Tony Ashton talked to Chris Welch of Melody Maker about the rise and fall of Paice Ashton Lord. The following was transcribed from the liner notes of Repertoire's 1995 re-issue of the PAL album Malice In Wonderland:
"I remember we began recording the album in Musicland studios in Munich. Jon and I had done a couple of projects together and we were always good buddies. I played on his solo albums including "Gemeni Suite" and not long after I had a hit with "Resurrection Shuffle", we decided to do an album together called "First Of The Big Bands". We called it Ashton Lord. We decided against Lord Ashton!"
"As I recall, Ritchie Blackmore had left Deep Purple, and they decided to split up. Ian and Jon approached me with the idea of forming a band. In fact Jon had approached me before and I hadn't liked the idea much because I couldn't see myself as a front man. I also thought that with Jon and me both being keyboard players, we'd get in each other's way. We did a very nice album together, but I was never very comfortable with the idea of being the lead singer. It didn't really work on stage. We were very happy with the album, but I couldn't cut the mustard up front. I actually fell off the stage at the Rainbow Theatre concert in London. I went down well! But after that the band more or less fizzled out. We had a good band too, with Bernie Marsden on guitar and Paul Martinez on bass. Howie Casey who used to be with Wings was on tenor sax. We had a few other guys on trumpet and trombone and a couple of girl singers".
"What we managed to achieve was a tighter version of "The First Of The Big Bands". On that album we had tried to get a Phil Spector sound with as many musicians as we could with two drummers, and five guitar players. It was an expensive experiment, but we liked it so much we thought we'd go for the Paice Ashton Lord thing. As I say, it didn't work very well on stage, partly because I was the wrong guy for the job and physically I wasn't up to it. I wasn't comfortable so I was drinking a lot and it became a difficult situation".
"We couldn't think of a title, then we heard this German guy come out with this remark about "Malice In Wonderland", and we thought:'Ah, that's a good title!' We wrote a song round it, and another one called "Arabella" about the hotel above the studio, we were staying in, which turned out to be a bit harrowing! Ian and Bernie both contributed to the writing, and the material was mostly funky rock with a brass section and girl singers. Paul Martinez had played on that thing by Elmer Gantry called "Why Did You Do It" which was really funky and so we liked him".
"We were going to do a full tour but decided against it and just did some UK dates which was when I fell off the stage. It wasn't actually my fault. We had an announcer to bring us on, but the kids didn't know who he was, and they were yelling 'Get Off'. So the roadies had to drag him off and I had to go on stage in the darkness. I was supposed to have been guided on with the torches but the roadies were to busy, so I just stormed on and fell over a monitorspeaker and crashed headlong into the orchestra pit, which was a 12 foot drop. I was dead lucky I didn't fall on my head. They dragged me back on stage, while Ian did a half hour drum solo, and I managed to finish the set. Then everybody had a good think about the future. We went back to Munich to start recording a second album and got some tracks down, but the impetus had gone, and we never finished the album".
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