On July 2, 1986, Metallica released the only single from their foundational third album, Master of Puppets. The album already dropped that March to high praise, but the release of the title track as a single brought even more attention to Metallica as a pillar of the heavy metal genre.
“Master of Puppets” is the second track on the album, following the more traditional thrasher “Battery”. But where “Battery” opens the album with high-octane speed and sound, “Master of Puppets” takes a different approach. For one, it’s almost four minutes longer with a considerable instrumental stretch. It had a similar structure to a few earlier tracks, with a guitar solo that’s since become an iconic break.
What really sets “Master of Puppets” apart may not even be completely obvious at first, however. Among the many odd-metered riffs on this track, there’s an homage to David Bowie. You probably wouldn’t think of Bowie immediately when considering heavy metal influences. But Cliff Burton and Kirk Hammett cited Bowie as an early inspiration, and paid tribute on “Master of Puppets”.
First David Bowie Influenced Metallica, Then ‘Stranger Things’ Brought Them Back to Mainstream Focus
While composing the guitar parts for “Master of Puppets”, Burton and Hammett took inspiration from a 1971 David Bowie track. “Andy Warhol” was featured on Bowie’s fourth album, Hunky Dory, a notable track for its use of studio chatter in the opening.
But more memorable still is the repeated guitar riff, which Burton and Hammett replicated for Metallica. The acoustic phrase is repeated by Mick Ronson, guitarist of Bowie’s early backing band The Spiders from Mars. “Master of Puppets” mirrors that riff around the 6-minute 20-second mark.
Overall, “Master of Puppets” is a clean heavy metal single despite the influence of an acoustic Bowie track. It has gone on to become not only an iconic Metallica song but a foundational single that helped bridge the gaps between several metal subgenres. The album itself has long been considered a formative work for thrash metal, as it was just one of several albums around 1986 that brought heavy metal out from the underground.
Years later, the Netflix series Stranger Things put the mainstream spotlight back on several 80s classics, “Master of Puppets” included. The 2022 season four finale featured a fan-favorite character shredding the solo in the Upside Down. This impressed not only the other characters in-narrative as well as the viewers, but also Metallica themselves. According to the band, they were “blown away” by the scene, which put “Master of Puppets” on the U.S. and U.K. charts for the first time in almost four decades.
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