RON ASHETON
Ron Asheton (July 17, 1948 – c. January 6, 2009) was an American guitarist, bassist and co-songwriter with Iggy Pop for the rock band the Stooges. He formed the Stooges along with Pop and his brother, drummer Scott Asheton, and bassist Dave Alexander. Asheton, once ranked as number 29 on Rolling Stone’s list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time is currently (as of November 2014) ranked at number 60. (More from Wikipedia)
Dark Carnival was sort of a Detroit punk supergroup that was assembled by Detroit music promoter Colonel Galaxy, whose name was a nod to Elvis Presley’s longtime manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Bootsey X was the first bandmember to be recruited; others included his bandmate in the Ramrods, Mark Norton, plus (as listed in Wikipedia): “Gary Adams from the Cubes [who was also a sometime bandmember in the Lovemasters], Mike McFeaters from What Jane Shared, Jerry Vile from the Boners, Sarana VerLin from Natasha, Greasy Carlisi from Motor City Bad Boys, Robert Gordon and Art Lyzak from the Mutants, Joe Hayden from Bugs Bedow, Pete Bankert from Weapons, [and] Larry Steel from the Cult Heroes.
“Later, Dark Carnival saw some turnover, with the ‘big’ names signing on: Niagara from Destroy All Monsters, Ron [Asheton] and Scott Asheton from the Stooges, Cheetah Chrome from the Dead Boys, Jim Carroll even came in from New York.”
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Credits for “(Santa’s Got a) Bomb for Whitey” by the Lovemasters / Dark Carnival are Bootsey X (lead vocals), Ron Asheton (lead guitar and backing vocals), Gary Adams (guitar), Joe Hayden (bass), and Ron Cumbo (drums). I have no idea what the song is about, but the infectious repetition of “got a bomb for whitey” that recurs throughout the song typically runs through my head for weeks every time I play this CD.
(March 2016)
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The Stooges (also known as Iggy and the Stooges) are the prototype of proto-punk. Like MC5, they are a Detroit band, or more properly an Ann Arbor band. As Stephen Thomas Erlewine observes in his Allmusic article: “Taking their cue from the over-amplified pounding of British blues, the primal raunch of American garage rock, and the psychedelic rock (as well as the audience-baiting) of the Doors, the Stooges were raw, immediate, and vulgar. Iggy Pop became notorious for performing smeared in blood or peanut butter and diving into the audience. Ron [Asheton] and Scott Asheton formed a ridiculously primitive rhythm section, pounding out chords with no finesse – in essence, the Stooges were the first rock & roll band completely stripped of the swinging beat that epitomized R&B and early rock & roll.”
After seeing a concert by the Doors, Iggy Pop (using the moniker Iggy Stooge) formed the Stooges in 1967 with Ron Asheton (guitar), Scott Asheton (drums), and Dave Alexander (bass). As an opening act for MC5, the Stooges lucked into a major label contract when the Elektra Records talent scout signed both acts.
Writing for Allmusic, Mark Deming says of their debut album, The Stooges: “[The Stooges] didn’t really sound like anyone else around when their first album hit the streets in 1969. It’s hard to say if Ron Asheton, Scott Asheton, Dave Alexander, and the man then known as Iggy Stooge were capable of making anything more sophisticated than this; but if they were, they weren’t letting on, and the best moments of this record document the blithering inarticulate fury of the post-adolescent id. Ron Asheton’s guitar runs (fortified with bracing use of fuzztone and wah-wah) are so brutal and concise they achieve a naïve genius, while Scott Asheton’s proto-Bo Diddley drums and Dave Alexander’s solid bass stomp these tunes into submission with a force that inspires awe. And Iggy’s vividly blank vocals fill the ‘so what?’ shrug of a thousand teenagers with a wealth of palpable arrogance and wondrous confusion.”
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Continuing in the Allmusic article, Stephen Thomas Erlewine talks about the genesis of the Stooges’ third album: “Early in 1972, [Iggy] Pop happened to run into David Bowie, then at the height of his Ziggy Stardust popularity and an avowed Stooges fan. Bowie made it his mission to resuscitate Iggy & the Stooges, as the band was then billed. Iggy and [James] Williamson were signed to a management deal with MainMan, the firm guiding Bowie’s career, and the new edition of the band scored a deal with Columbia Records. Temporarily based in London and unable to find a suitable rhythm section in the U.K., Iggy and Williamson invited the Asheton brothers to join the new group, with Scott [Asheton] on drums and Ron [Asheton] moved to bass. Iggy produced the third Stooges album, Raw Power, and Bowie handled the mix. Released in 1973 to surprisingly strong reviews, Raw Power had a weird, thin sound due to various technical problems . . . [with] many Stooges purists blam[ing] Bowie for the brittle mix.”
(December 2016)
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Iggy Pop began working with the Stooges again on his 2003 album, Skull Ring that also featured several younger artists: Green Day, the Trolls, Sum 41, and Peaches. The Stooges toured extensively between 2003 and 2008 with founding members Iggy Pop (vocals), Ron Asheton (guitar), and Scott Asheton (drums), along with (at Ron Asheton’s suggestion) new bandmember Mike Watt (bass guitar), formerly of Minutemen and fIREHOSE, and guest musician Steve Mackay (saxophone), who had performed on the Fun House album. During these tours, the Stooges released an album of all new material, The Weirdness (2007). Also, Elektra Records reissued the band’s first two albums, The Stooges and Fun House in deluxe 2-CD packages in 2005.
After Ron Asheton was found dead in January 2009 of an apparent heart attack, James Williamson was brought back into the line-up, and the Stooges continued to perform concerts around the world until June 2016, when James Williamson announced: “The Stooges is over. Basically, everybody’s dead except Iggy [Pop] and I. So it would be sort-of ludicrous to try and tour as Iggy and the Stooges when there’s only one Stooge in the band and then you have side guys. That doesn’t make any sense to me.” One last album was released by the Stooges in 2013, Ready to Die that was better received by the critics than The Weirdness.
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Against the odds, Iggy Pop turns 70 next month, and his music is as vital as ever. His most recent album, Post Pop Depression (2016), ranks 4 stars from Allmusic; Mark Deming writes: “When it was announced that Iggy Pop would be collaborating with Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, the music press buzzed with anticipation about the project. What would the proto-punk icon and the snarky hard rock smart guy come up with? The surprise answer is 2016’s Post Pop Depression, in many respects an unwitting but loving tribute to Pop’s friend and collaborator David Bowie. Post Pop Depression arrived two months after Bowie’s death, and was completed before his health problems became common knowledge. More than anything, though, this music evokes the sound and feel of Pop’s first two solo albums. 1977’s The Idiot and Lust for Life were cut with Bowie in Germany as Pop struggled to make sense of his life and career after the Stooges collapsed. With the reunited Stooges gone following the deaths of Ron [Asheton] and Scott Asheton, Post Pop Depression finds Pop returning to the work he made in 1977, in ways that count the most. Post Pop Depression is smart and thoughtful, intelligent without being pretentious, and full of bold but introspective thinking.”
(March 2017)
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As I might have mentioned already, like Kill City the album that became Raw Power started off as a collaboration between Iggy Pop and James Williamson also. Iggy Pop had been signed with MainMan Management, the company that handled David Bowie. They were recording in England, and after many auditions for a rhythm section, James Williamson suggested that the Asheton brothers be flown over from the U.S.; Scott Asheton sat in on drums, while the Stooges’ founding guitarist Ron Asheton reluctantly agreed to become the bass guitarist. Only at that point did it truly start to become a Stooges album.
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In a long essay in the booklet for Rough Power that includes an interview with guitarist/bassist Ron Asheton, Frank Meyer says of David Bowie’s involvement: “Finally . . . Iggy brought the tapes to [David] Bowie in L.A. for remixing and mastering. Bowie’s mix turned out to be very different than the original Stooges mix. He buried the drums and bass, took out backup vocals, percussion and keyboard parts, and brought the lead guitar up in the mix. While the band was not happy with it, CBS [Records] was thrilled that [Raw Power] was produced by Ziggy Stardust himself, and felt it would boost sales. Although Bowie’s mix stands the test of time and, in fact, adds to the overall originality of the album, it’s very interesting to hear some of the Stooges’ original attempts.”
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The liner notes for Wild Love, which sound like they were written by Greg Shaw, lay out the process that Bomp! Records went through to sift through the box of tapes that James Williamson gave them. The box included rehearsal tapes from Detroit, CBS Records in New York, and probably Los Angeles that evidently date from 1973, plus others made in 1972 that included demos for some songs that wound up on Kill City. However, there was no way to know for certain when much of the music was recorded, since the tapes were mostly unlabeled or incorrectly labeled. Among the bandmembers in the Stooges, only Ron Asheton was forthcoming with information about the tapes, and he was unclear on many of the details or wasn’t present at all.
After pulling the finished studio masters that provided the songs on the Kill City, I’m Sick of You and I Got a Right albums, and also the live concert performances that make up a third to a half of the Iguana Chronicles releases, the remaining tapes were almost all post-Raw Power rehearsal sessions. Greg Shaw mentioned that songs like “Johanna” and “Head On” were practiced seven or eight times in a row, often with stops and starts. Many of these songs were taken out on the road after Raw Power was released and often show up on the Iguana Chronicles concert albums. The best of these rehearsal performances were pulled out and assembled, along with selected live versions of other songs, for the hypothetical fourth album by the Stooges that was released as Open Up and Bleed!.
(December 2017)
