Kirk Hammett might be known for playing his beloved Greeny Gibson Les Paul, famously once owned by Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green, but did you know it’s not the only axe he has with an interesting ownership history?

It turns out that the Metallica guitarist also came into the possession of a red Flying V once owned by Michael Schenker of UFO, and artist he describes as “hugely influential” to him as a teenager.

• READ MORE: “People say a lot of things have changed about me since I got that guitar”: Kirk Hammett on how acquiring Greeny has transformed him as a player
  

Speaking to American Songwriter, Hammett recalls, “One other hugely influential guitar player [for me] was Michael Schenker. Those first four or five UFO albums, even to this day, I’m listening to them all the time and still learning stuff.

“It’s crazy, but somehow, some way, how the universe works, I also ended up with the guitar that Michael Schenker played on those albums, the red Flying V. I have two major guitars from my childhood and my teenage years. It freaks me out.”

Despite the guitars remaining firmly within Hammett’s ownership (and in the case of Greeny, being so synonymous with him as a player), he actually feels that they don’t really belong to him, per se.

“To me, it doesn’t even feel like my guitar,” he says of Greeny. “It feels like a guitar for the people. I’m just wielding it. My good friend Whit Crane [best-known as vocalist for Ugly Kid Joe], from a band I play in called The Wedding Band, one day we were just sitting around at a rehearsal.

“He was sitting across from me, and he said, ‘You know what, Kirk? That guitar is your Excalibur. Think about it. You’re the one that it chose. All these people could have had it. But that guitar chose you. And now you’re wielding it and look what it does for you.’” He adds, “I can’t think of a better analogy.”