Editor’s Note: The following article contains some minor spoilers for Stranger Things Season 4.
While Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo’s son Tye played “additional guitar tracks” for a key scene in Stranger Things in which the character of Eddie Munson shreds “Master of Puppets,” credit should also go to actor Joseph Quinn for learning the metal classic himself. A new video posted by the writers of the popular Netflix series shows Quinn very ably playing the tune during a practice session.
While it’s not clear which, if any, of the notes that are heard in the Season 4 finale of Stranger Things are actually being played by Quinn, he is seen properly playing “Master of Puppets” in the scene. Tye Trujillo was recruited to perform parts of the song, while guitarist Aiden Fisher’s hands were filmed for the close-ups.
That all said, Quinn is a pretty good guitarist himself, telling Collider, “I played guitar since I was very young, so I was lucky that I had a foundation there. But as I said, when I read the scripts, the next morning I went out and bought a guitar and manically started learning ‘Master of Puppets.’
He continued, “On the day, me and [Stranger Things actor] Gaten [Matarazzo] just got up on top of the camper van, and just got into it. It was very fun. I played most of it. We got a kind of black belt metal guitarist to come in and do the solo because I’m a human being. It’s very fast, but the rest of it, I tried my best to understand that. It was very fun.”
The newly unveiled video shows Quinn — minus the long hair and “Hellfire Club” T-shirt he sported as Eddie Munson — practicing “Master of Puppets” in what appears to be a garage, impressively ripping through the iconic thrash metal tune.
Metallica themselves have fully embraced the song’s inclusion in Stranger Things. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame act recently played along with Eddie Munson as part of Netflix’s TikTok challenge, with each of the band members wearing “Hellfire Club” T-shirts.
Watch actor Joseph Quinn practice “Master of Puppets” in the video below.
practice makes perfect pic.twitter.com/yjv63A1pfp
— stranger writers (@strangerwriters) July 10, 2022