NEW RELEASE - Stranger on a Strange Land Bust
What is in the box
Scale: 1/12 (150mm)
Material: High quality resin
Packaging: All pieces are safely packaged within a cardboard box in protective foam
Note:
- Figures/kits come unassembled and unpainted.
- Wooden plinth (base) is not included
"Stranger in a Strange Land" song was released as the second single from their sixth studio album, Somewhere in Time (1986). 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 Smith. In a 2020 interview with EON music, the guitarist said that it was one of the first Iron Maiden songs that gave him "space to play in", citing its mid-paced tempo as the reason why; "a lot of the Maiden stuff up until then had been very fast, and aggressive, and heavy, but that actually allowed me a little bit of space to stretch out a bit", he said.
Eddie's appearance on the single cover is an homage to the Clint Eastwood character "Man with No Name", although it can also be seen as a mixture of Rick Deckard from Blade Runner and the "Man with No Name". This version of Eddie would later be used in the Camp Chaos music video for "Run to the Hills".
In the top-right corner of the cover (slightly right of Eddie's lit match), the time on the clock appears as "11:58". This is a reference to an earlier Iron Maiden single, "2 Minutes to Midnight".
Several cards can be seen falling from the table. One (orange background, next to red-coloured card) contains a picture of the Grim Reaper, like that on "The Trooper" cover.
Just under one of the stacks of cards, on the edge of the table, Derek Riggs' signature can be seen.
"Stranger In A Strange Land was the second single, after the album has been released," says Derek, this classy and epic track emerging in November of '86, two months after the issue of the album proper. "They wanted Eddie in that bar in Star Wars. So I knew I needed the bar in Star Wars, but I did him as Clint Eastwood. And it's the scene... you know, Clint Eastwood walks into the bar, and there's two guys playing cards, and one of them pretends to reach for the cards, but you know he's really going to reach for the gun, because this is the bit where Clint Eastwood shoots them all, and doesn't incur any bullet holes himself, somehow. You know, he's the stranger with no name, the stranger in a strange land. It's even got Clint Eastwood's physique, if you look at it, plus the little cigarette thing and everything. Fist Full Of Dollars might be the actual movie, and I mixed the two up and made them work together."
