Ron Asheton, the influential guitarist for legendary punk band the Stooges, was found dead early this morning at his home in Ann Arbor, police said.
Ann Arbor Police Sgt. Brad Hill said the department received a call around midnight with a request to check on Asheton, 60, because the unidentified caller said he had not heard from the guitarist in a few days. Police went to his home and found him deceased.
The death is still under investigation, but foul play is not suspected, Hill said.
The Stooges was founded in 1967 in Ann Arbor by Iggy Pop, Asheton and Ron Asheton’s brother, Scott. It is among the most important rock groups to have emerged from the Detroit area, a place that’s seen more than its share. The band was never a commercial success in its late 1960s and early ‘70s heyday, but the Stooges’ raw guttural sound helped create the template for punk rock, and later became hugely influential in the alternative-rock revolution of the late 1980s and early ‘90s.
Asheton was not an incredibly gifted player technically, but the dirgy, guttural sounds he created on early Stooges classics like “I Wanna Be Your Dog” were cited by guitarists as varied as Kurt Cobain, Thurston Moore and Jack White — who once called the Stooges’ 1969 effort “Fun House” the greatest rock album of all time. In a 2003 list by Rolling Stone magazine, the publication named Asheton the 29th-greatest rock guitarist of all time.
JackRabbit Café contributor TBLMISBT notes that Asheton "was perhaps more influential than any other guitarist because you didn't have to be a freak of nature to mimic his style."
TBLMISBT ranks Asheton second only to Maybelle Carter as the most under-appreciated guitarist of all-time.
This might be the only place you'll read of Mother Maybelle and Ron Asheton in the same paragraph.
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