Iggy Pop by Paul Trynka Read Free Book Online Page B

simply that of straight man. After a couple of rehearsals at Ricky’s house and at ‘Ox’s’ trailer, Hyacinth and Hodges opened the show. Ricky produced a watering can, and sprinkled imaginary water over his partner, who slowly unfurled and then blossomed into life. Hodges and Hyacinth proceeded to transfix the 2,000 pupils who filled the auditorium, trading jokes and improvising lines; Hodges’s humour was quick-witted, while Hyacinth was simply surreal, prancing around, giggling, skipping across the stage. Today, of course, it sounds quite camp, and Jim Osterberg is slightly defensive of his pioneering alter ego (‘I didn’t even know what a gay person was!’), but it was a hilarious, brave performance that had the high-school audience doubled over with laughter.
    One younger boy, soon to become one of Ann Arbor’s hottest singers, was mesmerised by the performance. He enjoyed the couple of numbers that Jim played with his band the Iguanas, who were also on the bill, but he was most impressed by Hyacinth’s prancing, offbeat antics: ‘Nobody expected anything like this,’ says Scott Morgan. ‘Hyacinth was so entertaining, so charismatic. It was like a preview of what he was to become.’
    Three years later, Morgan would see Jim Osterberg’s public unveiling of Iggy Stooge at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom. He would remember Hyacinth, and realise he’d seen this all before.
     
    Four decades on from that talent show, the class of ’65 weave their way tentatively through the banked seats filling Ann Arbor High’s huge auditorium. The area is in semi-darkness, thanks to holiday restoration work on the electrical system, but it’s still possible to make out an impressive, beautifully designed performance space, which puts to shame many provincial theatres or arts venues. The night before, Jim Osterberg’s reunited class members had met up at Colonial Lanes bowling alley for their forty-year reunion; tonight there will be a formal reception. Very occasionally you can see flashes of old high-school rivalries, the odd mention of ‘snooty Tappan kids’, but it’s an overwhelmingly warm, textbook friendly event, rich with tales of people happily wed to their high-school sweethearts, or who’ve indulged themselves with early retirement, or who’ve gone on to successful careers in academia, engineering or the law.
    Most of Jim’s classmates smile at the mention of his name, and recall his political views or his goofy humour; perhaps two or three recall him as a misguided, eccentric creature whose music could never hold a candle to their favourite Detroit rocker, Bob Seger. Many of the women spontaneously volunteer recollections of his engaging wit and entrancing blue eyes, and maintain that his accounts of being an outcast, or a dork, are quite simply ‘bogus’, as one classmate, Deborah Ward, puts it: ‘Let’s face it, he wasn’t Eminem.’
    Mim Streiff is an elegant, ebullient woman who in her high-school senior year dated Sam Swisher, one of the tallest, wealthiest and classiest boys in Jim’s year. She shares her schoolmates’ warm memories of Jim, a ‘super-smart’ boy, ‘a natural, in the top echelon’, who claimed he would one day be President of the United States. But as we walk along the dark, brick-lined hallways, with their impeccable terrazzo floors and art deco signage, Mim smiles, before she dissects Jim’s achievements forensically - almost brutally: ‘I think Jim tried everything . He was not quite the best at golf; he wasn’t quite an athlete. He wasn’t quite the best at swimming. He was good, but he wasn’t the top debater. He wasn’t the coolest guy, and he didn’t date the coolest girls. But he still wanted to be the coolest. He kept trying . . . but he never quite made it to the top.’
    There was one kid at Ann Arbor High who back in 1965 was undoubtedly aware of this brutal truth; one kid who had a burning belief in himself, and a fierce desire to succeed, and that was