Greeny, the iconic 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, has been owned by blues giants Peter Green and Gary Moore. Given its history, would it be any surprise if the guitar had landed in the storied guitar collection of another blues giant like Joe Bonamassa?
It could have happened. But as Bonamassa explains in a new interview with Guitar Interactive Magazine’s Jonathan Graham, he has no regrets things went the way they did.
Peter Green’s 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard is an icon among rock’s star-studded electric guitar universe. It's famed for its honky, out-of-phase tone on its middle pickup switch setting, the result of the neck pickup having been accidentally flipped during a repair, reversing the polarity of its magnets. The guitar featured in Green’s work with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers through to his years in Fleetwood Mac, where it was used on cuts like “Black Magic Woman” and “The Green Manalishi.”
He then sold it to Irish blues-rocker Gary Moore, a devoted follower of Green, who used the guitar throughout his career with Thin Lizzy and on his solo efforts, including his 1995 Green tribute, Blues for Greeny. The guitar took a beating during its time with Moore and suffered a headstock break in an automobile accident, which was subsequently repaired.
Although Moore loved the guitar, when financial troubles struck, he was forced to sell Greeny. Guitar dealer Phil Winfield purchased it and sold it, after which it changed hands before landing with Melvyn Franks, who consigned its sale to guitar dealer Richard Henry.
It was at this point Bonamassa had an opportunity to own Greeny. He had possession of it briefly when he used it to perform “Midnight Blues” at London’s Royal Albert Hall in March 2013. As he revealed in a 2023 social media post, he had a chance to buy the guitar that same year, but turned it down.
"Greeny wasn't for me,” he explains to Guitar Interactive. “Guitars let you know when they're for you. And — truth be told — I think that guitar ended up — one thousand percent without a doubt — with the person who loves it the most. That means more than anything else.
“Now, you're not going to find a bigger Peter Green fan than me, and you're not going to find a bigger Gary Moore fan than me. But at the time, how it was being presented to me was not the way I would want to remember that.”
Bonamassa doesn’t elaborate on how the guitar was being sold, and unfortunately he’s not pressed to provide more details. According to various rumors, he either didn’t like the headstock repair, the asking price was too high (some claim it was $6 million) or he was unhappy with the guitar’s sound. Joe confirms to Graham that the latter was not the issue.
“It sounded fine,” he says. “It was a Les Paul — and it quacked in the middle,” he says with a grin, referring to its out-of-phase pickup setting. “But, you know, give me five minutes and a screwdriver, I can make any Les Paul quack. You just flip the magnet. It's quacking.
At the time, how it was being presented to me was not the way I would want to remember that.”
— Joe Bonamassa
“But that's the one, you know?”
As Joe makes clear, he has nothing but good vibes for Greeny’s owner, Kirk Hammett. As he wrote in the previously mentioned 2013 post, “It found its right home since then. Collecting is about what you love and what you are gonna do with it. PG's Les Paul gets played every night. I'm very happy for its current owner. And he is a friend and a hellava player.”
As Hammett has previously revealed, he was in London in 2014 when Richard Henry offered him a chance to add Greeny to his growing guitar collection. He played the guitar through a vintage Marshall Bluesbreaker combo and was wowed by what he heard.
“After about 30 seconds,” he says, “I thought to myself, ‘Wow, this is not your standard Les Paul…’ and I went to the middle position, because, you know, that’s the revered sound, and I started ripping out, and I thought to myself, ‘Holy shit, this is a total contradiction.’
“It sounded like an incredible Les Paul in the bridge position and in the neck position, but when you put it in the middle position it kind of sounded like a Strat through a 100-watt Marshall stack!”
Hammett, of course, became Greeny's third famous owner and has continued to give the iconic Les Paul workouts both onstage and in the studio. Bonamassa, meanwhile, has no regrets about taking a pass on it. Which only underscores what’s been said many times about guitar collecting: What you choose to own is as personal as how you play.
