So, I've been pondering this and thinking about the guitars that made rock and roll what it is. Now probably most fans of rock music can think of some famous guitars, David Gilmore's 69 Strat Blackie, last sold I think for $4 million, that may be the most expensive guitar ever sold. I believe he got that guitar from Eric Clapton. Robbie Robertson obviously created a very famous guitar when for the film The Last Waltz he dipped a Fender Strat in bronze to commemorate the occasion. When you think about Jimmy Page, you think about a couple of guitars (I actually think of four) his double neck Gibson he would use to play Stairway to Heaven live and his Gibson Les Paul, gifted to him by Joe Walsh that he used on so many songs. I also think of his Fender Telecaster (which he played on a lot of Zeppelin recordings) and his Danelectro that I associate with whenever he played Kashmir live. We've got Eddie Van Halen and his 1984 Kramer, the iconic red and white stripes on it. Stevie Ray Vaughan and his Fender Strats, or B.B. King and Lucille (there were actually a number of Lucille's B.B. not being particularly faithful. Clapton played Fender Strats, many different ones. 

I'm sure people will think of others depending upon who you enjoyed but I think the guitar with the longest life, that seems to have possessed all the players that owned it, is Peter Green's 59 Gibson Les Paul known as Greenie. This guitar does not want to retire from the stage despite having suffered multiple catastrophic injuries over the years. It not only was the guitar in Green's hands when he joined the Bluesbreakers, but the one he wrote a bunch of classic Fleetwood Mac songs on. Green had an incident while with Fleetwood Mac, I won't go into here, that caused him to leave the band and basically screwed up his music career for some time. During this phase he sold Greenie to Gary Moore, who used the guitar for some 30 years, solo and in Thin Lizzy, before he sold Greenie to a collector, I think in the 2000s. It then made some rounds and was on sale for about 4 or more years as the collector tried to make a profit off of it. At one point it carried a price tag of over $2 million but no offers were made at that price. 

Greenie finally ended up in the hands of Kirk Hammett and upon holding the guitar, immediately decided he could not let go of it. Now, I only recently discovered who Kirk Hammet is, he is the primary guitar player for Metallica, a band I've never been into. Kirk said since buying the guitar its never been more than 10 feet away from him and he has used it live at Metallica shows since purchasing it. It may be the guitar that has played more rock shows than any other guitar. From Green to Moore to Hammett and it is said many other famous players have played this guitar. 

The Gibson custom shop has made three different "Greenie" replica guitars, one at $50,000, another at $20,000 and then one for us punters at $3000. There may potentially be an Epiphone model coming you can own for around a grand. 

For some reason, this guitar fascinates me, in part because it seems to possess the players that own it more than them possessing the guitar. Hammett says he does not feel like he is the owner of the guitar, just a caretaker of it until it gets passed along to the next great player.

I'll put some more about Greenie here in upcoming posts.