Alan Graham has passed after a long life of singular quality during which, among other things, he grew up with all the Beatles in Liverpool, England, was married to Jim Morrison’s sister for 22 years, babysat for Sylvester Stallone, worked as a fixer for Larry Flynt while he ran for president from inside a mental ward, and got as close as possible to opening a chain of whiskey bars in tribute to his late brother-in-law before he passed.
A hundred years ago, I wrote a piece investigating the possibility Jim Morrison had faked his own death. The first person I interviewed in connection with this project, Floyd Bocox, manager of Jim’s erstwhile son, Cliff Morrison, told me about Jim’s mysterious brother-in-law for 22 years from Liverpool, England, who he referred to as “Uncle Al”. According to Bocox, Al had been implicated in the deaths of multiple sixties icons, Brian Jones, Mama Cass, Hendrix, you name it, but never charged with anything. “Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “You’re saying this guy was a murderer?!”
“You tell me, Zack,” Bocox* responded.
I didn’t know what to think. I’d heard all the stories about the Laurel Canyon flower generation scene allegedly having been a CIA op. Maybe this was true. I published the interview somewhere with a heightened sense of purpose and received an unexpected phone call the following day: “Young Zack,” began Al. “How dare you go to print with such terrible information about me without consulting me first?”
“Well I–it was just an interview. It wasn’t me saying that, just a quote from–”
“A quote from a grifter,” he finished my sentence. “who doesn’t need any more publicity.” Al had a long-standing problem with Bocox, who he told me he saw as someone trying to make money off Jim’s name and told me I shouldn’t be promoting him.
“Well, I’m sorry…” I didn’t know which tale to trust. And I’m not sure about the words we used, this conversation having taken place more than twenty years ago, but by the end of the call Al had contracted with me to edit a rewrite of his book I Remember Jim Morrison, Too, its title inspired by the plethora of books about Jim dealing only with his public persona. By contrast, Al was Clara and Admiral Steve Morrison’s son-in-law, Jim’s sister’s husband, the father of his nieces and nephews. The Morrisons were a military family going all the way back to Scottish clan wars. They kept a strict policy of nondisclosure, as is generally the case in such families, and Al’s book gave an insider’s view as opposed to a sensationalist’s.
It was amazing to be in ready contact with Jim Morrison’s brother-in-law out of nowhere like this, coming hot on the heels of my introduction to Neal Cassady’s son Robert Hyatt, as if I’d contacted another level of potential. Then I thought about Al’s whole life full of multiple connections with world-famous people, and realized some kind of temporal mirror effect was going on with us. Al spoke of it in his own case as contacting a portal and going through it. he told me he’d been doing it all his life. I’m not saying Floyd Bocox was wrong and I’m not saying he was right, but Al told me once, “I’m not a secret agent or a cop or a priest. I only play one in real life” whatever that might indicate.
The next book we wrote together was all about Al’s childhood in Liverpool in extreme poverty amid childhood rhymes about London’s founder Richard “Dick” Whittington and growing up through the skiffle era into the rock-and-roll era into the acid love era and the sixties. I think it was even better than the first one but likely has a smaller readership.
Al talked about our “synergy,” the way our energies complimented each other so well they gave origin to a third force that did all the work. We had a way of getting on each other’s nerves, though, and often our conversations ended with one of us hanging up on the other. Whenever I heard from him after a long time I knew he had another project he wanted me to help him with. We made it most of the way through creating one called The Flynt Caper before Al told me it felt like digging up power cables long buried underground, and he didn’t want to go there anymore.
Once he contacted me asking for an updated version of the article I’d written mentioning the radio station he’d founded in fulfillment of his Knights Templar lineage. We had a conversation about going ahead and mentioning certain things while not mentioning others because rights to Morrison’s image were still in dispute and it wasn’t a done deal until he could do the first thing, “if you get my drift.” “Sure, I see.” I had the rough outline and anything he wanted added to the article later could be worked in with no problem. I wrote it that evening and sent it in. “Great work, Knight Zack,” he responded, and sent me a sigil he’d designed to make it official.
I was sitting around in my kitchen another night when the phone rang and Al reported he’d recently fallen on his face and broken his shoulder and his hip, “but I’m still standin’!”
“Well, that sounds terrible. Have a seat. Take a load off.”
“Well, that might be a good idea,” Al laughed, “but no, my face absorbed most of the shock. Everything else is still swollen.” He’d undergone a drastic operation to unclog the arteries of his heart with a diamond-headed drill bit years before and rebounded miraculously, but I knew he’d fallen on the train a few months back, and hoped he was all right.
“But that’s not what I’m calling about,” the venerable soul continued. “My son let me know I just received permission from the Estate to market Jim Morrison’s image in whatever way I want!” This freed Al up to do anything he wanted after decades hard against the razor’s edge of infringement and opened his mind to literally all sorts of possibilities. “I’m founding a string of portable whiskey bars in just a few weeks, a moveable feast like Jim wanted, and I’m gonna bring one to Denver in just a few weeks’ time, so get ready!”
I felt flattered to have been given a window seat to the creation of this historic traveling rock and roll enterprise after so many months waiting for a paid shift at the library. I wouldn’t quit just yet, but if something better came along, why not? “I’m looking forward to it, Al. Thanks for including me.”
“Sure thing, lad. Goodnight.”
I’ll check in with him again soon,I thought, but didn’t want to step out of my own life to do it. There was really no reason to wait, but I was always reluctant to make the first move where this client was concerned. I sent him an email after getting back one afternoon: “I hope everything’s going well. I know you’ve made remarkable recoveries before. God’s on your side and I am too.” No response. Another freelancer working for Al sent an email a few weeks later saying his phone had been turned off for some reason. I let him know I’d sent an email with no answer yet.
A few more weeks went by. It was hard not to imagine this guy forging ahead dauntlessly forever. That’s how I’ll remember him. But I figured the old man might have finally kicked it. Those injuries had sounded terrible, after all he’d been through with his heart already and being an old man and everything. What would happen with the whiskey bars? Maybe I’d write the menu or the press release from my apartment in Denver for some of the profits or—something else. You have to start somewhere to get anywhere. Just then, Al sent an email with a link to a clip of him narrating his latest misadventures, nearly 80 years old and forced to crawl across the floor of a jail cell by the San Diego PD. The audio said he was covered with bruises and the video showed his feet walking along. It sounded like he was having terrible luck. “Well, at least he’s not dead,” I thought.
Months later I was in Madison, Wisconsin, thinking about moving there, and my friend Jenny Jarkey took me to a few bookstores and up to the top of the state capitol building full of ornate engravings and colorful embossed seals and winding twisting corners and stairways. We looked down on the whole town full of tiny people with bodies of water on either side. We walked up and down a tilted street against a tide of students with determined looks on their way back to class.
I called Al that evening and apologized for my lack of sympathy during his recent troubles with the police. “I wasn’t in the right head.” I was sitting on the porch outside Jenny and Ted’s place, looking out into the dark blue evening street.
“Well, I don’t know why you’re apologizing for something you never even did, lad, but let me tell, you, my troubles with the police were the least of it! I’m happy to tell you that now all this is at an end, and I wouldn’t be the man I am today if I hadn’t been through all that trouble. I’m opening the first whiskey bar, in Cancun!”
“Good for you, Al.” I told him I was staying with some friends of mine who were cabbies in Madison and thinking about moving there. He told me Jim Morrison’s maternal grandfather, last name Clarke, had once run for office there on the Communist ticket and won before disappearing with his pockets full of women’s underpants.
“Really? Well, This looks like it might be the next place for me. It feels good.”
“Well, I’ll tell you, lad, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in this life: If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.”
In our last phone conversation a few weeks ago, he told me he was getting back to writing about the Flynt years again and needed my help. I told him no, I’m moving out of here in August and I don’t know where I’m going yet, it’s just a bad time and I have to say give me until after August, I’ll do it after this coming August, yes, but he told me, “Well, I woke up this morning 80 years old, and I’m still here, and I’m going for it. We’re moving on this one right now. Sorry, lad.”
“Sorry, Al.”
It could well be the case that he knew he was on his way out when he made this proposal, and I figured maybe so, too. People die and you wish you’d asked them things you never did or told them things you meant but never said. I never asked him about the Laure Canyon scene allegedly having been an establishment set-up, either, or got his take on the Billy Shears case. I’d love to have heard his answers to these questions, considering his youthful acquaintance with the Beatles and his close connection to Jim Morrison, and his father, Admiral George Stephen Morrison. I thought of asking lots of times, but never found the perfect moment.
He was a great man and I’m honored to have known him.
God rest you, sir. I was honored by our friendship, and safe passage to your essence. Ta, wack.*
Alan R. Graham
1944 – 2024
Noble Order Of The Lighted Knights
“We follow the light!”
Photos used with permission.
*Scouse slang for “Thanks, friend.”
