Iggy Pop Read Free Page A

just east of Lake Michigan where high school kids lucky enough to own their own automobiles would hang out on the beach for the summer. It was 1965, and Jim Osterberg had just joined the car-owning set, but as was his habit he had flouted the conventional entry requirements of parental approval, driving licence - even driving lessons. Lynn Klavitter, his steady date throughout twelfth grade, was impressed that Jim had saved up enough cash to afford the ’57 Chevy station wagon, but wasn’t so impressed by his driving on the 200-mile trip to the resort. Yet the more she asked him to slow down, calmly, avoiding confrontation, the more her kind-hearted, funny, but increasingly headstrong boyfriend floored the accelerator, insisting he was in control.
    On the final stretch of Highway 31 up to Silver Lake, Lynn started to lose her temper as Jim coaxed the reluctant old red and white Chevy up to ninety miles an hour. Suddenly they were shouting at each other, and just as suddenly the wagon’s back end started fishtailing, then swerving out of control. As the novice driver tried to correct the swerve, the car veered off the road; it flipped over once, then twice, then a third time, ploughing down two trees on the grass verge, crashing upside-down through bushes as wood splinters and dust filled the car.
    As the Chevy groaned to a halt on its roof, its teenage passengers scrambled out of the open windows and looked at each other. The car was a total wreck, but apart from scratches from tree bark, and Jim’s bruises from the steering wheel, they were both, unbelievably, unharmed. All was quiet. Calmly, Jim picked up the number plate that had been ripped from the Chevy, linked hands with Lynn and they walked off up the hill and all the way to the resort, where they would both lie on the beach in the sun.
    It was maybe a couple of days later that Osterberg told his closest friend, Jim McLaughlin, how lucky he was to be alive. ‘Here we go, another of Osterberg’s tall tales,’ thought McLaughlin, and promptly forgot about it. A few years later, Iggy Stooge mentioned to a journalist how he was special, that he’d survived what should have been a fatal accident and he was destined to make his mark. Even though the notion of an indestructible rock star seemed faintly ludicrous, like many of his inflated claims it made good copy.
     
    These were optimistic, booming, postwar years in America, when anything seemed possible. It was a time and a place when a smart kid, brought up in an environment seething with intellectuals and scientific savants, driven by intelligent, hard-working, ambitious parents, could seemingly do anything he wanted. He could make friends with some of the most powerful figures in the industrial world, and witness first-hand an intimate arts scene peopled with characters who would later become superstars. With this environment, the right kind of kid - one with drive, a fierce intelligence and the right kind of charm - could become President of the United States. And this was the future that classmates and teachers in Ann Arbor predicted for Jim Osterberg, the witty, well-dressed classroom politician, a kid with an enviable knack of making connections with the rich and powerful.
    Coachville Gardens trailer park sits in green surroundings on Carpenter Road, just outside the city of Ann Arbor, officially in the town of Ypsilanti, Michigan. Although it’s gained the inevitable gaggle of sprawling out-of-town stores, Ypsilanti is still mostly a lush, quiet place where nothing much happens. There are plenty of isolated wooden houses where you can live undisturbed, watching out for cranes and squirrels in the summer, and taking your dogs for long, reflective walks through the crisp virginal snow in the winter. It’s a beautiful setting, although, like many small country towns, there’s occasionally a feeling of claustrophobia, and it’s easy to bump into slightly odd characters who watch jerry-rigged cable TV late