Beltane Fire - White Stag (2025)

The release of WHITE STAG is the final page in the story of a band that could have been. From the mists of 1983 to the present day, people still enquire as to the whereabouts of that something very “Different” that they heard or saw a glimpse of back in the day.

The tracks that you’ll be listening to on this album are basically a collection of demo tapes, recorded between 1986-1989, that would have formed the basis of our second album.

After “Different Breed” We continued to write and record following our departure from Sony Records in anticipation of working with another label.

We began pre-production work and demoing after we completed the Marillion tour in 1986. All the tracks were produced by us and have been transferred from the original analogue tapes. The quality of the tapes varies from track to track, but there is enough to give you an idea of the direction we were going in and what could have been achieved had fortune been kinder and we’d found the right label and the support to continue.

Listening to all 15 songs in sequence has been quite an emotional experience for all of us, the rate at which the band was growing creatively is immediately evident when you listen. Notably, the addition of a keyboard player brought with it a lot more scope for us to explore the texture of the sound that we wanted to create.

There are many who have told us (over the years since we ceased to be active as BELTANE FIRE) that we should have become a major force in British Rock music. The problems that we had after the label cast us adrift were the same that many faced back then. There was no internet community on which to promote and continue our progression, no social media, no YouTube none of the tools that would have been at our disposal today.

This collection of songs is a statement of what could have been, had the wheels of fortune stopped in a different place for us. The songs are unashamedly a celebration of this Island, its people, and its history. All the love, loss, frustration, and anger that we experienced back then are contained within.