The story of Iggy Pop is well-known, a legend steeped in peanut butter, blood and broken glass. The history of his creator, Jim Osterberg, in contrast is an obscure one, except for folks in Washtenaw County, Michigan, where a generation of his schoolmates remember him, not as a countercultural icon, but as a boy who they thought would be their own John F Kennedy.

 

Today, Iggy Pop is endearingly embarrassed by his well-behaved alter-ego and claims he was regarded as ‘a dork’ by his peers. Yet the young James Newell Osterberg Jr was not just a talented schoolboy politician. He was one of the most impressive children – “an amazing young person, confident, a real go-getter”, according to girlfriend Cindy Payne – his contemporaries can recall. In 9th grade, he signed several of his friends’ year book with the legend “Jim Osterberg, 43rd president of the United States.” Quite a few of them believed him, for he was voted the “Most Likely To Succeed” boy at Tappan Junior High School, Ann Arbor,  in 1962.

 

Jim had a comfortable, if unconventional middle class upbringing, his father an English teacher, his mother a secretary at the Bendix Corporation. Parents James Sr and Louella spent their money on matching Cadillacs rather than an impressive house, and young Osterberg was ashamed of the trailer home where the family lived, at Coachville Gardens in Ypsilanti. You could say he overcompensated, for in his high school years he would invariably be seen in pristine preppie dress, with neatly-pressed slacks, sweater and seersucker jacket; many fellow pupils were convinced he lived in Ann Arbor Hills, the area of town populated by doctors, architects and University of Michigan professors; that was where he hung out with his best friend Kenny Miller, who exemplified Osterberg’s high class connections, for Kenny was the son of Arjay Miller, President of the Ford Motor company, and godson of Robert McNamara, a previous Ford President who became the US Secretary of Defense.