"Master and Servant" is Depeche Mode's eleventh UK single (released on 20 August 1984) and the second single from the Some Great Reward album. Despite controversy surrounding the song, it still managed to reach number 9 in the UK Singles Chart.
The "Slavery Whip Mix" was the longest 12" DM song at the time, with the outro being turned into a swing version of the refrain. The "Voxless" version is an instrumental mix of the song. The B-side is "(Set Me Free) Remotivate Me", featuring a 12-inch "Release Mix". The 7" version edits out much of the beginning.
Some versions include a song called "Are People People?" which uses samples from "People Are People" along with chanting. Both "Are People People?" and "Master and Servant (An ON-USound Science Fiction Dance Hall Classic)" appear on Remixes 81 - 04 in 2004. They are remixed by Adrian Sherwood.
The production and mixing process of "Master and Servant" are remembered by Alan Wilder, Daniel Miller, and Gareth Jones, as among the longest that Depeche Mode ever endured. One famous story about the song includes a mixing duration of seven days, and after all the reworking and final mastering of the mix, they realized they left the channel with the snare drum muted during the last chorus.
The "Master and Servant" music video was directed by Clive Richardson.
Some of the sounds on "Master And Servant" – such as the whip effect – are based on Daniel Miller standing in the studio hissing and spitting. According to the band, they tried to sample a real whip but "it was hopeless".
The overtly sexual, BDSM-themed lyrics of "Master and Servant" - complete with synthesized whip-and-chain sound effects - reportedly got the song banned by many radio stations in the United States (although the song reached the Billboard Hot 100 chart anyway, albeit only at number 87 and for only a three-week chart stay). Reportedly the song narrowly avoided a radio ban by the BBC as well, and might have been banned if the one BBC staffer who wanted to ban the record had not been away on holiday at the time the other staffers voted on whether to add "Master and Servant" to their playlist.
The band used an instrumental part of the song as an intro during their 1984/1985 Some Great Reward Tour.
Famous quotes containing the words master and, master and/or servant:
“I remember the almost daily talks of my mother on the cruelty of slavery. I would say nothing to her, but I was thinking all the time that slavery did not seem so cruel. Master and Mistress Jennings were not mean to my mother. It was she who was mean to them.”
—Cornelia (1844–?)
“Mine honesty and I begin to square.
The loyalty well held to fools does make
Our faith mere folly; yet he that can endure
To follow with allegiance a fall’n lord
Does conquer him that did his master conquer
And earns a place i’ the story.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The mother as a social servant instead of a home servant will not lack in true mother duty.... From her work, loved and honored though it is, she will return to her home life, the child life, with an eager, ceaseless pleasure, cleansed of all the fret and fraction and weariness that so mar it now.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)