“[The Stooges] didn’t really have proper songs, we had pieces of riffs—we were just a riff band, and pieces of it developed into the first record… You get frustrated sometimes because your head hears what you want to do and your hands can’t, but you block that out, and you just go and go…”

- Ron Asheton, 2008

When I consider all the rock ‘n’ roll bands that have come and gone under our predominantly hydrogen-based sun, I don’t think any define young male collegiate adulthood (ages 18-24) better than the Stooges. By that I really mean the feeling of young male collegiate adulthood. On the one hand, you’ve got the basic aesthetics embodied by skin n’ bone Stooges frontman Iggy Pop (shirtlessness, stupid dancing, and fucking). On the other clammy paw, you’ve got the group’s sonic platter—a lazy, over-sexual fuzzed-out mess of syrup-thick guitars and freak-out pow-wow drumming. No sound better exemplifies or represents the cloudy period of unattended erections and warm beer that greets every dude between high school and legal car-renting age.

Ronald Frank Asheton, who died January 6th at the age of 60, was an undeniable part of that equation, squeezing out the tasty and repetitive guitar noise that laid the foundation for the Stooges’ groundbreaking proto-punk sound. Ron’s growling git-box was the hairy beast missing link between twangy ’60s garage rock and full-on ’70s punk blasting. The way he could beat you utterly senseless with the same three notes for four or five minutes was almost poetic. Certain Asheton disciples, it has been said, played exactly to the point where you just can’t take any more. I think the opposite was true with Ron; he could lock into grooves with Brother Scott on drums that you’d never want to end. “No Fun”, for instance. There’s a reason the Sex Pistols would play that song for 10 or 12 minutes in concert. It’s more addictive than mainlining Nutella.

I remember hearing “No Fun” for the first time on the house sound at Side One Records, the hippest record shop in all of Volusia County, one otherwise stupid afternoon during my freshman year of college. It made me want to put on the darkest sunglasses I could find, clap my hands, and nod my head with my mouth open like a mental patient whacked out on rhino tranquilizers. It was that good. This vinyl copy of The Stooges was priced at $15—I think it was some kind of collector’s item because Dave Alexander had farted on it or some shit. I wasn’t about to pay that, but the cavalier soul of “No Fun” stuck with me. How could it not? That riff was, as a Vermont hippie might say, so crunchy. I’d have The Stooges in my possession by year’s end, basking in the strange desperation of “I Wanna Be Your Dog” over and over again as I waited for my girlfriend to get home from church on Christmas Eve. It really helped mellow me out when she was three hours late and refused to stay at my house longer than 15 minutes.

Alright, enough of that horseshit. Everyone knows and loves the first two Stooges albums. They’re stone cold classics that have put serious rock fans’ lederhosen in a situation since the general public first ignored them in 1930 or whenever the hell they originally came out. This piece is about Ron Asheton. Before the cavalcade of hard drugs, illicit sex, and spent money that was the Stooges, what was this guy’s life like? Born in Washington, D.C., musically Ron was originally drawn to the accordion because it was his great aunt’s instrument of choice (“I’d play in ensembles and as a soloist,” Ron once told an interviewer. “I thought, ‘Wow, this is cool!’”). Like so many of his generation, Asheton found his rock calling when the Beatles first exploded onto the scene. In fact, the guitarist traveled to England in 1965 with the aforementioned Dave Alexander in an attempt to meet John, Paul, George, and Ringo. The boys didn’t meet the Beatles, but they did see a rather wild Who show at some dingy London club. Thus Ron’s desire to become a full-time rock star was cemented.

Returning to their adopted home of Ann Arbor, Michigan, Ron and Dave put together their own band with Ron’s brother Scott and a local record store clerk named James Osterberg, who would later insist everyone call him Iggy. The rest, as they say, is history. Loud, sweaty, illegal substance-heavy history. These days, you can’t swing a dead sloth in a bar, rec center, or halfway house without accidentally hitting at least two seriously devoted Stoogeaholics. Iggy Pop is, of course, a huge solo star who lives in Miami, but he wouldn’t be rubbing elbows with Sage Stallone and David Letterman if it weren’t for Ron Asheton’s endless parade of ass-shakin’ white boy groove riffs. Really, without the groundwork of the Stooges, what makes Iggy Pop any better or fiercer than [INSERT ’80S POP ROCKER WHO IS NEITHER GOOD NOR FIERCE]?