I was there. I witnessed it. And I just spoke with my friend Eileen Alexander who gave him that nickname to confirm my recollection, AND she gave me permission to name the guilty parties! Some background is necessary. If you have read the postcard story you will know how I came to have clients in the recording industry. George Blackwell opened his studio SoundTrack on NE 149th Street in North Miami, Studio Row. The same street the famous Criteria Recording Studio was on. So it wasn’t long before I started meeting people in the other studios. Ross Alexander was a recording engineer at Criteria in the days of KC and the Sunshine Band and the Bee Gees (The Bee Gees later had me do the health insurance policies for the employees of their studio in Miami, Middle Ear. A good story associated that which I’ll tell later).
Ross left Criteria to create his own business, Synergetic Services, as a designer and builder of recording studios. I took care of his employee benefit needs once he was self-employed. He designed and built studios for Bruce Hornsby, Emilio and Gloria Estefan (Crescent Moon, which led to my referral to them, taking care of the needs of that studio for ten years) and the subject of this tale, John Cougar Mellencamp.
Eileen is pregnant with their daughter, Theresa Leigh. She is nearing term. Ross is in Indiana building the studio for Mellencamp. John was insisting Ross stay through the production of the first album in the new studio. Who better to deal with anything that came up than the designer and builder! I am visiting Eileen in their home in North Miami when Ross returns her call. I was there. I heard this. Mellencamp is of notoriously short stature.
Eileen: “You tell the Little Bastard that if you’re not here for the birth of our first child HE can pay for the divorce!”
Mellencamp loved it. Needed a new nickname when he dropped Cougar. He embraced it. Eileen just told me a story I had never heard before that ratifies this. Some time later they were at a performance of his and went backstage.
Mellencamp: “Are you still pregnant?”
Eileen: “Are you still short?”
It is now months after I first wrote this and I realized there is more evidence supporting this story. Look at a Mellencamp album from those days and you will see a credit I dare say has not been on any other album:
Maintenance Engineer: Ross Alexander!
Here are links to actual album credits showing John calling himself The Little Bastard and referring to Ross as the Maintenance whatever…