I never thought I'd see the day when I'd hear four Stooges songs on the radio in one day. I was at work today, and out of nowhere "
I Wanna Be Your Dog" comes on. I'm instantly transported, and in an instant, all sorts of memories associated with the first two Stooges albums start to get tangled in my already vunerable
should-be-plugging-away work mindset. (But not before turning it up.) Then the DJ comes on and says that Ron Asheton, the Stooges guitarist, had died....Fu-huck.
.It was bound to happen. People get older, they die. In all sorts of occupations. People post tributes and mp3s on their blogs, and links get emailed to rowdy old friends. One after another, you've seen them pass. But now, in this, the era of dying under-appreciated rock legends, it's starting to get personal.
.My friend Ed turned me on to the Stooges, in 1977. He read Creem magazine way more religliously than I did, and took their recommendations seriously. He had been on the lookout for Stooges albums, then out of print, long before punk rock increased their archetype equity. I'm not certain, but I think my first Stooges album was from his stash.
.Without going into more detail than I should, suffice it to say that the first two Stooges album have a lot of memories tied to them, thirty years of memories. "Turn it down!" memories, hangover memories, getting laid memories, DJing memories, sitting-around-with-other-guys-who-can't-get-dates memories...you get the picture. And it is Ron Asheton's buzz saw/wah-wah/feedback-bleeding guitar, not Iggy Pop's vocals, that dominate those Stooges inspired flashbacks-gone-wild.
For it is written, in the Book of Bacon Street, Clapton most assuredly is not God. But Ron Asheton is close. (He is in this house.) As rock guitar goes, he's got very few peers. There have been great guitarists in every type of rock n' roll, and most of them are technically better than Asheton. But very few were radically original players, and fewer still capable of turning volume knobs from the grooves of a record. (That much I know, as the owner of once prized JBL speakers that were blown beyond repair from one such Stooges spin.) Not even other noted early punk influences Johnny Ramone, Johnny Thunders or Wayne Kramer, had the punch of Asheton on those first two Stooges LPs. Lest the reader imagine him as a one dimensional three chord wonder: he was a jazz freak.
His MySpace page lists Sun Ra in his top 7, and Thurston Moore, a rather noisy guitarist in his own rite,
described the Stooges thusly: "Their music was total high-energy blues, with the contemporary freakout of Jimi Hendrix and the free-jazz spirit of John Coltrane." As the kids say,
true dat.
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While shirtless showboat Iggy Pop claimed much of the spotlight, later claiming creation of the Stooges sound, ask any Stooge fiend. Pop's decline started post-Funhouse, coinciding with the courtship of coattail anchor #1, David Bowie. Raw Power, the third Stooges LP (laden with Bowie-stink), while more sophisticated, lacked the intensity and, er, raw power of the first two albums. Within a few years, Pop would be getting cozy with Dinah Shore and resting on laurels that weren't rightfully his. Meanwhile Asheton soldiered on, in a succession of bands, never straying far from his Ann Arbor roots. (He actually passed away in the house he grew up in.) Why, then, isn't he better known? One word: humility. He was a regular guy, without the look-at-me ego required for rock stardom. A telling quote from after the first Stooges reunion, a few years ago:
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“When I was a young guy coming up, going to the Grande Ballroom every weekend, I got to see my heroes play. Jeff Beck, the Who, everyone. I didn’t want to be a fanboy, but I’d stand there and wait — ‘I just want to say hi, this was great.’ I saw them walk by me with blank stares like they were zombies. I said to myself, you know, if I ever make it, I’ve got at least one minute for everybody who wants to say something. So I talk to people, and that’s what’s exciting now.” Dude was a saint.
Check out the mp3s below, particularly the full version of
No Fun, all 6:48 gloriously noisy minutes. If there is any doubt who was the foundation of the Stooges sound, and an archetype for all future punk rock guitar players, after three minutes you should start to see what I've been getting at. If you've got an open mind, and feel brave, there's a mash-up of the Stooges and Salt-N-Pepa that, with Iggy Pop mixed out, shows Asheton's guitar capable of making even a couple hip hop divas rock.
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at Pogo a go-go WARNING: Mash-up alert; purists proceed with caution .
