Strange Tales of Jim Morrison Revisited: Conversations with Frank Wagner
My first citizen journalism article twenty-five years ago was about Gerald Pitts in Oregon, who claimed he’d discovered Morrison still alive as a rodeo cowboy.
This led me to interviews with Jim’s presumptive son Cliff Morrison and his manager Floyd Bocox, and more than twenty years off-and-on employment as an editor and publicist for Jim’s former brother-in-law of 22 years Alan Graham, who died last year God rest him. The Morrison case is riddled with inconsistencies and curiosities and keeps drawing me back as an investigator of countercultural history. About a month and a half ago, I interviewed Jeff Finn, esteemed director of Beyond The End: Searching for Jim Morrison, a film implying Frank Wagner, an elderly maintenance worker in upstate New York called “Mr. X” in the film is Jim Morrison in disguise, which he denies. I’ve seen pictures of Jim’s father and brother as old men—I’ve seen how the Morrisons age, and it’s easy to see the young Jim aging into exactly the look of an elderly Frank. Their voices are remarkably similar, too, close enough to be the same man, though Frank’s voice is quieter, and I’ve never heard him sing.
Frank liked my YouTube channel after I posted the podcasts featuring Finn, and his piercing eyes and bushy white beard had started showing up in my People You Might Know on Facebook. I sent the request. “Thanks for following my YT pg, Frank. Would you like to appear on a podcast or answer a few questions by email sometime?” I was in the middle of planning a trip to San Francisco to visit Jami Cassady and Randy Ratto and by the time he responded with a thumbs up emoji, the train was pulling out with me aboard. It seems to be part of my life-plan, making contact with stars from previous generations fallen into obscurity, from the Beat Generation to John Fante’s son author Dan Fante to Paul Krassner to Johnny Strike, which makes Frank being Jim seem more likely than unlikely.
Or he could be a kind-spirited old man who’s found himself in the middle of someone else’s imagined discovery and taken the path of least resistance on purpose. That’s probably what I’d do. How would you react if someone said you were really Jim Morrison?
If he is Morrison in disguise, how does he feel about Jeff’s exposing him? And if he isn’t Morrison, how strange the whole business must seem to him—Finn has even gone so far as to kidnap Wagner’s DNA for a comparison (the test was inconclusive, but didn’t rule anything out (see the movie on AppleTV or Vimeo, where it’s now available worldwide via French, German, Italian, and Spanish: (https://vimeo.com/ondemand/beforetheend/)—and the two remain close, even after all that.
I let Frank know, “My intention will not be to prove or disprove anything or even declare or uncover anything but just to have a nice conversation with one man who may or may not be another man, just to do it and see what it’s like,” and asking, ”So how does it feel being compared to Jim Morrison? Does it make you self-conscious or is it sort of a kick?” I didn’t want to overdo it or say anything about lizards. Jeff had warned me to avoid low-hanging fruit.
A couple of days passed without a response. The longer he made me wait, the more convinced I became Frank was probably Jim, not just an old man with a white beard and piercing eyes on Facebook. “Do you want to have a conversation with me, Frank?”
“Sure.”
He sent me a clip of Frank Zappa’s “How Did That Get In Here? (Lumpy Gravy Orchestral Suite)” and I asked him if he thought Zappa played a part in the cultural revolution of the sixties. He responded over the voice recorder feature along the lines of hell yes, he did things no one else was doing, he was great. Then I asked if he thought said revolution had been successful and he said, it will not be televised, that’s for sure.
A couple more days went by. I’d asked him what he thought of the Velvet Underground and he hadn’t responded, so I did a search on Zappa, learned he didn’t like them except the first album (also my favorite), and typed in, “Zappa hated them, maybe because he was so anti-drug,” adding, “I never much liked the stuff they did with Nico, either, but that first album’s great, in my opinion.” I kept reading the article I’d found and learned that Jim Morrison had been in attendance at Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable Gig in 1969—where he met Nico after seeing her performance with the Velvets and had a brief, life-changing affair with her, which I’d forgotten all about but suddenly remembered from No One Here Gets Out Alive.
Frank answered, again using the voice recorder feature on Facebook, only this time it was :04 seconds of silence. Which meant either Morrison was saying, “No comment,” heart formally scarred by his relationship with Nico, which changed both of their romantic and creative lives, according to that article, or Frank just didn’t like the Velvet Underground. Forging ahead as if unaware of the significance of the Morrison-Nico connection, as if I hadn’t understood, I sent him a message saying the recorder didn’t pick anything up in your last message, Frank, I didn’t get your last message. But I just found out Nico was almost the singer for Can, too. Did you know that? (I’d seen a post where the late Holger Czukay had made that comment).
“No, I didn’t know Nico was almost the singer for Can,” Frank replied, voice-recorded as always. Then he sent me a shot of a coastline at night, the location later identified as Miami Beach, slightly blurry but conveying the scene in all its sweep—“Great shot,” and Frank replied, “Thank you,” with a friendly lilt—plus the cartoon of a fox barbecuing.
“Thanks for talking to me, Frank. You’ve been great to work with. So what do you think of Jeff Finn? He seems like a good egg to me.”
“He is a good egg. Haven’t talked to him in a while.”
“Me either. I guess I’ll check in again soon. Maybe I can help him promote the film. You feel OK about what he’s doing?”
“Yeah, I really do. He’s having trouble with the streaming services, you know, and the in-between services to do with the contracts.”
“Bum kicks. I’m thinking of making a film about the Cassadys. Maybe he’d be interested.”
“I hope he would, but if he doesn’t, I know other people could do it. That’s a good idea. I’ve been thinking a lot about—watching that film about Neal Cassady lately, seen that? With ah, his wife, I mean his daughter being interviewed? That was precious.”
I agreed, and said my favorite interview of Jami Cassady was by David Hoffman. “David Hoffman is terrific, what a guy,” commented Frank.
“So you’re on vacation,” I said, thinking about that fox cartoon, and Frank’s voice corrected me: “No, I’m doing something else. Actually.”
“So what do you do to take yourself out of the prevalent mood of society/this culture?”
This was something I’d been thinking about, I wasn’t sure if he’d relate, but Frank took up that thread, “Well, there’s some terrific people down here. I mean, I met all kinds of musicians. As soon as I get a phone, we’ll talk on the phone.”
“People have the power, that’s right.”
In the morning, he sent me a less blurry shot of the same coastline by sunlight, with the message, “Good afternoon from Miami Beach, my brother,” and another shot of him making peace signs with both hands on a patio surrounded by four unidentified males—Fellow maintenance workers? Musicians?—one in a tam looking something like Robby Krieger but wearing sunglasses. So Frank was in Miami Beach, doing “something else”? And now he wanted to talk on the phone. Was Jim Morrison about to come out of retirement?
“Are you down there recording an album? If not, you should. You’ve got all the ingredients right there.”
His face showed up beneath that message indicating he’d seen it and I sent a smiley face emoji to show I was kidding. “What’s up, Zack?”
“Howyadoin, Frank?”
“Terrific, Zack. What’s up, man?”
“Doing the laundry.”
“Sounds good, bro.”
“You meet Joan yet?” He’d posted something about how he was going to meet Joan Jett. Maybe she was in on the comeback recording, if any was planned.
“Not yet. I’ll be down here for another week almost.”
“Well, enjoy yourself.” Then I asked him when he started reading Bukowski. Me and Jim Morrison I mean Frank Wagner exchanging cultural commentary on Facebook.
Later the same day he replaced his profile pic with an image of himself years younger that definitely wasn’t a picture of Jim Morrison. But was it really a picture of the young Frank, or just someone who looked like him? Who does the truth belong to? I wasn’t here to blow anyone’s cover or prove anything.
“Say, Frank. How’s it going in Miami Beach?”
“Weird.”
“Yeah? What’s happening?”
“Everything. I’ll tell you about it sometime.”
I feel like I should apologize to Frank Wagner. I’ve been trying to relate to him as Morrison-in-disguise the whole time we’ve been talking. Then again, there are all those convincing comparative pictures (see the film) and that photo of him with Densmore and the way his brother looks compared to him and I can’t call it. I hope he’s recording a comeback album in Miami Beach because wouldn’t that be great? And if he’s down there doing maintenance work, I hope it goes smoothly. “Hey, Frank. How’s your day going?”
“Very slowly. I’m waiting to go record with Inner Circle at the Marley studios.”
“Awesome. I hope things speed up for you!”
“All-righty!”
It didn’t look like that piece was going anywhere, I thought, now maybe it is…
In the morning he sent me the link to a song by a Miami Beach band called the Velvet Edge with a soulful, guitar-heavy sound, captioned, “Just made a big hit with them.”
“You did? Looking forward to the podcast tonight.”
I’d invited Frank to be a guest on one of my podcasts. My plan was to ask him all the questions in person I hadn’t asked in writing, like how does it feel to be the subject of that documentary implying you’re Jim Morrison and generally talk to him as Frank Wagner not Jim Morrison to see how it went. “So, Frank, you were in the Navy, went to St. Bonaventure University.” He said he wanted to do it, but I kept trying to get him to specify whether Thursday or Friday worked better without success. On Thursday afternoon I sent him a message saying we’re gonna do it tomorrow night, Frank. Can you make it. “Hopefully!” Frank replied, a cheerful lilt in his voice. All right, this was gonna be good. I invited a few other people and in the end it was me, Frank, and another guy who’d be making it. Frank hadn’t checked in on Facebook that day as far as I could tell. As the hours ticked away I thought about it. Jeff Finn’s whole premise depended on Frank’s mysterious nature. I didn’t want to strip away any of the layers of mystery surrounding Frank’s identity, but that’s what I’d be doing if I had him on the podcast as himself. Maybe this was a bad idea. Well, Frank didn’t show up and my apologies to the guy who did, an accomplished author, professor and nobleman out of South Dakota formerly of Denver—though I think I put up a respectable performance of lively interest and attention, the truth is I felt let down by the absence of Jim Morrison’s alter-ego. Was Frank busy recording that night with Inner Circle and Velvet Edge? Was I trying to trap this innocent stranger in my self-created menagerie of podcast guests? First that film and now this. That poor guy. I sent him a message: “Missed you tonight, Frank. Hope everything’s cool.” That one went unresponded, but Frank started posting all these Velvet Underground videos by way of making amends, then sent me a link to Richard Strass’s Also spracht Zarathustra perhaps making reference to Morrison’s hero Nietzsche who wrote the book that inspired it, keeping the mystery alive for mystery’s sake. “Cool, thanks!” To quote Jeff Finn: Jim Morrison is dead. Long live Frank Wagner.
Zack Kopp
