Artist Spotlight

Ron Asheton was the guitarist for the Stooges, and he provided the template for thousands of punk rock and metal bands that would follow. He wasn’t a virtuouso—his technical abilities on the first two Stooges albums may even be questionable—but he had a distinctive sound, a smudged up and distorted growl, that could shred your psyche.

Asheton was a riff master. In fact, when John Cale produced the first Stooges album, he only allowed the band a few minutes to write a song before he started recording. The resulting tracks were almost nothing but riff: a model that the Ramones would transform into a template for punk rock.

Even among the hard partying Stooges, Asheton was always a little weird. He wore iron crosses and leather on stage before anybody else. He wasn’t a fascist; he just liked to shock his neighbors. It was another element he added to the punk rock mix.

After the Stooges disbanded, strung out from drink, drugs, and dreary album sales, Asheton kicked around, always in a band. Whether it was the rock ensemble the New Order (no, not that one) or the rather more experimental Destroy All Monsters, Asheton stayed fresh. You could hear his giddy love of music in the tone of his guitar. By the nineties, he was playing with the generation he had inspired, teaming up with J. Mascis, Mike Watt, Mark Arm, and Thurston Moore for the Velvet Goldmine soundtrack and playing in a revived version of the Stooges, first with Watt and later with the rest of the original band.

He was found dead in his Ann Arbor apartment yesterday of natural causes.

Five Essential Asheton Tracks (with audio)

Exhibit A in the prosecution’s case that the Stooges are guilty of inventing punk rock. It’s two chords and the truth: life is boring and repetitive. The riff sears itself into your skull, and it had become a punk rock standard by the late seventies.

The riff from “I Wanna Be Your Dog” is frankly ridiculous. It’s three descending chords, about as artless as you can get. But it might be the most primal riff in the history of rock. Its simplicity and unrelenting repetition lay bare the basic sexual urge in Iggy Pop’s lyrics and make the song into a visceral experience.

If the first Stooges album sounded like it came straight from a cave, Fun House had a more accomplished sheen to it. The album could still eviscerate an unsuspecting listener, but the band had at least bothered to pack the essence of the blues into their sound. On “Loose,” you can hear Asheton jam his riff into a pure noise abstraction. This is the featured track on Damn Fine Day so click here to get another perspective on this classic Stooges’ song.

It’s a song that can make you fall in love with a guitar tone. Asheton’s riff for “T.V. Eye” is as much a rhythm component as it is the dominant musical motif. And his solo simply shreds.

There’s something about the space that Asheton’s guitar figure creates during this tune that makes you imagine a great expanse of highway that will take you to a secluded spot in the woods where you can drink until you puke and spend your Saturday night just being young and stupid. The fact that the tune is a cacophony by its end, squealing saxophone and all, just puts it closer to the bared nerve of the American psyche.

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