Thirty years ago yesterday Metallica released the album Master of Puppets, one of the greatest and most influential metal albums of all time. For me, the album completely changed how I viewed music. Hearing it for the first time catapulted me from really liking music to a full-on love affair.
Everyone loves anniversaries. They give us the opportunity to reflect upon those "where I was when" moments. In 1986, at 18 years old, I worked as the night manager at a Round Table Pizza. This entailed closing at 11 p.m. on weeknights and an astounding 1 a.m. on weekends—an unheard of closing time these days. After the doors closed I did the books while my "closer" began cleaning up. Once I completed the bookkeeping, I joined in the cleaning fun until the restaurant was somewhat presentable. We then closed up and dropped off the deposit at a local bank. All told it was about a 90-minute process.
Sometime in March, a couple weeks after the album was released, all my friend and closing partner Ben could talk about was the new Metallica album he had purchased the day before. He simply would not shut up about how incredible it was. My attitude was best characterized by the word, "Whatever."
To the general public, rock music was pretty much dead at the time. Current rock music certainly wasn't on the radio in Sacramento. We had a classic rock station, pop (now called '80s music), soul, oldies and probably multiple country stations. The year of 1985 was particularly dismal. Van Halen broke up. Previously great bands like Aerosmith and AC/DC released some of their weakest work (Done With Mirrors, Fly on the Wall) that year. If you look at the top 100 songs from 1985, you'll only find about six songs representing the rock genre, and half of those sucked. The other half were power ballads. It was a tough time to be a rocker.
I was listening to music like Van Halen, Motley Crue, AC/DC, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Ozzy and Dio. Not bad. I was also listening to stuff like Dokken, Ratt, Great White and Cinderella. Questionable. But all the music had a pretty common theme in that it was guitar driven. In my defense, even on the shitiest of my hair band albums, I gravitated towards the heaviest songs.
After we closed up on that Tuesday night, Ben and I both filled up our plastic one gallon pickle jars with Michelob, Round Table's finest beer, and headed to his house to listen to Master of Puppets. Ben lived in the attic of his parent's home, and to us it was the coolest apartment ever. It was accessed by quite possibly the steepest stairs ever built, and you couldn't stand up in two-thirds of the room, but I thought it was awesome. The low ceiling just made the Arabian style décor that much better.
We assumed our positions on the floor pillows, beer between our legs, and settled in. Ben put needle to vinyl and handed me the lyric sheet. This was the proper way to listen to new music back then.
The music blew me away. Long, epic songs, hard and yet melodic at the same time, with huge changes in tempo and mood. Drum beats and time signatures that were hard to identity; definitely not standard 4/4 rock tempos I was used to. Lyrics that were not of the light "girls and good times" rock and roll fare, but much darker: drug addiction, war, religious hypocrisy, control, assault and mental disease.
The timing was right. I had survived a pretty bad rollover car accident a few weeks prior. Instead of being happy to be alive, though, I was in a very dark place. I was pissed off. The aggressiveness and darkness appealed to me. I bought my own copy the next day.
In the following weeks I listened to the album over and over. I really dissected it. I tried to figure out pieces of the songs on guitar. The music was so much more complex than anything I had tried to learn previously, and at a much greater speed. I couldn't play much of it, which only impressed me more. Cliff Burton's classical music background greatly influenced the complexity and depth of the music. He died later that year in the infamous bus accident.
I soon added Metallica's two earlier albums, and any import or bootleg I could get my hands on. I eagerly anticipated anything released thereafter, and I still do to this day. I have seen Metallica live more times than I can count, and I probably will again. At 48 years old, sometimes it seems odd to me that I still listen to Metallica, but I do.
Thirty years later the album still sounds relevant. It really was a masterpiece produced by a band hitting its peak. I listened to it just a couple weeks ago while working in the yard without even realizing this anniversary was approaching, and I had that very same thought.
You can debate forever where the lines are between different music genres. Personally, I have always called Metallica rock, but most people say metal. At and rate, Master of Puppets is widely acknowledged as the first metal album to go platinum, opening the door for harder music to hit the mainstream.
Happy birthday, Master of Puppets. You still sound good.
