Gibson Publishing has launched a 400-page coffee-table book documenting Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett’s epic gear collection, photographing his most famous electric guitars and telling the story behind them.
The Collection: Kirk Hammett is written by MusicRadar alumnus Chris Vinnicombe and features photography from Ross Halfin, including some deep cuts from Halfin’s archive.
And it features a lot of guitars that Metallica fans – not to mention Fleetwood Mac and Gary Moore fans – will be more than familiar worth. Never mind Hammett, the star of the show here is Greeny, the legendary 1959 Les Paul Standard previously owned by the late Peter Green, then the late Gary Moore, and has been owned by Hammett since 2014.
We say owned but Hammett himself will say that he is just its present custodian – a guitar he describes as “his Excalibur”.
Speaking to the Metallica Report podcast in October 2024, he says he is consistently inspired every time he picks it up and plays it.
“Every day she’s really great to me. I play her every day. Riffs fall out of that guitar pretty much every single day,” he said. “I really feel like that guitar was calling for me and I answered the calling. And once that guitar and me got together, great things started to happen for both of us! It’s a magic piece of wood. It’s blessed! It’s beyond words. I can’t even begin to fully describe the guitar’s effect on me.”
Gibson has released a number of Greeny replicas in recent years, offering it as a Kirk Hammett signature guitar from the Custom Shop’s Murphy Lab, as a standard Gibson USA model, and as a more affordable Epiphone model – and Hammett has said that the Epiphone guitar is his favourite of the production runs.
As with Slash’s 2022 book from Gibson Publishing, The Collection: Kirk Hammett follows Hammett’s appearance on GibsonTV, where brought out some of the rarest and most unique pieces in his collection (a signature ESP KH S-style with an actual theremin!?) to show Gibson’s Mark Agnesi.
And having gathered all those guitars together for the shoot, it made sense for Hammett to sit down with Vinnicombe to talk about them, and for Hammett to get Halfin to shoot them for posterity.
“I’ve worked diligently on this curated collection of vintage and modern guitars for the book,” says Hammett. “I feel the book captures the rich history and artistry behind each of these unique and rare instruments.
"Every picture tells a story and thanks to Ross Halfin and his exceptional photography, every picture in this book is worth a million words! This book could not be possible without the help of Gibson, so I’d like to thank them for making my passion for Greeny, and guitars a reality. I hope all of you enjoy this journey as much as I did.”
This being Hammett, there will be a lot of Flying Vs. Besides Greeny, there will be Les Pauls. And there will be some guitars that have lived a full life before coming into Hammett’s possession. We rarely think of Hammett as an SG player a la Tony Iommi or Angus Young and yet that’s what he was using when Metallica tracked Load.
And here, Hammett reveals that he owns the 1961 SG Custom that John Frusciante used to record the breakdown section of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Californication cut Otherside – it’s also in the video for Fortune Faded. Better still, he owns Les Paul’s SG Custom, a true unicorn dual-humbucker version in white that Paul appeared with in publicity photos.
There are more doozies where that came from. Vinnicombe says Hammett has “one of the coolest guitar collections on the planet”. It’s not all electric either; Hammett’s 1964 J-180 Everly Brothers acoustic guitar also makes an appearance.
Gibson president and CEO Cesar Gueikian says the project has been years in the making.
“It was a thrill to put this together and it took a village to get it done!” he says. “I hope everyone appreciates the work that went into this book and enjoys every story behind the guitars.”
The Collection: Kirk Hammett is being offered in three hardback editions: Standard (£129/$149), Deluxe (£249/$299) and Custom (£649), the latter two both signed by Hammett.
The Custom Edition is limited to 300 units worldwide and arrives in a presentation box, measuring 19” x 14.5” and has a lenticular cover. Inside there is a framable print of one of Halfin’s portraits of Hammett, and Axe Heaven mini-replica of the Metallica man’s Flying V, plus a guitar pick tin and COA.
The Deluxe Edition ships in a presentation slipcase decorated with pictures of Greeny, inside which you will find an exclusive 33” by 23” A1 poster and COA.
The Collection: Kirk Hammett is available now. See Gibson for more details.
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