Easter

Hogarth had largely written it before he joined in 1989, and the band built only the ending, which moves into 5/4. Recorded at Hook End that spring, it is the second track on Seasons End, with Jean-Pierre Rasle on pipes and a long Rothery solo that fans prize and the single edit cuts heavily. Released as the album's third single in March 1990, it reached 34 in Britain.

Hogarth first visited Belfast with The Europeans in 1984, expecting the worst, and found it uplifting. He began the song in 1988 as a message of hope for ordinary people who had nothing to do with the Troubles. The title nods to Yeats's Easter, 1916. With Forgotten Sons, it gives each of the band's eras a song about Northern Ireland.

Live

setlist.fm counts 817 performances, more than any other Marillion song, from June 1989 to October 2026. Dream Theater played it at Ronnie Scott's in London in January 1995 with Hogarth and Rothery sitting in, and the band played it with strings at the Royal Albert Hall in 2017. In April 2020 all five recorded a new version at home in lockdown. The upload in the hypersongs web is the 1990 single's promo video, partly filmed on the Giant's Causeway.