“Would have worked out great”: the psychedelic band Paul McCartney wanted to join
The early 1970s was a strange time. Not only had the hippie ideal evolved into a drug-addled husk of its former self, without any of the cultural motivations that it once had, but many who had been shining lights of their generation were tragically taken too young by misadventure. Elsewhere, other musical outfits that had managed to survive the hazardous trappings of fame either split up or crawled on, failing to see that they were no longer relevant. Yet, one man who managed to carry on unimpeded was Paul McCartney.
The Beatles were always a plucky band, from their outset as brash Liverpudlians in Hamburg to their daring experimentation in the late 1960s, and in many ways, McCartney typified this. Just as his band managed to dance their way through the changes that occurred in the decade, McCartney would be the one least affected by the pull of rockstardom. By the time the era came to a close and The Beatles had ended, he was already hunkering into domestic bliss with his wife Linda and young family.
Sure, he liked to smoke marijuana and would later fall foul of the law in Japan for possessing the sweet leaf. However, just as his old bandmates were getting good and screwed up on lost weekends, and his countercultural peers were falling at the wayside, wrecked by the effects of hard partying, he was carrying on, releasing albums like Ram and starting Wings, one of the decade’s most successful bands.
One of the most influential figures who would succumb to the dangers of hard living was Jim Morrison, the frontman of psychedelic pioneers The Doors. In many ways, the embodiment of the California-centred rebellion, he was a controversial figure in life, and although he had been on a downward spiral for some time, his death aged 27 in Paris in 1971 was a shock to many, regardless of what Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek would later say, that he felt he went to Paris to die.
The Doors always were a brilliant sum of their parts, and without the larger-than-life frontman, ‘The Lizard King’, it was clear that they could not go on. They might have recorded two more albums after his death, but without him their status and output changed, so they split in 1973.
Although the band decided to call it a day after 1972’s Full Circle, according to keyboardist Ray Manzarek, the surviving trio did consider bringing in new members to refresh their lineup and sound. Speaking to Classic Rock in 2014, he claimed that The Doors nearly brought in Paul McCartney, not as frontman, but as bassist, with Sheffield singer Joe Cocker also considered.
He said: “Yes. Paul was going to play bass. That would have worked out great. Who knows what direction we would have gone off into had that actually happened.” Regarding Cocker, he added: “That would have been great.”
These would have been significant additions on a few levels. Not only would McCartney have prompted much media excitement about joining following the demise of The Beatles, but he was creatively on fire during the early 1970s, and, as Manazarek had always helmed bass duties on the keyboard, this would have given the band a completely different sound from anything anyone was used to. As for Cocker, his gravelly voice, electric stage presence, and unrelenting personality would have made him the perfect replacement for Morrison. It’s a shame it never happened; it would have been quite the unison of greats.
