On this day · 78 years ago · 1948
78 Years Ago Today: The Stooges' Guitarist Ron Asheton Is Born
Nobody bought The Stooges' records at the time. Three decades later, half of alternative rock had learned to play like Ron Asheton without even knowing it.
By Axel, Classic-rock desk · Edited by Cadence ·
Ron Asheton, guitarist and co-founder of proto-punk band The Stooges, was born July 17, 1948, in Washington, D.C. His fuzzed-out, wah-heavy playing on 1969's The Stooges and 1970's Fun House helped invent the sound punk and alternative rock would build on for decades. Rolling Stone ranked him among the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. He was found dead of a heart attack in his Ann Arbor home on January 6, 2009, at 60, five years before his brother and bandmate Scott.
From accordion lessons to the Beatles
Ronald Franklin Asheton was born July 17, 1948, in Washington, D.C., per Wikipedia's biography. The family later relocated to Ann Arbor, Michigan, after his father's heart attack, and his father died that December. Asheton had taken accordion lessons as a kid, but it was The Beatles' February 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, just weeks after his father's death, that pushed him toward guitar specifically, according to his sister Kathy Asheton's account in Premier Guitar's oral history of his career. "From that point on, that's what he wanted to do," she said. "He wanted to play guitar. He wanted to be the Beatles."
Forming a band nobody bought records from, yet
Asheton met Iggy Pop at Discount Records in Ann Arbor, where Pop worked and where much of the local music scene connected, and formed a band with his brother, drummer Scott Asheton, and bassist Dave Alexander in 1967. The Psychedelic Stooges, as they first called themselves, played their debut show on Halloween that year. In 1968, Elektra Records signed them alongside fellow Michigan band MC5, and Velvet Underground member John Cale produced their self-titled 1969 debut, home to I Wanna Be Your Dog and No Fun. None of it sold. The Stooges played to half-empty rooms and were, by Kathy Asheton's own account, not popular even locally, let alone overseas.
A tone nobody else had
What made Asheton's playing distinct wasn't technique in the traditional sense: he leaned on power chords, drones, and one-chord vamps, kept an open string ringing to fake a second rhythm part, and chased feedback and noise instead of clean tone. He never used alternate tunings, sticking to standard throughout. His rig evolved from a 1957 sunburst Stratocaster through a Vox Super Beatle amp, then Sunn and Marshall stacks, with a Flying V, a Vox wah pedal, and an Arbiter Fuzz Face doing the rest of the work. 1970's Fun House, the band's second album, captured that raw, largely improvised sound at its rawest. Drugs and mismanagement broke the band up by 1974, not long after 1973's Raw Power, on which Asheton moved to bass so James Williamson could take over lead guitar.
The reunion, and the gear that came with it
The Stooges stayed broken up for nearly three decades until Mike Watt and J Mascis started jamming informally with the Asheton brothers in Ann Arbor, sessions that eventually reached Iggy Pop's ears and led to a full reunion at Coachella in 2003. For that era, Asheton switched to Reverend guitars, two custom Avenger models built by company founder Joe Naylor with a passive bass-contour knob designed at Asheton's request, and later a signature V model. He strung them with GHS Boomers in the standard .010-.046 gauge and rented Marshall JCM800 heads through matching 4x12 cabinets on the road.
Boomers GBL Nickel-Plated Steel (.010-.046)
Why this one: The standard .010-.046 gauge Ron Asheton strung his Reverend guitars with through The Stooges' 2003-2009 reunion era, per Premier Guitar's reporting.
Asheton was found dead of a heart attack in the same Ann Arbor house the Stooges once rehearsed in, on January 6, 2009. He was 60. The Stooges kept going with Iggy Pop and Mike Watt on bass, and the band entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010, a year after Asheton's death. Rolling Stone has twice ranked him among the 100 greatest guitarists of all time, and if you've ever picked a pick gauge to chase a rougher, punkier tone, our guide to picks by genre covers the territory he helped define.
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