It’s no secret Metallica’s Kirk Hammett and James Hetfield are huge Michael Schenker fans, so when UFO’s farewell tour came through the Avalon Theater in Hollywood on 12 October, Metallica’s lead guitarist couldn’t resist the chance to blast through two Schenker-penned classics with them – Doctor Doctor and Shoot Shoot. And he was playing the iconic ‘Greeny’ ‘59 Les Paul, no less.
Fans of Gary Moore and Peter Green will know the famous lineage of that guitar – it belonged to both of them at different times – and was purchased by Hammett a few years ago at the behest of Led Zeppelin legend Jimmy Page.
Hammett told us about the effect Greeny has on his playing when we spoke to him in 2016; “Greeny has a way of wanting me to play Peter Green and Gary Moore licks,” Hammett revealed. “It’s just one of those things. And the blues, the blues thing has always been with me since the very beginning, but I got really, really heavily into it in the 90s. But it’s really an example of how much of an effect that guitar has on me.”
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