had brought her two sons and daughter from Davenport, Iowa, to Ann Arbor in December 1963 immediately after her husband Ronald’s death; her life was a struggle, for Ronald Senior ’s pension was too meagre for the family to survive, forcing her to take a job at the Ann Arbor Ramada Inn, in addition to looking after three intelligent but feisty teenagers.
Ronald Asheton Junior believed, like Jim Osterberg, that he was destined to achieve something significant in his life, a belief reinforced by his 1960 encounter with John Kennedy when the Democratic nominee was campaigning in Davenport Iowa. Dressed in his cub scout’s uniform, young Ronald was propelled forward by a surge in the crowd and ended up with his face in the future president’s crotch. As a Secret Service agent attempted to tug him away by his cub-scout scarf, the future president intervened to save the unfortunate scout from being throttled, ordering the agent to ‘leave the kid alone’; Ronald’s fingers brushed those of the charismatic candidate as he was bundled away, star-struck. John F. Kennedy joined Ron’s pantheon of showbiz heroes, alongside Adolf Hitler and The Three Stooges. Soon that select band was joined by The Beatles and the Stones, inspiring Ron to drop out of high school, along with his classmate Dave Alexander, and travel to London, hoping to see John Lennon or Mick Jagger walking down Carnaby Street. He settled for the more than satisfactory alternative of seeing the Who at their superviolent mod peak, bringing home a shard of splintered Rickenbacker as a souvenir. The Who’s Pete Townshend would become his inspiration, although he started out on the bass guitar. After getting kicked out of the Prime Movers, Ron joined Scott Richardson’s snotty English-flavoured R&B band, the Chosen Few, and would soon enjoy the distinction of playing the very first notes to be heard at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom as a live rock ’n’ roll venue: his bass intro to the Stones’ ‘Everybody Needs Somebody’ launched the Chosen Few’s opening set for up and coming band the MC5 in October 1966.
Scott Asheton, too, was a crucial Dum Dum boy, an aspiring drummer who at one point played with Ron, Dave Alexander and Bill Cheatham in a garage band called the Dirty Shames. As a kid, he’d spent countless hours with his dad discussing plans for racing go-karts and building V8 hot-rods, only for his whole world to fall apart with the premature death of his father. After that he became a wild child, thrown out of the house by his mom, hanging out with his hoodlum-looking friends on State and Liberty, spitting on passers-by. It was his tall, Brando-esque good looks and tough guy cool, together with the wickedly cynical Asheton sense of humour, that first entranced Jim Osterberg.
Iggy and the Asheton brothers returned from Chicago at the precise moment that a psychedelic revolution was engulfing Ann Arbor. Its huge student population, cosmopolitan atmosphere and Democrat administration contributed to a liberal ethos which meant that its fines for drugs possession were lower than neighbouring Detroit, and before long the town possessed its own mini Haight-Ashbury in the form of a gaggle of headshops around Liberty and State, at the edge of the university campus.
Jim, Ron and Scott Asheton had decided to form a band together. They hadn’t by this point decided who would play what - at first the plan was for Scott Asheton, the most physically magnetic of the three, to sing, and Iggy to stay on drums. And as there was no immediate prospect of making money from their music, they needed a source of income. Fortunately, Ann Arbor’s embryonic hippie subculture would become the perfect outlet, as they established their own little niche on the drug-supply chain, buying marijuana plants and drying them to sell on as grass. Jim had moved back into the family trailer on his return from Chicago, and he and Ron discovered that Coachville’s communal laundry and
Ronald Asheton Junior believed, like Jim Osterberg, that he was destined to achieve something significant in his life, a belief reinforced by his 1960 encounter with John Kennedy when the Democratic nominee was campaigning in Davenport Iowa. Dressed in his cub scout’s uniform, young Ronald was propelled forward by a surge in the crowd and ended up with his face in the future president’s crotch. As a Secret Service agent attempted to tug him away by his cub-scout scarf, the future president intervened to save the unfortunate scout from being throttled, ordering the agent to ‘leave the kid alone’; Ronald’s fingers brushed those of the charismatic candidate as he was bundled away, star-struck. John F. Kennedy joined Ron’s pantheon of showbiz heroes, alongside Adolf Hitler and The Three Stooges. Soon that select band was joined by The Beatles and the Stones, inspiring Ron to drop out of high school, along with his classmate Dave Alexander, and travel to London, hoping to see John Lennon or Mick Jagger walking down Carnaby Street. He settled for the more than satisfactory alternative of seeing the Who at their superviolent mod peak, bringing home a shard of splintered Rickenbacker as a souvenir. The Who’s Pete Townshend would become his inspiration, although he started out on the bass guitar. After getting kicked out of the Prime Movers, Ron joined Scott Richardson’s snotty English-flavoured R&B band, the Chosen Few, and would soon enjoy the distinction of playing the very first notes to be heard at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom as a live rock ’n’ roll venue: his bass intro to the Stones’ ‘Everybody Needs Somebody’ launched the Chosen Few’s opening set for up and coming band the MC5 in October 1966.
Scott Asheton, too, was a crucial Dum Dum boy, an aspiring drummer who at one point played with Ron, Dave Alexander and Bill Cheatham in a garage band called the Dirty Shames. As a kid, he’d spent countless hours with his dad discussing plans for racing go-karts and building V8 hot-rods, only for his whole world to fall apart with the premature death of his father. After that he became a wild child, thrown out of the house by his mom, hanging out with his hoodlum-looking friends on State and Liberty, spitting on passers-by. It was his tall, Brando-esque good looks and tough guy cool, together with the wickedly cynical Asheton sense of humour, that first entranced Jim Osterberg.
Iggy and the Asheton brothers returned from Chicago at the precise moment that a psychedelic revolution was engulfing Ann Arbor. Its huge student population, cosmopolitan atmosphere and Democrat administration contributed to a liberal ethos which meant that its fines for drugs possession were lower than neighbouring Detroit, and before long the town possessed its own mini Haight-Ashbury in the form of a gaggle of headshops around Liberty and State, at the edge of the university campus.
Jim, Ron and Scott Asheton had decided to form a band together. They hadn’t by this point decided who would play what - at first the plan was for Scott Asheton, the most physically magnetic of the three, to sing, and Iggy to stay on drums. And as there was no immediate prospect of making money from their music, they needed a source of income. Fortunately, Ann Arbor’s embryonic hippie subculture would become the perfect outlet, as they established their own little niche on the drug-supply chain, buying marijuana plants and drying them to sell on as grass. Jim had moved back into the family trailer on his return from Chicago, and he and Ron discovered that Coachville’s communal laundry and
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