1. Iggy’s constant self-mythologising may provide quite a wall for beginners to cut through, but as anyone who’s spent sufficient time with the records will know, the Asheton Bros plus Dave Alexander WERE The Stooges. Now they’re all gone.

2. People writing about punk/rock/garage music often fall back on talking about ‘caveman drumming’, ‘primal thumping’ etc, and most of the time it’s all so much automated cliché, but if you want an example of some PUREST UG, check out Scott A. on the first Stooges album; sounds like they’ve just let him out of his cage in the zoo to lay down some thud! It's like he learned his chops watching the bigger apes beating their chests.

3. Well, that’s on the SURFACE at least…. dig further into the rhythm tracks on any of those songs (bar the long, shit one of course) and you’ll hear what a vicious, unconventional and totally single-minded approach this guy took to rock drumming – rarely equalled, not that many people dared try. Beneath the simplistic/untutored façade, he’s got the Charlie Watts pulse down, plus the crash & band of a big Motown influence, and it is flat-out amazing to hear things come into full-bloom on ‘Funhouse’. Of course, absolutely every element of ‘Funhouse’ is so amazing that it’s easy to overlook the drums, but they are HEAVY man, rolling and crashing and *right there* at the exact second the song needs a push. The sheer PLAYING from everyone on that album, jesus christ, the field of “rock”s not seem it’s like before or since, but… well, there are about a thousand ‘Henry Rollins picks his favourite albums’ interviews where you can read all this crap, so I’ll not go on about it too much.

4. From what I recall from my years studying ye olde history books, Scott was the younger brother, wild and dumb and impressionable, real ‘drug-hoover’ type, and he was very much Iggy’s drug-buddy as the band (or 50% of it at least) plunged heavily into smack. (Seems Alexander was more into the booze, and Ron was the straight man trying to pull them all together.) I believe Scott was also the one at the wheel when the band ploughed their van into a low-headroom bridge, putting a suitably destructive end to Stooges Mk. 1. (Correct me if I’m wrong in any of that.)

5. After the ‘Raw Power’ years, Scott put in some fine (if slightly more conventional) work drumming for Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith’s Sonic Rendezvous Band, whose scattered recordings remain essential listening for anyone with a yen for rough, punk-spirited heavy rock, way-out ‘70s guitar noise and the like. Wikipedia tells me that in the ‘90s, he recorded four whole albums with The Testors’ Sonny Vincent, in a line-up that also featured Captain Sensible on bass. I did not know that.

6. So in summation: a brilliant drummer and key member of probably the greatest capital letters Rock Band of all time, he will be missed.

Labels: deathblog, Scott Asheton, The Stooges