R.I.P. Ron Asheton

Ron Asheton was the shit. Pretty much invented punk rock, when you think about it. Sure, Iggy was the frontman, but he was an animal. Ron caged the beast, gave Iggy some structure to monkey with, and managed to invent a fucking genre in the process.
There were tons of guitarists that could play Asheton under the table, but there’s his brilliance. While others were decorating their shit with flowers, liquid light shows and cheesy sitars, Ron took his primitive approach and ran it through a combo amp as loud as he could.
Ask The Ramones who the common denominator was and they’d tell you “The Stooges.”
What was the last song the Sex Pistols played at Winterland? The Stooges.
Name the band where you need to have every single proper album that was released? The Stooges.
Of course, we’re not talking about The Weirdness and we’re admitting that Iggy moved Ron to bass for Raw Power. But the groundwork for everything was founded on a few chords this man knew and an everyman notion that even a geeky looking kid from a shitty Midwestern town could play rock and roll.
And every once in a great while, that same geeky kid managed to change the face of the genre that encouraged him to pick up the guitar in the first place.

One of the best Ron Asheton memories for me is one that he wasn't even at, but his spirit was. A few of us gathered to dick around in my basement years ago looking for something to play. My cousin suggested "No Fun," and within thirty seconds he showed me the chords and we began to play it for nearly a half-hour. Some girls came down from upstairs (read: our wives) and asked us if we knew any other songs. The point is, we didn't need to know any other songs. Ron probably knew that already.

Another Ron Asheton story...and another basement. A few of us gathered in the basement of my old house in Cedar Falls. Again, we were seeking inspiration and again someone suggested a Stooges song. This time it was "I Wanna Be Your Dog." The chords were learned, but still, one guitarist continued to struggle with it. Without naming names, this particular guitarist went on to prove to be a very good guitarist and still performs to this day. Anyway, on this night long ago, he had challenges with keeping time on a song that is, essentially, three chords repeated over and over. After resigning with my own "Oh come on!" with more exasperation than what Iggy does on vinyl, we resigned ourselves to the sloppy performance before the song truly began to make sense. "I Wanna Be Your Dog" wasn't really meant to be "perfect" or to be "perfected." The song is just a vague blueprint for us to follow. Twists, turns, and fluctuations in time are merely part of the journey.

Two stories, each one very telling: his guitar work was easy enough for the most amateur of players to learn in just a few minutes, yet tough enough for even the best of players to figure out.

Ron Asheton embodied that spirit and after only sixty years, he's left us alone in the basement to figure it out for ourselves.