Jon Lord also did a round robin tour of all the local radio stations during early December to plug his new album ’Sarabande’and of course PAL. He explained that the group were almost christened Ghosts, but in the end with album just about to go to print PAL had won the day! “The new band is not going to be Deep Purple Mark 7, it’s not an attempt to recreate purple, and it’s a totally new direction for me and Ian”

White label copies of the album were put out in January but the planned release date of February was eventually put back until March 4^th. Radio One played two unmixed tracks on the Alan Freeman Saturday Radio show, with reviews positive. Elsewhere the media was less kind and Pal took some stick, with most of the music papers at the time pushing the next big music scene of Punk Music.

Jon Lord took up the offer to promote and perform some tracks from his new album “Sarabande” at the Albert Hall on January 25^th; the performance was less than well received due to most of the audience arriving late for the main performance of David Bedford’s “Odyssey”

The extravagant stage with all the gear was ready for the tour, Paice Ashton and Lord had planned this tour well and put a lot of time and money into it and was there to see it succeed.

The original tour was due to start off in Europe, with Copenhagen on March 2^nd, followed by German, Swiss, France and dates in Holland, then Five UK dates. But due to unforeseen reasons, maybe lack of tour support from their record label, the European tour was dropped and this just left the UK dates.

Concert Dates

March 26th:  Birmigham Odeon

March 27th: Liverpool Empire

March 28th: Newcastle City Hall

March 30th: Glagow Apollo

April 1st: The Rainbow Theatre London

The group spent their efforts in preparing for the live debut on “BBC’s Sight and Sound” on March 10^th, there was and enormous amount of publicity generated from it, but the recording was fraught with all sorts of problems, which some people record that PAL never recovered from.

The BBC generators blew up twice, which resulted in the recording of one number three times, this put un due pressure on Tony Ashton and affected his singing, which when finally mixed gave a poor audio sound. Tony was also beginning to feel he had got involved against his better judgement. “We were very happy with the album but I couldn’t cut the mustard up front. I was never comfortable with the idea of being the lead singer”

The Debut went out on Saturday March 19^th on BBC 2 a week later to coincide with the albums release and just before they opened the tour at the Birmingham Odeon

The film crews were again there to cover the shows in Birmingham and London in a big effort to promote this new force in the music world.

At The Birmingham Odeon and the band were tense, the support band, were a called “Bandit” a heavy based rock band which opened the night. Paice Ashton and Lord hit the stage to huge raptures of applause, from the fans who were not to be disappointed. On stage the band were tight although Tony Ashton said he never really felt comfortable, his presence and entertainment style was superb. The band were a huge force to be reckoned with, turning in some ferocious R&B /Rock, with Tony on piano and Jon on Keyboards and coming up the rear with his a thundering drumming from Ian. Bernie Marsden proved on that first night his excellent guitar lead riffs and singing talents, his future was secured and Paul Martinez fitted perfectly. The sound was enormous, that big band sound with brass and backing singers, which is what they always wanted to achieve.

There was huge potential for the band, with the live reviews fairly positive, but that was never enough, with so much time and money sunk into the project they had to hope on good album sales.