Crappy new year everybody — legendary Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton was found dead this morning. NME.com reports that he was found on his sofa in his Ann Arbor home, with cause of death suspected to be a heart attack. He was 60 years old.Lord knows Ron was not a perfect man — dude was sometimes a little too enthusiastic about his Nazi-uniform fetish — but in a single one of his riffs, you can hear the blueprint for a million sub-genres: glam, punk-rock, heavy metal, hardcore, stoner-rock, goth, noise, etc. Rock 'n' roll would've become a whole lot more boring without him. The Stooges — who had reunited in 2007 after initially disbanding up in 1974 — had most recently played Toronto last summer at a riotous Massey Hall gig, and are on the list of potential inductees for this April's Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame ceremonies. Perhaps the thought of being welcomed into rock's high society was too much for this life-long iconoclast to bear.
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