Edit 2 for headphones, December 2020. An edit to make the song a bit less "sixties channel separated".
Recorded June 12 and also on July 7 - 12, 1967. The first Bill Wyman song to be released. Besides the original album it was also released on "The Rolling Stones singles collection: The London years", August 1989. In 1967 it was a nr 87 hit in the US, nr 21 in Canada.
Mellotron: Brian Jones. Lead vocals and bass: Bill Wyman. Drums: Charlie Watts. Harpsichord: Nicky Hopkins. Piano: Bill Wyman. Guitar: Keith Richards. 12-string acoustic guitar: Steve Marriott. Organ: Ian Stewart or Brian Jones or Nicky Hopkins. Background vocals: Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Steve Marriott & Ronnie Lane (both of the Small Faces).
The song was recorded on a night when Bill Wyman had shown up at the studio and found that the session had been cancelled. Feeling frustrated that he had potentially wasted time in driving there, engineer Glyn Johns asked him if he had anything that he'd like to record. "I'd been messing with this song. It was a bit... what I thought was kind of spacy, you know... a bit kind of Satanic Majesties-like. And psychedelic in a way."
Lyrically, Wyman stated that "The idea for the song is about this guy who wakes up from a dream and finds himself in another dream."
The song describes events that transpire in a dreamlike state:
We walked across the sand
And the sea and the sky and the castles were blue
I stood and held your hand
And the spray flew high and the feathers floated by
I stood and held your hand
Glyn Johns showed the song to Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Brian Jones, who all liked it and decided to include it on the record.
The musicians on the song are Bill Wyman on lead vocals, with both Ronnie Lane and Steve Marriott of the Small Faces on guitar and backing vocals, Nicky Hopkins on keyboards, Charlie Watts on drums, and Jagger adding backing vocals.
At the conclusion of the track as heard on the album, Wyman himself can be heard snoring. He was unaware this had been tagged onto his song until he first played the completed album. He learned later that one night when he had fallen asleep in the studio, Jagger and Richards miked him up and recorded him snoring, and stuck it onto his track as a joke. This does not appear on the single.
IN ANOTHER LAND
(William George Perks a.k.a. Bill Wyman)
in another land
where the breeze and the trees and flowers were blue
I stood and held your hand
and the grass grew high and the feathers floated by
I stood and held your hand
and nobody else's hand will ever do
nobody else will do
then I awoke
was this some kind of joke
much to my surprise
I opened my eyes
we walked across the sand and the sea and
the sky and the castles were blue
I stood and held your hand
and the spray flew high and the feathers floated by
I stood and held your hand
and nobody else's hand will ever do
nobody else will do
then I awoke
was this some kind
