Photo by Vincent Guignet
Listen to the single "Frenzy." Every Loser out January 6th, 2023.
Every Loser is Iggyās 19th solo album and his first to be released via the recently announced partnership between Atlantic Records and Gold Tooth Records, the new label founded by the albumās Grammy Award-winning, multi-platinum executive producer, Andrew Watt. Listen to "Frenzy:" HERE
The cover of Every Loser is an original piece of art created by world renowned contemporary fine artist Raymond Pettibon. Pettibon burst onto the scene in the late 70s and designed iconic album covers for artists such as Sonic Youth and Black Flag with his signature comic book-like drawings. Pettibonās work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States and around the world, including an installation of the High Line Billboard in New York and a solo exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
Credit: Raymond Pettibon
Every Loser Tracklist:
1. Frenzy
2. Strung Out Johnny
3. New Atlantis
4. Modern Day Rip Off
5. Morning Show
6. The News For Andy
7. Neo Punk
8. All The Way Down
9. Comments
10. My Animus Interlude
11. The Regency
Every Loser out January 6th, 2023. More info: iggypop.com.
The guitar anti-hero who started the Stooges and changed the sound of rock 6-stringās future, paving the way for ā¦ everything.
Late 1960s Ann Arbor, Michiganāa sleepy college town about 45 minutes west of Detroitāis the unlikely birthplace of punk. But it was there, led by a local band called the Stooges, that Americaās most visceral, degenerate export was born.
The Stooges werenāt Eastern Michiganās most popular band at the time. That honor went to the MC5. But the Stooges may have been the most importantāeven compared to Michigan artists like Bob Seger, Alice Cooper, and Ted Nugent, that would go on to sell out arenas in the next decade. The Stooges classic songs, like āT.V. Eyeā and āI Wanna Be Your Dog,ā have been covered over and over by numerous artists. The chaos they inspired is today standard behavior at most punk, hardcore, alternative, indie, and metal shows. They embraced noise. They were aggressive and confrontational. They werenāt hippies, despite their late-ā60s pedigree. They were ahead of their time andāthis isnāt clichĆ©d or hyperbolicāpioneered the next half-century of alternative rock.
In addition to his bandās influence, the Stoogesā guitarist, Ron Asheton, made a significant impact as well. He embraced power chords. His tone was grating and jagged. He didnāt play with that vintage tube warmth associated with many of his contemporaries. And he loved feedback and noise. As his bandās only guitarist, he found ways to make his 6-string sound like more than one instrument. He explored non-Western tonalities and experimented with drones.
In hindsight, the Stooges are famous for their nihilistic, antagonistic performances and their lead singerās self-destructive anticsāsome say Iggy Pop invented stage diving and crowd surfingāas well as their straightforward, no-nonsense songwriting, and Ashetonās innovative guitar playing. But at the time, no one was interested. The Stooges released three albums that didnāt sell well. They played to half-empty clubs and were taunted and harassed by their audiences. They didnāt have a loyal fan base and they werenāt popular overseas. In 1974, plagued by drug use and mismanagement, the Stooges broke up.
Not that anyone noticed.
But payback is sweet. The mainstream may have ignored the Stooges, but the underground grew to adore them. Over the next three decades, young bands dissected their music, copied their sound, and used them as a starting point to invent new genres and movements. Their legend grew and their albums, while never radio-friendly, continued to sell.
In 2003, after a 29-year hiatus, the Stooges regrouped with Mike Watt on bass for a one-off performance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. That performance led to a tour, which led to a full-fledged reunion. But unlike the old days, the reunited Stooges headlined major festivals and played to enthusiastic crowds numbering in the tens of thousands. Whatās more, they werenāt a nostalgia act. Their audiences were young and the old-timers kept their distance. It was as if the culture had finally caught up with them.
Ron Asheton died in 2009, and although the Stoogesā story has been told many times over, those retellings usually focus on the bandās iconic countercultural status and Iggy Popās larger-than-life persona. Much less has been written about Ashetonās guitar playing, sonic choices, and gear. Our hope is to remedy that. We spoke to his family, roadies, old friends, collaborators, and bandmates, and bring you this picture of an important and influential talent.
The Beginning
Ron Asheton was born in Washington, D.C., on July 17, 1948. His fatherās business took the family to Davenport, Iowa, and then, following his dadās heart attack, to Ann Arbor, Michigan. āOur momās parents and family were in Michigan,ā Kathy Asheton, Ronās younger sister says. Ron was the oldest of three siblings. Stooges drummer Scott Asheton was in the middle. āThey decidedānot sure how our dad would be doingāto move so we could be near family. Sadly, about a year later, our father passed away, in December, 1963.ā
Ashetonās mother, while still in Iowa, encouraged her children to take music lessons. Ron studied the accordion, Scottāyears before discovering rock ānā rollātook drum lessons, and Kathy sang. Those music lessons stopped with the familyās move to Michiganāalong with the uncertainty that accompanied their fatherās illness and early deathāand Ron put his interest in music on hold.
At least, until the Beatles played The Ed Sullivan Show. āThe Beatles came in February of ā64, right after our father passed away, and that got Ronny going,ā Kathy says. āFrom that point on, thatās what he wanted to do. He wanted to play guitar. He wanted to be the Beatles. So thatās how that started for him.ā
With āI Wanna Be Your Dogā and ā1969,ā the Stoogesā 1969 debut alone would be enough to qualify Ron Asheton, at right, just behind Iggy Pop, as a guitar giant. His drumming brother, Scott, is at center, with bassist Dave Alexander at rear.
He also traveled to England, along with future Stooges bassist Dave Alexander, during his senior year in high school. āThere was a good friend of hisāalso from a very good family in Ann Arborāand they had moved to England,ā Kathy Asheton says, putting to rest a number of myths about her brotherās early days. āIt wasnāt like he was just floating off into a land of strangers. He had a family connection there, which was part of the, āyes, you have permission to go.ā It was the biggest thing. Heād write letters. Ronny wrote letters to Bill Cheathamāwho was his best, dearest friend [Editorās note: Cheatham was a roadie for the Stooges and also played second guitar in the band for a short period, before being replaced by James Williamson.]āsaying that he met Ringo. They started a rumor in high school that āRonny met Ringo.ā But it was really a joke. He never did meet anybody. He saw the Who there, but he didnāt meet any of them.ā
After he returned, Asheton played bass in a number of local bands, often running through a fuzz pedal and wah-wah, including the Chosen Few, which included future Iggy and the Stooges guitarist James Williamson. He also shared a stage with the Prime Movers, whose drummer was Iggy Pop.
āHe met Iggy at the local Discount Records,ā Kathy says. āThatās where Iggy worked, and that was the music hub of Ann Arbor, where everybody connected.ā
Ronāas a guitaristāstarted the band that would eventually morph into the Stooges original line-up, featuring Pop, Alexander on bass, and his brother Scott on drums. āWe were all shook up when our father passed away, but Scotty took it very hard,ā Kathy Asheton says. āHe was hanging out with, say, the wrong people and our mom was concerned about that. Ronny took Scotty under his wing and took him to all the Chosen Few shows, just to keep an eye on him. Scotty was like their little roadie at the gigs. He would help out with the drum kit, and thatās when he started taking more interest in playing drums.ā
The bandās original name was the Psychedelic Stooges, which was a tip of the hat to the Three Stooges. āRon was a huge fan of the Three Stooges,ā says Deniz Tek, the guitarist in the legendary Australian punk band Radio Birdman and an old friend of Ronās from Ann Arbor. āAt one point, when he was a kid, he was the president of the Three Stooges fan club. Later, when Ron was living in Hollywood, he knew Larry Fine from the Three Stooges. Larry was in a nursing home in Beverley Hills and Ron would often go visit him and help him out with answering his fan mail and stuff like that. He would get cigars and whisky for him.ā
The early Stooges didnāt sound like anything else. They were loud, raucous, raw, free, and improvisatory. They didnāt have a set listāor even established songsāand crafted each performance to fit the event. Their focus wasnāt developing a repertoire, but putting on a show and making each night an experience.
āThey were doing what they called āEnergy Freakouts,ā or jams,ā Tek says. āIt was fascinating to me as a teenager to attend those shows, because I never saw anything like it. Scotty would bang on 44-gallon oilcans with steel pipes. Iggy made noise, putting mics in blenders and things like that. Ron just had this raw guitar mayhem. They would adapt it to the gig.ā
āThe gigs were one big jam,ā Mike Watt (Minutemen, Firehose) says. Watt was the Stoogesā bassist throughout their 2003-ā14 reunion. āRonny told me about making noise with an electric blender, Dave Alexander throwing the amp down to make sounds, and Scotty beating oil drums with their horoscope signs painted on them. It was a whole different thing than what we know from Stoogesā albums.ā
The Stoogesā āforgotten boyā is now a patriarch of punk guitar whose passion for playing Les Pauls through dimed Vox AC30s remains undiminished after nearly a half-century.
James Williamsonās simple, violent rhythm work, searing leads, and iconic raunchy distortion on āSearch and Destroyāāand all of the Stoogesā Raw Powerāhelped light the fuse and inform the sound of the punk rock revolution as it was ripe to explode. Williamsonās guitar work on Raw Power is imprinted within punk rockās very DNA, from the records coming out of New York City in the early ā70s to the British class of ā77.
James R. Williamson was tasked with guitar and co-songwriting duties in the Stooges after the bandās original guitarist, Ron Asheton, was relegated from guitar to bass amid the incredible turbulence that characterized the Stoogesā world in the early ā70s. From the visceral guitar assault of tracks like āSearch and Destroyā to the moody riffs of āGimme Dangerā to the psychedelic meanderings of āI Need Somebody,ā Williamsonās 6-string is the true bedrock of Raw Power, and there is no doubt that his contributions to that highly influential album will continue to echo through the lexicon of guitar music for decades to come.
Williamsonās post-Stooges tale is nearly as compelling as that of the bandās own debauched early-ā70s trip. The Stooges disbanded for the second and final time of their initial run in 1974ādestitute, drug-addled, and in a state of obscurity following a failed attempt by David Bowie to help them break out in England.
In a stranger-than-fiction twist, the former guitarist of one of the most untamable bands of all time returned to the States to study electrical engineering and eventually re-emerged as a fixture in Silicon Valley, where he designed products around microchips when that technology was in its infancy. Williamsonās years in the tech world would prove to be tremendously fruitful and led to an executive role at Sony as the vice president of technological standards. He was heavily involved in developing Blu-ray data storage.
However, itās no secret that the music-performance bug is an affliction few ever truly kill. Sony offered Williamson an early retirement package in 2009, the same year that Ron Ashetonāwhoād returned to the resuscitated Stoogesā guitar chairādied. Iggy Pop recognized an opportunity to finally celebrate the posthumous canonization of the Williamson-era Stooges and invited the guitarist back into the band for a whirlwind second life of touring. The group performed to massive generation-spanning audiences at major festivals, and even released a new album, 2013ās Ready to Die.
Williamson and Pop have since parted ways again, but Williamsonās second coming as a Stooge gave birth to a solo career and, now, a new band called James Williamson and the Pink Hearts, which features singer, frontman, and co-writer Frank Meyer (of the Streetwalkinā Cheetahs), as well as singer Petra Haden. Their debut is the excellent Behind the Shade, which has its share of the high-octane rock ānā roll Williamson is best known for, but also shines a light on the facets of his songcraft that exist beyond the bombast of proto-punk. Juxtaposed against the albumās rock ragers like āRiot on the Stripā are alt-country ballads (āPink Hearts Across the Skyā) and blue-eyed soul stompers (āYou Send Me Downā). Above all, it shows a graceful evolution for the guitarist that nods plenty to the piss and vinegar of his past, but does not attempt to repeat it.
what people like about it.ā
When PG spoke with Williamson, we delved deep into the often-overlooked ex-Stoogeās guitar world, discussed the recording of his killer new album and the gear he used to cop his inimitable guitar sound back in the day, and why heās still an analog man during the digital revolution, despite his experience in the tech industry.
Your career as a guitaristāespecially with the Stoogesāis littered with unique, song-defining riffs. Do you think in terms of riffs, or do you look to the bigger picture of the song?
You know, itās kind of the same thing to me. I think riffs are probably more an artifact of the way I go about writing a song, because a riff really is what comes up first. If I canāt come up with something that I consider interesting, which is almost always a riff, then I donāt pursue the song further. As a song progresses and developsāusually once Iām working with a singerāI start thinking in terms of structure and filling it out, but it mostly comes from riffs.
Iāve always felt like the same kid I was when I was sitting in my room trying to work stuff out on a guitar and using it solely as an emotional outlet, and I think thatās probably what people like about it. I was self-taught, for the most partāaside from an early lesson or twoāand I pretty much just made stuff up from the very beginning. Part of it was that learning some of the guitar stuff I liked when I started was too difficult for me, so I just started making stuff up and I got better and better at it, and pretty soon I was in a band and had a place to play my stuff. People seemed to like it, so that was that.
I know youāre a blues fan and particularly big on Mike Bloomfield. Could you explain where the blues and Bloomfield come into your world as a guitarist?
When I was growing up, the British Invasion really overwhelmed everything else for us kids. I was maybe 15 at the time and all the girls were screaming about those bands. Therefore we were all interested in it.
TIDBIT: Although Williamson usually cuts tracks with the same rig he plays live, a Les Paul run through a Vox AC30, he also played a Telecaster and used an old Silvertone 1484 amp on Behind the Shade.
The blues came along a little bit later for us and the people that originally made it were finally being acknowledged as being the real innovators. The guys we looked up to, like the Stones, started acknowledging the blues guys that theyād been ripping off, so the original blues players became the real guys for us, rather than the English dudes playing their music and popularizing it. It was a period of discovery for a bunch of us, and certainly Paul Butterfield was the most accessible initially for us white kids for obvious cultural reasons at the time. I hadnāt discovered the deep guys like Howlinā Wolf or anyone like that yet, but Bloomfield with Butterfield really brought the blues to white kids. Of course, Bloomfieldās style of playing was really so original, so he was someone important to me. I had to learn āBorn in Chicagoā and all of those songs, and I forget about him sometimes, but he was an amazing player and certainly very innovative.
Really, that same story fits the Stooges in a lot of ways. The posthumous popularity that we achieved is not far from what happened to the original blues players. We were never popular back in the day, and we actually broke up the final initial time because we just couldnāt make a living doing it. So the popularity that we eventually achieved came because the kids were listening to bands we had influenced, and then realized that they werenāt necessarily the real guys and that we were. When we reunited, the audience was full of twentysomethings, and I think it was exactly the same effect.
For every punk band that was influenced by āSearch and Destroy,ā thereās a player who was inspired by the way you play nuanced rhythm parts with melodies hidden in them, like in āGimme Danger.ā Guys like Johnny Marr, for example.
Yeah, and I must say that Johnnyās a really nice guy, by the way. The thing that Iām happy to hear is that you get that side of my playing. The thing that I think this album really displays is that side of my playing. For every āRaw Powerā or āSearch and Destroy,ā there was a āGimme Dangerā or āI Need Somebody,ā and I really focused on putting more of those types of songs into this album than I ever did back then. When you have a singer like Iggy Pop, who is so aggressiveāthough he can obviously croonāyou have to do more uptempo things because they work really well with his thing. With Frank [Meyer] and Petra [Haden], you can give them just about anything for a guitar part and theyāll make a silk purse out of it because of how good they are with melodies.
Williamson helps Iggy Pop get in touch with his sensitive side, accompanying the legendary frontman on Weissenborn lap slide guitarāan instrument more typically associated today with the likes of Ben Harper and David Lindley.
Photo by Ken Settle
What gear did you use to track Behind the Shade?
Williamson: I pretty much used my regular stage rig for most things, which consists of a Les Paulāor a variation of a Les Paulāwith a Vox AC30. The Vox I have now is a 1965 twin, so itās a head and a cab. Iāve used that basic rig since Raw Power because of how great it sounds. Thereās something special about humbuckers hitting an AC30 and I donāt think you can beat that sound, personally.
I did mix it up a little bit to suit some of the tracks. On one track, I used a Tele through an old Silvertone 2x12 combo. I believe itās the 1484. I actually have my original one, which was my first amp that I had to talk my mom into getting for me because my uncle worked for Sears and I could use his discount. I played that amp in my first band, the Chosen Few, and when that band came to an end, the rhythm guitarist had a pair of boots I really liked, so I traded him the amp for those boots. He definitely got the better end of that deal, but later in life, he became an attorney in D.C. and he got in touch with me like a year ago and said, āI still have that amp in my basement. Do you want me to send it back?ā and the rest is history. Those cabs are particle board, so it had totally deteriorated, but I replaced the cab and it sounds great. So some advice to everyone: Donāt throw those things away! I really donāt think Iāve ever played a Tele on a record before this, either. I do use one live for songs in open tunings.
Beyond that, I used a Martin D-28 and I have a really cool 1949 Martin D-18 that I just love the sound of. The wood is everything, and on those guitars, I just think the older the better. They donāt really come into their own into theyāre almost sawdust, you know?
Your original ā73 Stooges Les Paul lives at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, so what Les Pauls are you using these days?
The original one in the Rock Hall was my only real vintage guitar, and I never thought anything sounded better than it. So I kept recording with it, but I wouldnāt take it on the road because I didnāt want to lose it or mess it up. I had a bunch of touring Les Paul Customs that I used that were all just reissues, and Iād go through a bunch of them to find ones I liked. I actually sent my Leopard Lady guitar [the Stooges Les Paul] to Jason Lollar and he took out the pickups and reverse engineered them so he could wind some new ones with the impedance characteristics of that guitarās pickups. Because all of Gibsonās pickups were handwound back in the day, they all varied a bit, and these were actually pretty low impedance for humbuckers. I think the sound Iām known for comes from a low-impedance pickup into a loud amp, where the bite really comes from the amp itself. People like high-output pickups because they have some attack going on, but the high impedance actually makes them hard to control. With these, you can really crank the amp and get the sound I like without it being too unruly. So Lollar makes them now and sells them, and theyāre called the Raw Power pickup.
Anyway, I had put those pickups in a lot of those touring guitars, but then I downsized a bunch of those touring guitars and, at the same time, Eastman Guitars came along and they sent me one of their guitarsāan SB59/vāto try, and I was just blown away by the build quality. So I started playing those and I tricked mine for live shows with my Lollar pickups, and I also use the Fishman piezo bridge and I send that through stereo outputs, so I have a signal coming from both the magnetic pickups and the piezo, and I can switch between them on the guitar. I split that signal and send the piezo pickup to a Fishman Aura acoustic simulator, which gives me a very convincing acoustic sound with none of the feedback problems, and obviously the magnetic pickups go to my tube amp, and I can blend or switch between the two sounds, depending on the song.
Guitars
Eastman SB59/v with Lollar Raw Power pickups
1969 Gibson Les Paul Custom
2000s Gibson Les Paul Custom reissues with Lollar Raw Power pickups
Fender Telecaster with Lollar Pickups
Fender Telecaster Thinline with Telenator Wide Range pickups
2000s Martin D-28
1949 Martin D-18
Amps
1965 Vox AC30
1960s Silvertone 1484
Effects
Vintage Pedal Workshop F.E.T. booster
Strings and Picks
DāAddario EXL110 electric (.010ā.046)
DāAddario EJ17 acoustic (.013-.056)
Itās easy to assume the sound of your guitar during the Stooges involved fuzz pedals, so itās very interesting to find itās a low-output pickup through a Vox AC30.
A big part of it is how loud and trebly I have the Vox set, too. That said, I do use a pedal made by a guy named Steve Giles, who is the guy that designed all of the reissue vintage-style Vox-y stuff that JMI makes. Steve had a pedal business on the side called Vintage Pedal Workshop, and he took the circuit he used in the JMI AC30 Top Boost section and put it into a pedal he called the F.E.T., and itās a really good one. I love that thing because it doesnāt distort and it doesnāt really work as an overdrive pedal, but it gives you just enough top boost to cut through when you need it for solos. I didnāt use anything back in the day, but I use that now because it just makes things simpler.
Was there something specific that attracted you to Les Paul Customs?
Itās just been a lot of serendipity. I used to play a lot of different guitars when I first started, and I went through a lot of different models to figure out what I liked. My first guitar was a Fender Jaguar, which I think is kind of funny because Johnny Marr wound up using those after all these years, but when I joined the Stooges, I was playing an SG. The SG was a great guitar, but it didnāt sound like the right guitar for that band to me. So I went down with Iggy to the local music store in Ann Arbor and ended up trading the SG, my Jaguar, and a little bit of money for a new Les Paul. I donāt know that I got the best end of that deal, but thatās how I got the Leopard Lady guitar, and it obviously served me well! I really liked that sound from there on out, and that was my only guitar for many, many years.