Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith has become the latest big-name player afforded a chance to play Kirk Hammett’s fabled “Greeny” Les Paul, and like others before him, he’s fallen in love with it.
The guitar, first made famous in the hands of Fleetwood Mac’s founding guitarist, Peter Green, has been enjoying a renaissance with Metallica’s chief shredder. Green gifted the guitar to Gary Moore after he left Fleetwood Mac, making Hammett its third high-profile owner. Since he purchased it in 2014, the electric guitar has regularly featured onstage with Metallica.
But in a show of generosity, Hammett has been happy to let others take her for a spin, and Smith is just the latest to check out the guitar. His opportunity came when Iron Maiden were touring in Canada.
“Kirk's a great guy. I bumped into him in a hotel in Canada,” Smith tells eonmusic. “We were 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 it?’
“So I went to his room, and he gave me the guitar and a little practice amp, and of course, I played ‘Oh Well’. He and Ross [Halfin, photographer] were doing photos, so I took it to my hotel room, and I had a little practice amp in there. I played it all afternoon.”
Just like Jake E. Lee, who played Greeny backstage at Back to the Beginning, Smith had a hard time letting go of the guitar.
“It plays great; it's the intonation, the feel, the sound,” he says. “There's no doubt about it, that is a special guitar. The mojo is off the charts. I mean, Peter Green and Gary Moore? The classic middle position, the out-of-phase neck pickup, and there it is, the sound!”
“I'm glad somebody's using it, and it's not on a wall in somebody's climate-controlled guitar locker,” he adds. “It's out there being played, as it should be.”
From "Black Magic Woman," to "Rattlesnake Shake," "Oh Well," and "Albatross" — which is believed to have inspired the Beatles to write "Sun King" — Greeny was heard on many classic early Fleetwood Mac tracks..
Gary Moore recorded the entire Blues for Greeny tribute album with the guitar, as well as "Parisienne Walkways" from his seminal Still Got the Blues record, proving the instrument still had magic in other player's hands.
Meanwhile, Smith has been talking about a prized guitar from his own collection that he got for free, and still uses decades later, and has reflected on the two lucky breaks that led to him penning two massive Maiden anthems.
And original Thin Lizzy guitarist Eric Bell has looked back on the time he played "Whiskey in the Jar " with Metallica, and why he went on to call them “a pack of bastards.”
