Metallica plays two versions of "Master of Puppets" live. One version ends before the slow and soften part of the song - and the other one is the complete version as it was released on the same entitled album.

Album:
Master of Puppets

The song live:
Since its release it has almost always been a fixed part of Metallica's live show.

The Best Solos Ever Reader's Choice:
The solo of "Master of Puppets" reached the 51st place in the "100 Best Solos Ever Reader's Choice" in the september 1998 issue of Guitar World.

The covers:
Primus recorded a cover of "Master of Puppets". Holochaust and Limp Bizkit just covered the song during their live shows.

The samples:
"Master of Puppets" has been sampled by Anthrax for "I'm The Man!" and by The Pulp for "Metal Techno".

Subject matter:
It is about the drug (especially heroin) addiction and its consequences.

Interpretation possibility #2:
If the song refers to the album's cover, the song could stand for how the government controls soldiers' lives and send them into death. Depending on the lyrics the cover artwork would better fit to "Disposable Heroes".

The government: The hands with strings which are connected to
-the white crosses on the ground. The hands are in the sky because
-in the figurative sense the government stands above everything.
-The government conrols - pulls the strings.

The soldiers: Stand for the white crosses which are used for the burial of
-deceased soldiers of war. At the cross on the left of the cover there is
-an army helmet and at the cross in middle of the cover there is an army
-identification tag hanging on. The high grown grass could maybe hint at
-that the graves are old or that the nameless soldiers are falling into oblivion.

Metallica about "Master of Puppets"
Kirk Hammett: I used a Mesa-Boogie Mark 2C amp and a black Randy Rhoads custom Jackson guitar. For the four-bar fill at the beginning of the song, the rest of the guys wanted something high and screeching, but I came up with something a bit more percussive and riff-like, a flatted fifth-type figure. I got this real raunchy, over distorted sound which clashed well with the tight rythm sound James had. James played the first solo in that song, which is a great solo. I worked on the next solo for a couple of days - getting it tight was a real task for me. While recording the track, my hand accidently pulled a string off the neck, and it grounded on the neck pick-up, giving me something like a high D. It sounded like I slid up to a super high note that isn't even on the neck, so we left it. For the next solo we used backwards guitar parts. To get them I played a bunch of guitar parts that were in the same key as the song and laid them down on quarter-inch tape. Then we flipped the tape over and edited it, so we had two or three minutes of backwards guitar. We put it in the last verse of the song.

James Hetfield: I think we wanted to write another song like "Creeping Death" - with open chords carried by the vocals and a real catchy chorus. On "Master of Puppets" [album] we started getting into the longer, more orchestrated songs. It was more of a challenge to write a long song that didn't seem long. The riff for that song was pretty messy - constantly moving it works good live; people love to scream "Master!" a couple of times. (source: GuitarWorld issue of '91)

Master of Puppets

About drug addiction