Thrasher Skateboard Magazine | Ron Asheton R.I.P.

Hundreds bid Stooges guitarist farewell
Legend was 'what punk rock was all about'

One of the best moments of the memorial tribute for Stooges' guitarist Ron Asheton at the Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday night came after several punkish bands had taken the stage and kicked out raw, driving numbers, including Stooges' tunes.

Out on the stage marched Terry Bradley with a set of bagpipes. He wore a plaid kilt and official bagpiper's uniform, and he stood ramrod straight as he piped "MacCrimmon's Lament," a mournful tune whose droning notes filled the auditorium and silenced the partying crowd.

As Bradley piped, video clips projected on the stage's rear wall showed Asheton playing in local bands like Destroy All Monsters and Dark Carnival. One clip showed a man wagging his tongue.

"One of Ron's last wishes was to be piped to the afterlife," Bradley said.

That sometimes strange mélange of images and sounds captured the anarchistic nature of the high-spirited tribute to Asheton, who was found dead of natural causes in his Ann Arbor home Jan. 6. He was 60.

The snowy night and a huge crowd for a monster truck show at nearby Ford Field delayed the arrival of some audience members, who drifted in throughout the evening, many with a drink or two in hand. By the end of the two-hour program, there were more than 200 people in attendance.

"This is one of those situations that Ronnie would have found hysterical," said the emcee, Colonel Galaxy, a local music scene figure. "A blizzard and monster trucks."

Rick Manore, one of the organizers, chuckled at the unrehearsed nature of the evening.

"It's punk rock. It's got to be loose," he said.

While Asheton was not a household name, he was highly influential in the world of rock and cofounded the legendary Stooges in 1967 in Ann Arbor with his brother Scott and Iggy Pop, who did not appear on stage Saturday night.

Led by the writhing, nihilistic Iggy, the Stooges became one of the most important bands to emerge from southeast Michigan. Unlike the hyperkinetic Iggy on stage, Asheton remained relatively still when playing, dressed like an average Joe. He never blew critics away with his virtuosity.

Yet Rolling Stone magazine named Asheton the 29th greatest guitarist of all time. When Asheton died, the Guardian newspaper of London said in an obituary that his "aggressive and elemental guitar playing" was responsible for much of the Stooges' jarring sound.

On Saturday night, musicians and speakers honored Asheton's memory as a pioneer who showed the way for a couple of generations of guitarists.

"Ron Asheton, in my opinion, was what punk rock was all about," said John Holmstrom, editor and founder of the New York-based Punk magazine. "For every punk band I covered in the 1970s, the Stooges were the No. 1 influence."

Ricky Rat, a guitarist for Bootsey X and the Lovemasters, who performed at the tribute, recalled when he first heard the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog."

"You couldn't compare it to anything. Millions of people in the world could play the guitar to 'I Wanna Be Your Dog,' but no one could play it quite like him," he said. "He was just as unique as Jimi Hendrix."

One speaker, Mike Quatro, a well-known Detroit impresario in the 1960s and '70s, noted Iggy, despite his headliner status, was not necessarily the Stooges' boss.

"I remember Ron as the leader," Quatro said. "He signed all the contracts."

At one point, Colonel Galaxy invited audience members to come to the stage and speak. The first taker said he had gone to high school with Asheton, and proceeded to tell a disjointed story that involved Asheton, the State Fairgrounds, Milky the Clown and a chimpanzee.

As the audience hooted and organizers gently tried to convince the man his story was over, he blurted out a nonsensical punch line: "The place got robbed and they wouldn't pay him!"

The next audience member, Gary Jones, an actor who splits his time between Los Angeles and Michigan, talked of how Asheton had acted in a handful of B movies over the past couple of decades, including the 1995 feature "Mosquito," about bugs that feed on the corpses of passengers of an alien spacecraft that lands in a U.S. National Park. Asheton played Hendricks the park ranger.

"He was a really good actor," Jones said. "He would take a long time to get his lines perfect."

Offstage, Jones recalled getting a phone call from Asheton when "Mosquito" was showing on the Sci-Fi Channel.

"He would say, 'I'm watching myself on TV, and I'm looking pretty damn good.' "

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