Learn how to play Stranger in a Strange Land by Iron Maiden, released as the second single from their sixth studio album, Somewhere in Time.
The song is unrelated to Robert A. Heinlein’s novel by the same name.
The lyrics are about an Arctic explorer who dies and is frozen in the ice. After a hundred years his body is found preserved by other people exploring there. Adrian Smith was inspired to write about this song after talking to an explorer who had a similar experience of discovering a frozen body.
The guitar solo in “Stranger in a Strange Land” is played by Adrian Smith. The song is one of only four Iron Maiden songs to fade out, the others being “The Prophecy” from Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, “Women in Uniform”, a single included on some pressings of Killers, and “Kill Me Ce Soir”, a 1990 B-side. The lyrics “brave new world” were also present in Iron Maiden’s 2000 studio release, Brave New World.
Somewhere in Time is the sixth studio album by Iron Maiden, released on 29 September 1986 on EMI in Europe and its sister label Capitol Records in North America. (It was re-released by Sanctuary/Columbia Records in the United States in 1998.) It was the band’s first album to feature guitar synthesisers.
Since its release, it has been certified platinum by the RIAA, having sold over one million copies in the US
The guitar solo, tablature, and backing track can be found in the Premium Channel.
