Alanis record exec on mend after being stabbed
On the morning of Dec. 29, a man loading his groceries into a black Jeep Cherokee in a shopping plaza in Redondo Beach, Calif., was attacked by an assailant with a knife.
John Alexander, 73, was pulled from the vehicle, stabbed four times and left bleeding in the parking lot as the random madman drove away.
“I can't stop thinking about it,” said Alexander. “What's worse is I can't stop thinking about the `what if ?'”
Now recovering at home, Alexander said doctors told him the knife narrowly missed vital organs, leaving him with wounds, sore ribs and a collapsed lung.
“When the paramedics were cutting all my clothes off, one of them said `an inch or two and you wouldn't be here.' That's not nice to hear.”
Though it happened 4,500 kilometres away, in a palm-tree suburb of coastal Los Angeles, it is a story with strong Ottawa colours.
Alexander's full name is John Alexander Pulkkinen and he is, in his words, “an Ottawa boy.”
One of three children, Pulkkinen grew up here and attended Hillcrest High School from 1961 to 1966 and, at one time, quarterbacked the senior Hawks football team. He was later an elementary school teacher, with stints at several schools, including Pinecrest and Vincent Massey.
But music is where he made his name — first as a maker, then as a shaker — helping an unknown teenager named Alanis Morissette eventually become one of the best-selling album artists of all time.
Pulkkinen was the lead singer in Octavian, a once well-known local band that enjoyed regional fame in the 1970s, toured nationally and had a couple of Top 10 hits. According to the Hillcrest High alumni website — and the story, though possibly lore, is too good not to mention — “their first professional gig was at the Chaudière Club in Aylmer, Que., for members of Satan's Choice.”
The band did well enough that Pulkkinen quit teaching in his 20s to pursue music full time and, maybe in a way he didn't imagine, it all worked out. When Octavian broke up in 1979, he joined MCA records, launching a career as a music executive that would last some 40 years.
And the highlight of that stretch was his relationship with Alanis.
Pulkkinen said he first heard of Alanis when she was still a child. “She sent me a tape when she was nine years old.”
He eventually signed her when she was 14 and MCA produced her two first albums, which were of the pop/dance variety. As she grew, her music matured and Alexander connected her with manager Scott Welch and, fortuitously, to Glen Ballard, a music writer and producer in Alexander's west-coast circle.
Their collaboration led to the 1995 release of Jagged Little
Pill, which went on to sell in the 30-million copy range and established Alanis as, arguably, Ottawa's greatest-ever musical export.
“Obviously, it's the highlight of my career,” said Pulkkinen, “because of how successful Jagged Little Pill was. But I'm proud of being the lead singer of Octavian, I'm proud of what I contributed to the Canadian music scene.”
And what a career it was. As “Alexander,” he worked with or befriended the likes of Ringo Starr, Stephen Tyler and Aerosmith, Glenn Frey of Eagles fame, as well as acts like Meatloaf, work that took him from Toronto
to New York to Los Angeles.
Alexander eventually became the senior vice-president of membership for the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) in the United States and, semi-retired, now runs a consulting shop.
He'd like his old pals and acquaintances in town to know that he's “okay” after the attack. (Not so his Jeep. The suspect, a Minnesota man with a criminal record, sped away from the shopping plaza, only to be soon pursued by police. He eventually struck another vehicle, two telephone poles and a cinder block wall. The man was hurt and the vehicle was a wreck.)
Pulkkinen was in touch with Alanis for years after their professional collaboration ended, but has not communicated with her in the past few months.
“My wounds are recovering. My bruises are still there. I'm having post-traumatic stress syndrome. I can't sleep very well and when I do, I have nightmares,” he said one day this week.
“But I'm grateful I'm able to talk to you because it was close.”
Sure sounds that way. As his famous gal-pal might say, he oughta know.