R.I.P. RON ASHETON
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 11:37am by Axl RosenbergRon Asheton, founding guitarist of The Stooges, has been found dead in his home in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was 60 years old.
Cause of death has not yet been determined, although the police say they do not suspect foul play.
I know The Stooges aren’t really metal, but they do (did?) rock about as hard as any band ever has, and I’m sure they’ve influenced literally hundreds (if not thousands) of metal acts. Friends of mine who saw some of their reunion gigs over the past few years told me they were still kickin’ as much ass as men half their age; I am now sorrier than ever that I never made it to one of those shows.
It’s hard to choose just one song as my favorite by this legendary band… but here they are performing “I Wanna Be Your Dog” in ‘04.
-AR
This is such a huge loss. I’m listening to the Raw Power album now.
That’s crazy, I was just listening to some Stooges last night, Ron was the fucking man.
This sucks the worst.
This is really sad news. The Stooges fucking rocked. Here’t a clip from a couple of months ago playing Ljubljana with the crowd on the stage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ft2YOrhyc
Huge, huge loss to the music world. You could probably count on one hand the bands that put on as great a live show as the Stooges.
Long live Ron Asheton. Semper imitatum, nunquam idem.
Dude! This sucks soo much! I love the song “My Idea of Fun” that is a great song.
R.I.P.
That was a huge loss of a legend. Now, all the young turds will start flaming this.
Really sad to hear this news – wasn’t massively into them until Download Festival 2004, where they wiped the floor with every other act that weekend. Soon after, I obtained their S/T debut and ‘Raw Power’, the latter of which is one of the finest rock albums ever. I had to listen to it last night in his memory. Truly awesome.
R.I.P. Ron