As has been reported with appropriate thoroughness in the music media worldwide, longtime Stooges drummer Scott “Rock Action” Asheton – the handsomest man in rock’n’roll ever says this red-blooded Aussie bloke – sadly passed away on March 15.
Not only was Scott a goodlooking dude and the coolest cat to ever lay down a beat – Iggy described him in his statement as “cross between a young Sonny Liston and Elvis Presley” - he was also one of rock’s greatest drummers (Iggy again: ““Scott played drums with a boxer’s authority. When he wanted to, he had a heavy hand on the drums… He brought a swinging truth to the music he played and extreme musical honesty”), and a man who, along with his fellow Stooges, became one of the most influential musicians in rock history.
Most famously the Stooges are seen as THE most pivotal influence on punk (arguably there would have been no Ramones, Sex Pistols, Damned or Black Flag without their influence), but their influence was strongly felt earlier that - David Bowie rocked harder in their wake – and, later on , across genres. Just ask LCD Soundsystem, Nick Cave, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Sonic Youth for starters…
And speaking of Sonic Youth, their very name was in fact a tribute (so says Thurston) to the band that Scott Asheton joined following the dissolution of the Stooges in the mid-70s – Sonic’s Rendezvous Band. Led by guitarist Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith, formerly of the Stooges’ ‘big brother’ band the MC5, Sonic’s Rendezvous were the greatest rock band that nobody heard for the remainder of the ‘70s. An incredibly soulful and proficient hard rock band who should have been touring the world with AC/DC or Thin Lizzy, they never got out of the Detroit bar scene, stuck in the record biz wasteland, unwilling to play the punk card and ignored by an industry that still feared what both the Stooges and MC5 had stood for. In their five or so years of existence they released only one 7” single that featured the same track on both sides. But what a track! ‘City Slang’ is the ultimate Detroit rock song and one of the most electric sounding records ever. You can feel the voltage and hear the wattage spit out of the speakers. And underlying the electricity is the heart-pumping, unrelenting beat, driven by our hero Scott.
While Scott Ashton’s death at 64 came as no surprise – the Stooges were notoriously hard living and Scott had quit playing live with the band a couple of years ago due to health reasons (although he played like a champ on their last album, the under-rated and prophetic ‘Ready To Die’), his passing, like that of Lou Reed and UK rabble rouser Mick Farren, signifies that we are right now in the midst of losing those whose fearlessness and commitment to truth and humanity over artifice created a rock’n’roll that has nothing to do with the pop charts and which, if anything, is resonating more strongly than it did when created nearly half a century ago.
-Dave Laing
