auditioning bass players. They eventually settle on 23-year-old Flotsam and Jetsam bassist Jason Newsted.

Ulrich: “We did about 60 people in one week. And we decided that we wanted to ask four back. Jason was second of the four. We played all day, and then went out for a meal. And then we went for the big test, which was the drink test.

“Somehow, I swear it wasn’t planned, me, Kirk, and James ended up in the toilet together, pissing. So we’re standing there at three in the morning, out of our faces, all of us in a line, not saying anything. And I just said without looking at anybody, ‘That’s him, right?’ And the other guys said, ‘Yeah, that’s him.’ And that was it.”

Jason Newsted: “When I came into Metallica, I had to do justice to Cliff’s work, but I also had to put my own signature on it. No one could be Cliff Burton; Cliff Burton was the Jimi Hendrix of bass. I had to practice, practice, practice to get anywhere close to where he was.”

Holt: “After all these years, anyone who plays bass in Metallica is still filling Cliff Burton’s shoes. There was nobody like him.”

With Newsted onboard, Metallica head back out to the road, touring America and Europe with Metal Church, and ending with three shows as part of the Monsters of Rock festival. In the summer of 1987, they return to L.A. and record The $5.98 E.P.: Garage Days Re-Revisited. The set features covers of songs by Metallica favorites the Misfits, Budgie, and NWOBHM legends Diamond Head.

Hammett: “We did that EP for the fans, just for fun, and Elektra loved it and released it. All the lead parts flowed really quickly; I did them in two nights. That was when I first started using ESP guitars with EMG pickups.”

Hetfield: “We were still dealing with Cliff’s death, and Q-Prime, our management, was telling us to jump right back into it and start playing again. I guess we kind of mourned through music and doing the cover songs on that album.”

…And Justice for All

In January 1988, Metallica reconvene with producer Flemming Rasmussen, this time at One On One Studios in Los Angeles, to begin work on their fourth full-length album.

Titled …And Justice for All, the effort is the most progressive and technically challenging in the band’s catalog, boasting just nine songs for a combined length of more than one hour.

Hammett: “Things changed after Cliff’s death. Even our sound changed. On Justice, we kind of fell prey to that whole virtuosic, late-Eighties thing that was happening. All of a sudden, everyone wanted to be progressive and show off their abilities. Somehow, just playing fast and heavy took a backseat to that.”

Hetfield: “Sometimes we look back at some of our material and wonder how – or why – we ever came up with certain parts. There was a lot of urgency to that material, but a lot of it was just wank – just us showing off. But that’s where we were at that time.”

Though the album is Newsted’s first full-length effort with Metallica, his bass parts are almost completely inaudible on the finished product. This is widely believed to be the result of the rest of the band’s “hazing” of the bassist, though they deny the charge.

Hetfield: “The bass was obscured for two reasons. First, Jason tended to double my rhythm guitar parts, so it was hard to tell where my guitar started and his bass left off. Also, my tone on Justice was very scooped – all lows and highs, with very little midrange.

“When my rhythm parts were placed in the mix, my guitar sound ate up all the lower frequencies. Jason and I were always battling for the same space in the mix.”

Newsted: “I can’t explain how much grief I dealt with – and still deal with – over that record.”

Hammett: “There was a lot of anguish after Cliff died, and basically Jason was the punching bag. We vented so much on him, and it wasn’t really fair.”

…And Justice for All is released on September 6, 1988, and becomes Metallica’s biggest album to date. It is also their mainstream breakthrough. This is in large part due to the success of the song One, for which the band films their first music video. In the video, Hetfield’s dark lyrics are set against disturbing images from the 1971 film adaptation of Dalton Trumbo’s antiwar novel, Johnny Got His Gun.

Hetfield: “We’d never done a video until then because we’d never been asked to. We certainly didn’t want to get to the position where we had to beg MTV to play one of our videos.

“Our fans were calling them up and asking for our videos to be played. MTV were like, ‘Who the hell are Metallica?’ But they ended up asking us to make a video. So we finally did one, and we did it our way. And, of course, it was incredibly disturbing.”

Hammett: “I knew we were on to a good thing when I saw One on MTV at, like, 11:30 in the evening. I watched it, and afterward the VJ came on and said, ‘Wow, that’s a real bowl of rainbows!’”

In the wake of the album’s massive success – it peaks at #6 on the Billboard album chart, and is certified Platinum in less than three months – Metallica embark on ‘Damaged Justice,’ their first headlining arena tour, which takes them around the world and stretches on for more than a year.

One is also nominated for a Grammy – the first year the Recording Academy offers the Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance category – but the band lose to Jethro Tull, a band whose music is neither hard rock nor metal.

Ulrich: “I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you I was disappointed. Human nature is that you’d rather win than lose, but Jethro Tull walking away with it makes a huge mockery of the intentions of the event.”

A Sticker on the cover of subsequent copies of …And Justice for All reads: “Grammy Award LOSERS.”

The Black Album

After completing the ‘Damaged Justice’ tour, Metallica return to One On One Studios in October 1990 to record their fifth studio album. The music they write and record largely eschews their thrash metal roots in favor of a decidedly more commercial sound with slower tempos, simpler guitar riffs, and shorter, more accessible songs.

James Hetfield’s vocals are more melodic as well. This change in sound is credited by many to the influence of producer Bob Rock, best known for his work with radio-friendly acts like Bon Jovi and Mötley Crüe.

Hetfield: “People will be saying Bob [Rock] made Metallica sound like Bon Jovi. They don’t realize that no one screws with us, except us.”

Ulrich: “One thing that Bob should be given total credit for is making James comfortable enough to take that guard down and really sing. We’ve always thought of ourselves as Big Bad Metallica, but Bob taught us a new word none of us had ever heard before: ‘soulful.’”

Hetfield: “Radio airplay wasn’t the whole idea behind our writing shorter songs. It seemed to us that we had pretty much done the longer song format to death. We had one song that has just two riffs in it, which is pretty amazing. It only takes two minutes to get the point across.”

By the time the new album is released, on August 13, 1991, Metallica have been in the studio for close to a year, and the cost of the production reaches one million dollars. They choose to title the record Metallica, though due to its stark cover image – a coiled snake against a black background – it comes to be known as the “Black Album.”

Newsted: “It took us a long time to think up that title. I guess we could have just called it ‘Five’ or named it after one of the songs. We wanted to keep it simple.”

Ulrich: “The songs aren’t so busy, and Kirk’s guitar playing fits in well when he plays with the laid-back drums. James and I tried to set things up that were easier for Kirk to solo over. Some of the things on Justice got a little out of hand. Then it was, ‘Okay, Kirk, solo over this!’ And it would be the most sideways, difficult thing.”

Newsted: “The bass sound is much weightier. I tried to create a real rhythm section rather than a one-dimensional sound. It comes down to the music – making it a real rhythm section for once, and letting the guitars do their work. I’m glad the rest of the band could tell me that that’s what was needed.”

Hetfield: “What we really wanted was a live feel. In the past, Lars and I constructed the rhythm parts without Kirk and Jason. This time I wanted to try playing as a band unit in the studio. It lightens things up and you get more of a vibe.”

Hammett: “I used a Bradshaw preamp for the lows and mids and a couple of Marshalls for the nice clean highs. We EQ’d it through the board a little bit, and it worked out great. And I used two guitars – a Strat-style ESP with two EMG [pickups] and an ’89 Les Paul Deluxe with two EMGs.”

Hetfield: “We tried a bunch of amps, but I ended up using the same Mesa/Boogie Mark II Simul Class that I’d used on the last three albums. My primary guitar was my ESP Explorer with EMGs, but I also used a Telecaster, a Gretsch White Falcon with a Bigsby, and a Guild 12-string.”

The album’s lead-off track, Enter Sandman, is propelled by a simple and hooky riff and a huge, sing-along chorus. It becomes a worldwide smash hit.

Hetfield: “I can remember when I wrote the lyrics to Enter Sandman, Bob Rock and Lars came to me and said, ‘These aren’t as good as they could be.’ And that pissed me off so much. I was like, ‘Fuck you! I’m the writer here!’ That was the first challenge from someone else, and it made me work harder.”

Hammett: “I think the time has come to reveal where I actually got the guitar lick before the breakdown in Enter Sandman: It’s from Magic Man, by Heart, but I didn’t get it from Heart’s version; I got it from a cut off Ice-T’s Power album, where he sampled it. I heard that and thought, ‘I have to snake this!’”

Mainstream music fans wholeheartedly embrace the new, friendlier Metallica. The “Black Album” enters the Billboard album chart at number one and sells 600,000 copies in its first week of release.

In addition to Enter Sandman, the record spawns five more hit singles, including The Unforgiven, Wherever I May Roam, and the acoustic ballad Nothing Else Matters. The album has since sold more than 22 million copies worldwide.

Ulrich: “You think one day some fucker’s going to tell you, ‘You have a number-one record in America’ and the whole world will ejaculate. I stood there in my hotel room, and there was this fax that said, ‘You’re number one.’ And it was like, ‘Well, okay.’ It was just another fucking fax from the office.”

Beyond the Black

In October 1991, Metallica embark on the ‘Wherever We May Roam’ tour. They stay on the road for close to three years, in the process becoming one of the biggest touring and recording acts in the world.

Over the next decade the band release a series of albums – Load, ReLoad, St. Anger – on which they continually reinvent their sound (and image), gaining – and losing – fans in the process.

In 2001, Jason Newsted leaves Metallica due to strained relations with the rest of the band, in particular James Hetfield. In 2003 he is replaced by ex–Suicidal Tendencies and Ozzy Osbourne bassist Robert Trujillo, who joins prior to the tour in support of St. Anger.

In September 2008, Metallica release their ninth studio album, Death Magnetic. To date they’ve sold more than 90 million records worldwide, and remain one of the most influential and successful bands in hard rock and heavy metal.

Hammett: “I think Metallica have a lot more to say. We’re the type of band that likes to experiment. We don’t like to stay in one spot for too long; all the albums after the ‘Black Album’ prove that. We’re not afraid to take artistic risks, even at the cost of pissing off our audience and our friends.”

Hetfield: “The cool thing about Metallica is that there’s always a new generation of angry young men who latch onto Kill ’Em All and know what I’m talking about. And maybe they grow up with the rest of the records.

“We’ve never been about creating some fantasy world with our records; we’re just documenting where we’re at at the time. There’s always going to be youth on the planet, and whether they can relate to that or not, I don’t know. But every time I look out in the crowd and see some kids battling it out in the middle of the mosh pit, I’m like, ‘Yeah, I was there, man.’”

Hammett: “We want to get out there and show people how strong Metallica are. It’s not a mask and it’s not bullshit. We feel really good about being us right now, and here we are. Now, see if you can hang on.”

This feature was originally published in the December 2008 issue of Guitar World.

Metallica fans have been asking for it for quite some time, but if a recent post from Cesar Gueikian is anything to go by, it looks as though there’s a fairly strong chance we might see some James Hetfield Gibson signature guitars very soon.

The firm’s CEO has a solid track record of teasing upcoming releases – from Murphy Lab acoustics to the Gibson Victory model – and it looks as though he’s back to his old tricks once again, having posted a new photo that sees him putting the finishing touches to a Custom Shop Explorer.

It doesn’t seem to be just any Explorer, though. Instead, the all-white, pickguard-less 1980s-flavored model looks to be something of a dead-ringer for Hetfield’s famed 1984 Explorer, with Gueikian’s ‘Do Epic Shit’ tagline delicately embossed on the body.

Those familiar with Hetfield’s Explorer will no doubt see the connection here: Hetfield’s own model has ‘So What’ scribbled in a similar position on the body in equally flourished handwriting.

And, with Gueikian further teasing that this particular custom creation (dubbed CEO2) is “almost ready and will be going to a special friend”, it seems safe to assume Hetfield will indeed be the lucky recipient of this Explorer.

Sure, there are some differences between CEO2 and the ‘So What’ Explorer – the inlays aren’t dots, for example, and the pickups don’t look like EMGs – but they can all be explained by the fact this is clearly a Custom Shop creation.

To add fuel to the hype fire, Gueikian has been actively engaging with comments that have suggested the CEO2 could be linked to Hetfield.

He’s liked a stream of comments that all acknowledge the Hetfield link, including ones that read, ‘Gotta be Papa Het,’ ‘I’ll pick this up in May when I’m down for the Metallica show,’ ‘James is gonna be so happy for hos [sic] Christmas present,’ and (perhaps the biggest giveaway of them all), ‘Is your special friend named James?’

So, it looks like CEO2 will most definitely be making its way to Hetfield, but what could that mean for the average ’Tallica fan hoping to get their hands on a Hefield Explorer?

Well, the signs suggest Hetfield and Gibson are very friendly indeed. In fact, the Metallica frontman’s fondness of Gibson is well documented: he owns a whopping five 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard ’Bursts, and a further four Golden Era Gibsons, including both a ’58 Korina Flying V and Explorer.

As such, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that the two parties are working closely together behind the scenes on some upcoming guitars, and CEO2 is merely a statement creation to tie the proverbial knot of the new partnership.

It also helps that his bandmate, Kirk Hammett, is already an established signature artist for the firm, with a handful of signature Gibsons to his name – including replicas of his Greeny, 1979 Flying V and 1989 Les Paul Custom.

And, for even more evidence of the Metallica link, Gibson recently revived the Mesa/Boogie Mark IIC+ – the amp that was famously used by Hetfield and Hammett on Master of Puppets – for the first time since its launch.

Coincidence? Maybe. At the end of the day, CEO2 could just be a nice gift from Gibson, but we can’t help but feel there’s slightly more to the story here.

Whatever the case, Gueikian has teased, “Reveal coming soon,” so hopefully we don’t have to wait too long for all this speculation to be put to bed.

Head over to Cesar Gueikian’s Instagram account for more unofficial updates.

As is well-known in guitar circles, Kirk Hammett is currently in possession of perhaps the most legendary Gibson Les Paul to ever exist. We’re speaking, of course, about the ‘Greeny’.

Once owned by Peter Green and then Gary Moore, this particular Les Paul Standard is heralded for its flipped neck humbucker and mythical middle position guitar tone, having been used by its previous owners on countless legendary in-studio and on-stage moments.

Now, Greeny belongs to the Metallica guitar slinger, who honors its storied legacy and does its heritage justice by continuing to tour and record with it every time the heavy metal group hits the road.

He’s spoken at length before about what it means to him to own such a celebrated electric guitar, but never before has he fully divulged the circumstances surrounding the acquisition, nor has he revealed how much he paid for it.

In a new episode of Gibson TV’s The Collection, Hammett addresses the above, and recalls the conversations that took place prior to him purchasing the legendary Les Paul.

And, rather surprisingly, he says he had no interest in buying it at first, owing to the rumors surrounding its monumental price tag. When he ultimately got his hands on it via a guitar dealer friend, though, Hammett swiftly changed his mind.

“When that guitar became available, I was aware of it,” Hammett says. “I read about it in all the guitar magazines. I was aware of Greeny being out there and it being super-expensive, with a price tag of $1.5million or $2million.

“I remember reading that and going, ‘Who’s going to buy that?’ I didn’t have interest, because it seemed like one of those untouchable things.

“Three weeks later, I was sitting in my hotel room in London, I gave my friend [renowned guitar dealer] Richard Henry a call. I said, ‘Hey Richard, what have you got for me today? I know you’ve got something.’ He goes, ‘Oh, I have a guitar for you. I’ve got the Peter Green, Gary Moore Les Paul.’

“I said, ‘Hold up, I’m not going to pay a million dollars for a guitar, ever.’ He goes, ‘It’s not a million dollars, that’s a rumor.’ I go, ‘Oh, okay, bring it over.’”

It didn’t take long for Hammett to change his mind on Greeny. After playing the guitar for just a few minutes, he had a new appreciation for the instrument and its mythical middle position. And, ater being informed of its actual price tag, he just couldn’t say no.

“I plugged it into the [Marshall] Bluesbreaker, put it on the neck pickup and started playing Still Got The Blues. I went, ‘Yep, there it is.’

“I put it in the middle, and I was not really familiar with the middle sound at all… I was like, ‘This is a Les Paul – it’s not supposed to sound like that. This is amazing! I’m not giving it back to you guys.’ This all happened in a minute.

“The price was very realistic. It wasn’t a million dollars. It wasn’t half a million dollars. I hear of Les Pauls going these days for way more than I paid for Greeny. I will never let anyone know how much I paid for Greeny. That guitar is priceless.”

It took a text from Jimmy Page to finally tip Hammett over the edge and buy the guitar – which initially annoyed his bandmate James Hetfield, who branded himself an “idiot” for not snapping it up when he had the chance.

The rest of the story is well accounted for: Hammett purchased Greeny and quickly put it to work, and still uses it to this day.

Over the past few years, Greeny has even been recreated for a series of high-end Gibson and Epiphone signature guitars.

It began in Amsterdam on April 27, 2023. 17 months later, Metallica’s epic M72 world tour will reach its conclusion with a show in Mexico City on September 29.

In this previously unpublished interview, the band’s lead guitarist Kirk Hammett looks back on the tour and the 72 Seasons album, and explains how and why he is constantly adapting his approach as a player, songwriter and performer.

When you look back on the making of 72 Seasons, what gives you the most satisfaction?

“The crazy thing about 72 Seasons is that it just flowed. The riffs were great; lots of high-energy. It was a reprioritisation of what Metallica is, what Metallica means to us all. There was an immense amount of trust. People could take as much responsibility as they wanted and do what they needed to do and that in itself was a great thing.

“ I mean, we trust each other, right? But sometimes we don’t trust each other to make the right decisions! And it’s nothing personal. It is all for the betterment of the band. It’s all for the wellbeing of the music.

“But this time around, there was a confidence and a trust in everyone that really just made a difference. From day one, that trust was there. I didn’t think we had a choice – we had to trust each other. And we managed to squeeze out a really great album.”

You told TG that for this album you tracked a lot of solos and sent them over to Lars (Ulrich, drummer) and Greg Fidelman (producer) to cherry-pick the best. Is that really a new approach for you? Your solos have always had this improvisational quality.

“I have always done a version of that, but on this album I just went in with smaller concepts. I wanted the solos to be more ’70s rock solos, or in a nutshell, Angus Young! It never, ever sounded like Angus worked anything out. It sounded like he just went in there and went for it, and so that’s what I did. I had to do it this way because it was how I felt inside. Internally, it felt like the right thing to do at this point.

“I wanted spontaneity. I didn’t want picture-perfect solos, because some of my favourite players’ solos were kind of rag-tag, a lot of them, and I love that. Don’t get me wrong – I love precision, too. I listen to jazz. I listen to prog. And I love precision. I love well-crafted guitar solos, but it really felt like I should show up at the studio and just fucking go for it, man! Get that feeling and go for it.

“And, having said that, this is a one-time thing. I don’t think on future albums I will be doing this, because if I do this again in the future I have a real fear of repeating myself. It’s just I have a fear of being redundant. So this is not going to be my approach to solos on the next album.”

What will be your approach next time?

“I don’t know what my approach will be on the next album! I usually decide once I hear the music. I might be playing really super-clean jazz solos or something. But then the other guys might try and kick me out of the band!

“Who knows? I don’t know, but I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about it, because I know once I sit down and clear my mind and play, I get ideas. Stuff just appears.

“I can just rely on that stuff to appear and then just act on it, and that is the beauty of being a musician, and music in general. Music just appears, and you have the choice of doing what you want to do with it. Change an idea, make it longer, make it heavier, make it lighter, whatever. It’s just like clay.”

When you talk about clearing the mind, is that also the key to songwriting for you?

“Agreed, 100 per cent. This is my M.O., and I do this all the time – it’s really very simple. There is no hard science or years of experience needed for this. A person that’s been playing guitar for, like, two weeks can do this. I just sit there, I try to clear my mind, close my eyes, just relax, and then I just start playing and I listen.

“I listen to the notes being played. I am not looking at my guitar. I want to be somewhere different on the neck. And I just listen to the notes and I start getting ideas. ‘All right! The first note and the fourth note are great. I’ll stick with those notes. What’s gonna be the second and third one? What can we change?’ And then the idea comes.”

How do you deal with writer’s block?

“Don’t think about the past or what has been done. Don’t think about the future and what you need to do. Just see what you can grab in the moment. That’s how I write music, and it has turned me into a more prolific composer because I don’t get stuck like I used to.

“I used to get writing blocks for months and months and months, and not write a riff for months, and get frustrated about it, and think about smashing my guitar. That doesn’t happen anymore.”

Do you think of songwriting as an imprecise art?

“It’s all about experimentation that’s propelling that whole thing forward, propelling it forward and giving it more momentum – more momentum to see it through. One thing that we are all aware of, and it’s not spoken about, is when you are trying to come up with stuff, and you’re trying to write songs, there is a difference between adding to a song or making a song better.

“So you’ve got a song. You’ve got a part. Add it on. Does it necessarily make the song better? Maybe so, but usually not! There is a point where you have to stop yourself and say, ‘Okay, I am just adding onto the song. I’m not necessarily making the song better.’ A lot of times we will go back and frigging really rearrange the song and edit it, and take, like, two minutes out of a song.”

Many of Metallica’s songs originate from stockpiled ideas – drawn from what you call ‘the riff bank’…

“The riff bank is used in two instances. It’s used for our riffs, ‘Okay, go to the riff bank, we’ll take this riff, we’re gonna build a song around this riff.’ And we’re building and building, and then we come to a standstill and no one can come up with anything in the moment that works, then we’ll go back to the riff bank. ‘Okay, anything in there that will work?’ And we’ll pluck something out of there and then, all of a sudden, the ideas start flowing again.”

Last year you acquired a ‘Factory Black’ 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard. What does it sound like?

“It is a beautiful-sounding guitar. It is so well balanced. It is a real blues, jazz, rock guitar – a hard rock guitar. But it doesn’t quite have that extra 10 to 15 per cent aggression for me to use it in Metallica. Greg [Fidelman] and I came to the conclusion that it is almost too pretty! But for single lines, for single-note stuff and leads? Oh man, it’s so nice! It sings!

“And the thing about it, because it has been so well looked after, and so well played, it sounds really even. The pickups have aged really nicely. It’s a real smooth bridge pickup sound, a real smooth neck pickup sound. The playability of the guitar is amazing.”

Have you made any interesting gear discoveries recently?

“Well, about five years ago I figured out that Marshalls sound the best in Britain. You plug a Marshall straight into the wall in London and it will sound 30 per cent better than the same Marshall hooked up to the wall in America. It’s everything to do with the voltage. And it would drive me crazy because it would sound different from show to show!”

Has your approach to preparing for a show changed at all over the years?

“For me, when I get to a show I am all-business. It is all about doing everything I need to do to make the show the best as possible. Or, in other words, I am not sitting around backstage watching TV or socialising, or doing whatever.

“Everything I do, from minute to minute, has everything to do with the show, whether I am warming up, running through my own personal warm-ups or warming up with the other guys as a band.”

“The only thing I really, really worry about during our live shows is whether I can hear myself or not, because we put ourselves in situations, like the M72 stage, where it is extremely, extremely challenging to hear yourself or the other band members.

“The monitor system is pushed to its absolute limits as far as being able to hear ourselves on that big stage. We have monitors everywhere. We have in-ears. We have two monitor engineers - one for James [Hetfiield, guitarist/vocalist] and Lars, one for Rob [Trujillo, bassist] and I, because one guy can’t do it. There’s too much switching from song to song. It’s pretty difficult!”

The M72 tour stage design has offered changing perspectives, from full-on stadium to club to arena…

“It’s so crazy how it shifts like that for me in numerous times during the course of the show. I think people pick up on the fact because we are on cameras the whole time, video monitors the whole time. When we are playing to the Snakepit it feels like we are playing in a club, the camera is right there, and then we are projecting that club feel to the stadium, so I think that helps – that helps in creating intimacy.”

At this stage of your career, does criticism still hurt you?

“My attitude is that if you’re out there and you’re touring, and you’re making albums, and you’re recording, there is no way you suck. And so I can’t stop being bewildered by all these people who say, ‘This guy sucks! That guy sucks!’ Hey, I’ve got news for you – you don’t get to where you’re at if you fucking suck! Okay?

“These people are talking on 10 per cent of what they see in all of these people musically. It’s incredible. I don’t think anyone really sucks. These days, I don’t think bad guitar solos even exist anymore because everyone is just so much better than they used to be.

“Like, in the ’60s there were bad guitar solos. You would find them in pop songs, where you’d go, ‘Urgh! Nice try. Next!’ But that’s the past, and that’s a good thing.”

And now, where do you feel you’re at as a player?

“I love watching technique, but if I had to be put in a situation like that where I had a pressure to play a certain way all the time, I would be bummed out! I want to be able to play however the fuck I want to play, and I want to be able to improvise when I want to improvise. And I want to play for the song because I am part of a package. It doesn’t begin with me and it doesn’t end with me.”

• 72 Seasons is out now via Rhino/Blackened Recordings.

If you need a new excuse to buy more guitars, try this: Metallica’s M72 world tour includes an arsenal of 64 electric guitars, 32 of which need to be riff-ready at any given moment.

WCCO-TV’s Jeff Wagner was given a peak behind the scenes as the tour rolled into Minnesota, and the logistics are enormous. The touring crew consists of 156 personnel, which includes 40 steelworkers, with an additional 168 local production hands and 92 truck drivers. 800 locals are also employed to support each specific date.

But the number of six-strings that are brought along for the ride is what really catches the eye. That figure of 64 is split between guitar and bass, with the 36 gig-ready axes equating to 12 instruments per member.

Justifying that inflated figure, tour coordinator Jon-Michael Marino told WCCO-TV: “Across, let's call it 15-16 songs, there's various tunings. There's also things that happen naturally like strings breaking, guitars going out of tune that have to be swapped in the moment.”

Metallica’s current run has found the metal titans stop at each destination city for two nights, and perform two independent sets with no repetition. That’s a grueling run for the musicians and instruments alike, and so a suitably vast army of guitars has been assembled to roll with the punches of such heavy touring.

Adding to that array of guitars – which is likely to include Kirk Hammet’s latest signature guitar, the ESP LTD KH-V, and his iconic Greeny Les Paul – are 6,000 guitar picks, used or given away to the crowd each show, and 25 drumsticks that succumb to the same fate. Per night.

Therefore, across Metallica's five September dates, roughly 30,000 picks will be needed – roughly the same amount this writer probably has down the back of his couch.

To be fair, the construction of the eight towers, wrapped in LED screens, amounts to 36 hours of labor. They each weigh over 14 tons and are nearly 100ft tall. It would seem wrong, then, to tour with just a handful of instruments.

Kirk Hammett raised eyebrows late last year when he proclaimed that, no matter how impressive a player's solos are, they're going to be forgotten by most listeners: “I hate to say it, but non-musicians – who are the majority of the listening world – are not going to remember guitar solos,” he told Total Guitar.

In 2022, Metallica made their long-awaited return with 72 Seasons – their eleventh studio effort, which was initially previewed with the much-discussed lead single, Lux Æterna.

Following the song’s release, much was made of the electric guitar playing. Specifically, Kirk Hammett’s guitar solo was put under the microscope, and faced some backlash from ’Tallica fans and online commenters.

While some released whole videos on “Why everyone HATES the solo in Metallica’s new song”, others performed their own ‘improved’ versions, all while leveling criticism at the solo’s original architect.

At the time, Hammett hit back at the online haters and shrugged off their words, and in the latest issue of Total Guitar he once again addressed the controversy surrounding his solo.

Namely, he’s offered a rebuttal to those who believe his Lux Æterna solo is bad by proposing that there’s no such thing as a bad solo. According to the Greeny owner, bad solos simply don’t exist.

“I don’t think anyone really sucks. These days, I don’t think bad guitar solos even exist anymore because everyone is just so much better than they used to be,” Hammett observes.

“Like, in the ’60s there were bad guitar solos. You would find them in pop songs, where you’d go, ‘Urgh! Nice try. Next!’ But that’s the past, and that’s a good thing.”

Hammett goes on to establish a wider argument that it’s nigh-on impossible for a professional musician to really ‘suck’ at their craft.

“My attitude is that if you’re out there and you’re touring, and you’re making albums, and you’re recording, there is no way you suck,” he explains.”

“And so I can’t stop being bewildered by all these people who say, ‘This guy sucks! That guy sucks!’ Hey, I’ve got news for you – you don’t get to where you’re at if you fucking suck! Okay? These people are talking on 10 per cent of what they see in all of these people musically. It’s incredible.”

That’s not to say he won't be taking a different approach to solos on the next Metallica album, though. As Hammett explains, he adopted a particular method of creating his lead efforts on 72 Seasons, which hoped to harness some “spontaneity”.

“I didn’t want picture-perfect solos, because some of my favourite players’ solos were kind of rag-tag, a lot of them, and I love that. Don’t get me wrong – I love precision, too.

“Having said that, this is a one-time thing. I don’t think on future albums I will be doing this, because if I do I have a real fear of repeating myself. So this is not going to be my approach to solos on the next album.”

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up the newest issue of Total Guitar, which features the full interview with Kirk Hammett.