The Stooges' Ron Asheton Remembered

Ron Asheton, the guitarist in the proto-punk band the Stooges, whose raw, animalistic playing laid the groundwork for the entire punk rock movement, was found dead in his Ann Arbor, Michigan home last night. He was 60. An autopsy is scheduled, but police don't suspect foul play or drug use. Alongside Iggy Pop, David Alexander and his brother Scott, Ron co-wrote such classics "I Wanna Be Your Dog," "No Fun" and "1969."

At the height of the flower-power and psychedelic period of the late 1960s, Asheton pioneered an aggressive, rudimentary and stunningly loud style of playing that was the antithesis of everything popular at the time. The Stooges never achieved commercial success (their 1969 debut peaked at Number 106), but the punk acts that followed — from the New York Dolls to the Sex Pistols and the Ramones — cite them as their single biggest influence. (Thurston Moore explained the band's impact on Sonic Youth at length for Rolling Stone's Immortals feature.)

Asheton grew up in suburban Detroit and had a fascination with rock & roll and Nazi Germany from a young age. "I didn't have a lot of friends," he said in the punk oral history Please Kill Me. "I'd wear SS pins to school and draw swastikas all over my books." One of his few friends was future Stooges bassist Dave Alexander, who took Asheton to England in the mid-1960s where they saw the Who play at the Cavern Club. "It was my first experience of total pandemonium," he said. "Never had I seen people driven so nuts — that music could drive people to such dangerous extremes. That's when I realized, this is definitely what I want to do." (To watch video of Asheton discussing his early influences, click here.)

Within months Asheton had formed the Stooges with Alexander, his brother Scott on drums and record store clerk Jim Ostenberg — soon to be known as Iggy Pop. After earning a reputation for their outrageous live shows around Detroit, Elektra signed the band and hooked them up with the Velvet Underground's Jon Cale. "We'd never been in a recording studio before and we set up Marshall stacks, and set them on 10," Asheton said. "Cale said, 'Oh no, this is not the way.' We said, 'There is no way. We play loud, and his is how we play.' We couldn't play unless it was high volume." (For evidence of the Stooges' onstage power, click here for a photo gallery.)