Random Fascinating Facts From Making Of Metallica's 'Master Of Puppets' (13 items)

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  (#1) Rush's Geddy Lee Almost Produced The Album

  Before Flemming Rasmussen took over, Rush vocalist and bassist Geddy Lee was in talks to produce Master of Puppets. Lee met Metallica drummer and mouthpiece Lars Ulrich at an event in England and was friends with their management company, Q Prime.

  As Lee told Noisey:

  I remember going to see them in Toronto when they played at the Masonic Temple. That's when the original bass player [Cliff Burton] was still happening - you know, before that tragedy. And, you know, we talked about it, and I liked their band a lot at that time. But it just never came together.
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  (#2) The Back Cover Photo Of Kirk Hammett Reeked Of Lunch Meat

  All the members of Metallica received a solo shot on the back cover of the album, but the image of guitarist Kirk Hammett featured the normally smiley bandmember flashing a dirty look at the camera. Hammett told Revolver:

  That was because, I had just become a vegetarian and someone threw a deviled ham sandwich from the audience, and it fucking smashed right on my brand new black Jackson Flying V. And I was so fucking pissed! I looked over to the side, and I saw my guitar tech laughing, and I saw [the photographer] laughing. I gave them dirty looks. And that's the shot that's on the back of Master of Puppets.
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  (#3) Lars Ulrich Borrowed Def Leppard’s Snare Drum To Record

  Unhappy with the snare on the kit he was using at Sweet Silence Studio in Copenhagen, Denmark, Lars Ulrich placed a call to Def Leppard’s manager to see if he could borrow drummer Rick Allen’s Ludwig Black Beauty snare, which he felt would give him the sound he was seeking.

  At the time, Allen was still recovering from losing his arm in a horrific car accident. “[Ulrich] said, 'Hey, Rick's not using the snare right now. Can you send it over?'" Rasmussen told Rolling Stone. "The next day it was there. They just overnighted it."
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  (#4) Cliff Burton Stole One Of Guitarist Kirk Hammett’s Solo Spots

  The second bass solo in the cinematic instrumental “Orion” was originally a guitar solo. Bassist Cliff Burton nabbed it, transposing some of the guitar lines to bass. As Hammett told Revolver:

  I remember recording it in the studio, and then I left to go back to the East Coast and meet a girl or something. Cliff went back to the studio and used that area to put his own solo on it. But he played, like, half of my licks that were in the original solo. It was the weirdest thing!
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  (#5) Kate Bush, The Police, And Simon & Garfunkel Were In Regular Rotation When Metallica Wrote The Album

  No one would guess it from the ferocity and complexity of Master of Puppets, but Metallica spent a lot of downtime listening to non-metal music when they worked on the album. In part, Metallica didn’t want to hear anything that might influence the sound of the album. But also, the dudes have a soft spot for classic and artsy rock.

  "We'd discovered Kate Bush around that time,” Hammett told Revolver in 2017. “And we loved the Police. We listened to the Police all the time, because Cliff was a big fan of Stewart Copeland's drumming, and he loved the sound of his snare.”

  Ulrich added that Simon & Garfunkel received a lot of play, since everyone loved their melodies and harmonies.
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  (#6) James Hetfield Has A Tattoo Of The Bass Notes From 'Orion'

  James Hetfield had some of the notes from the bass part in the midsection of “Orion” tattooed on his left arm. He did it in tribute to Cliff Burton, who died when the band’s tour bus flipped over in Sweden on September 27, 1986, while Metallica was touring for Master of Puppets.

  "For me, 'Orion' was Cliff Burton's swan song," Hammett told Rolling Stone. "It was a great piece of music, and he'd written the whole middle section. It kind of gave us a view into what direction he was heading."
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  (#7) The Track 'Leper Messiah' Was Inspired By David Bowie

  Even back in the mid-‘80s, the members of Metallica listened to a wide variety of music. So, it’s not surprising that one of the song titles from Master of Puppets came from a David Bowie track.

  Hammett shared the revelation Mitch Lefon in 2016 on the show One on One, pointing out “Leper Messiah,” which is about hypocritical televangelists, came from Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust” from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

  “‘Making love with his ego, Ziggy sucked up into his mind like a leper messiah.’ That’s the Bowie line right there,” Hammett said.
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  (#8) The Artist Who Painted The Album Cover Also Worked With Stephen King, Anthrax, And Mötley Crüe

  Before he painted the iconic Master of Puppets cover art, Don Brautigam won an award for Cover of the Year by Marketing Bestsellers for the cover image of a Stephen King novel, The Stand.

  Brautigam also designed Anthrax’s Among the Living (the cover art was based on imagery from The Stand) and Mötley Crüe’s Dr. Feelgood.
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  (#9) Iron Maiden Played A Role In 'The Thing That Should Not Be'

  Like the Ride the Lightning instrumental, “The Call of Ktulu,” the Master of Puppets song “The Thing That Should Not Be” is obviously about the horrific beasts in H.P. Lovecraft’s stories. The lyrics of “The Thing That Should Not Be,” though, probably took some influence from Iron Maiden, as well.

  The Metallica lyric includes the line, “Not dead which can eternal lie / Stranger eons even death may die.” The cover art of Maiden’s Live After Death, meanwhile, depicts a tombstone that reads: “That is not dead which can eternal lie / You with strange aeons, even death must die - H.P. Lovecraft.” And the Maiden album was released in October 1985, during the Master studio sessions. Hmmm.
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  (#10) The Band Taunted The PMRC Until They Thought Better Of It

  Initial pressings of Master of Puppets were affixed with a large parental advisory sticker that spoofed the idea of rating albums based on their content.

  The only track you probably won't want to play is 'Damage, Inc.' due to multiple use of the infamous 'F' word. Otherwise, there aren't any 'sh*t,' 'f*cks,' 'pisses,' 'c*nts,' 'motherf*ckers' or 'c*cksuckers' anywhere on this record.

  But it wasn’t long before the album was shrink-wrapped with the more traditional "Parental Advisory" sticker endorsed by the Parents Music Resource Center, a Washington group (led by Al Gore’s wife, Tipper) who banded together to protest music they believed had a negative influence on young listeners.
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  (#11) The Album Art For 'Master Of Puppets' Sold For $28,000 At Auction

  Brautigam knew about some of the themes on Metallica’s album, but he hadn’t heard any of the songs when he created the legendary cover. It took Brautigam just three days of working with an airbrush and a paintbrush to come up with the victims of war image. It ended up fitting perfectly with lyrics on the title track and the song “Disposable Heroes,” a number about young soldiers dying needlessly in combat.

  The 17x17 painting sold for $28,000 at a Christie’s auction house at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City on November 24, 2008. 
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  (#12) While Touring For The Record, The Band Considered Firing Lars Ulrich

  At the end of the ‘Damage Inc.’ tour, shortly before the tragic death of Cliff Burton in Sweden, Hetfield, Hammett, and Burton had discussed giving Lars Ulrich his walking papers. In his memoir, I’m The Man: The Story of That Guy From Anthrax, Scott Ian, whose band was on the road with Metallica, addressed the story:

  They said they couldn’t take being in the band with him anymore and were done putting up with him. Cliff explained the plan: "The three of us have agreed. When we get home from this tour we’re going to get rid of Lars, even if it means we can’t use the name Metallica anymore.’”
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  (#13) Any Thoughts Of Firing Ulrich Ended When Cliff Burton Died

  After Cliff Burton's death, Metallica hired bassist Jason Newsted from the Arizona band Flotsam & Jetsam, and they immediately scheduled to make up the shows they had postponed. Metallica again hit the road with Anthrax. Their performances were explosive and the audiences’ reactions were more than favorable. Any past friction between the band and Ulrich was quickly forgotten.

  “I asked James what was going to happen with the Lars situation,” wrote Scott Ian in I’m the Man: The Story of That Guy From Anthrax. “‘We’re not going to do that now,’ he said. ‘We can’t lose two guys, we can’t do it.’”

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