“They’ve just been sitting there”

Treatments for an alien musical co-written by Paul McCartney and science fiction author Isaac Asimov have been unearthed by the writers of forthcoming biography The McCartney Legacy: Volume 2: 1974 – 80.

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The book, due for release tomorrow (December 10) via HarperCollins, covers the years of McCartney post-Beatles, specifically with his band Wings, in the second of five planned volumes.

Its writers Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair shared with The Guardian yesterday (December 8) that they discovered the documents while researching for the book in the US.

With a working title of Five And Five And One, the documents feature a loose plot outline with dialogue fragments and plot directions that were seemingly intended to incorporate then-new songs by McCartney.

Five And Five And One would have seen the invasion of shapeshifting aliens, who would then transform themselves into members of Wings, eventually meeting their real counterparts face-to-face.

“A ‘flying saucer’ lands. Out of it get five creatures. They transmute before your very eyes into ‘us’ [Wings],” the original treatment by McCartney began.

“They are here to take over Earth by taking America by storm and they proceed to do this supergroup style. Meanwhile – back in the sticks of Britain – lives the original group, whose personalities are being used by the aliens…”

In 1974, in hopes of collaborating on a script, McCartney flew to New York to see Asimov, who had a fear of flying. Asimov died in 1992 at age 72.

McCartney reportedly acknowledged the existence of the documents to Kozinn, telling him: “[Asimov] can imagine himself into far-off galaxies, but he wouldn’t get on a plane.”

Asimov’s expanded treatment made changes to McCartney’s original story: turning it into a five-page version, he changed the aliens into “energy-beings” ascended from a dying planet with the intention to “occupy, rather than clone” the Wings members “while being incapable of understanding human emotions such as love”.

These beings would communicate through “thought-waves” while being “strangely affected” by music, ultimately deciding that “they must use the musical key to unlock human emotion”.

“They’ve just been sitting there,” Sinclair spoke of the treatments. “Paul’s treatment reads like something Paul and Linda cooked up while they were smoking something particularly potent.”

Kozinn, a music journalist, told The Guardian that the duo came into possession of the correspondence between McCartney and Asimov, claiming that the musician “didn’t particularly like” Asimov’s treatment.

Kozinn continued: “By early 1975, the project was abandoned. ‘Nothing ever came of this because McCartney couldn’t recognise good stuff’ was Asimov’s succinct take on the pair’s failed collaboration, scrawled across the first page of his 1,800-word treatment.” He added, talking about his incredulity towards McCartney rejecting “science-fiction master” Asimov’s work. “We’re talking about Asimov, for God’s sake!”

In a recent interview with The Guardian, The Flaming Lips‘ Wayne Coyne shared a story about how he ended up smoking a joint with McCartney at a festival.

“I don’t smoke pot, and he had a big joint, and he handed it to me as if I was part of his entourage, and I took a big puff of it, which I shouldn’t have done, but I thought, ‘Well, how often do you get to smoke a joint with Paul McCartney?’ It was amazing.”