Ron's Dress Sense!

Re-visiting old Stooges footage recently, I realized afresh how cool Ron Asheton really looked. In spite of those, um, uniforms. Where did he get his taste in Nazi regalia? I realize there was nothing sinister about it - I'm sure there wasn't, but it got me thinking again. Of course he had - still has - an interest in military history, which was at least partly due to his dad's influence. And the later punks that took up this Nazi iconography as a conscious shock tactic - were they all taking their cues from him?

But he used it before it becme any kind of fashion! Typical Ron, always one to do things his own way ... that's what's so REFRESHING about him.

talking about how the stooges did and do dress...is a nice topic!

About Ron: don't know if you have heard what ron says about these uniforms. It's on the Escaped Maniacs dvd. It's coming from the influence his dad had on him. he was a pilot flying on Europe in world war II i think. very amusing when ron tells that his dad was giving him (as a small child) some second world war army Nazi stuff...as souvenir so to ron that stuff was simply...cool/beautiful

There is also a picture where ron's wearing really funky pants with a big print on it. must have been sinclair time. you can also find photo's where iggy is wearing the same pants in a gig..it's the photo where he is hanging and humping a mic standard

so ron (also Iggy and Dave) was pretty wild with experimenting with the dressing thing. I guess 't was al about a desire to be übercool

that was then. now it's complete different, but that's ok..theyre older.
I like mikes boilersuit. and iggy his naked torso got important as a statement for 'the real stuff'.

Cool topic. Don't have much to add to it, other than I like Ron's stage look too. That classic pic with him in a Nazi uniform "strangling" Iggy is a hoot...

yeah, ZinZin, I knew it was something to do with his dad!
But just how much 'shock value' did the Nazi stuff have at that time I wonder?
but isn't it true that when they first started out, they weren't conspicuous for their clothing at all. Of course Iggy caught people's attention from the first, but the other three were just described as being 'nearly anonymous in jeans and T-shirts', hardly moving and all.
But what you say about them 'experimenting' and stuff - it just sounds like they were having helluva time.

From some of the pics, not including the Nazi gear, it looked as if Ron was quite a snappy dresser.
Smart, casual clothes.
No disrespect to any of the other band members, but I think Ron looked the best groomed of the bunch too.

sheddy wrote:

From some of the pics, not including the Nazi gear, it looked as if Ron was quite a snappy dresser.
Smart, casual clothes.
No disrespect to any of the other band members, but I think Ron looked the best groomed of the bunch too.

I agree!

Don't forget of course that Ron wore a Nazi uniform to Iggy's wedding in 1968.

Iggy met Wendy Weisberg at the Grande Ballroom. Her father owned a chain of stores in the Midwest and was very wealthy. Her parents were so shocked by her decision to marry a freakish singer that they refused to attend the wedding. The service was officiated by Jimmy Silver, who like Wendy, was Jewish. Ron Asheton was Iggy’s best man and chose his smartest Nazi clothes to wear for the wedding - a Luftwaffe fighter pilot’s jacket decorated with various medals, including a couple of Iron Crosses, plus jodhpurs and riding boots. After the service the Stooges could be found outside the house taking bets on how long the marriage would last.

It lasted barely a month.

I wonder where Wendy is now?

Cheers,

Richard

Ron won that bet, according to him!

Nadja wrote:

yeah, ZinZin, I knew it was something to do with his dad!
But just how much 'shock value' did the Nazi stuff have at that time I wonder?
but isn't it true that when they first started out, they weren't conspicuous for their clothing at all. Of course Iggy caught people's attention from the first, but the other three were just described as being 'nearly anonymous in jeans and T-shirts', hardly moving and all.
But what you say about them 'experimenting' and stuff - it just sounds like they were having helluva time.

I don't know eather about that shock value..maybe the terrible dread about what the Nazi's had done got less attention in the US than here in Europe in those days?

As far as I know..Iggy was impressed by the looks of the Ashton brothers from the beginning. For Iggy they looked really cool...so there was more in their clothing than anonymus jeans and t-shirts i suppose....

that 'anonymous jeans and t-shirts' thing ... of course I never saw them myself, it's just something I read in a review

as for Wendy and Iggy's wedding, didn't Ron say he wore a Luftwaffe uniform as concession to the fact that she was Jewish, as the Luftwaffe were really just the military, rather than Nazi as such???

but the whole shock-value thing, I was just wondering because far as I know there wasn't too much reaction to Ron wearing that stuff.
Maybe just cos the band weren't that much noticed anyway?

I must say - as a german - that I was quite irritated when I first saw a photo of a Stooge with uniform including Swastika brassard. I think it was on one of the covers of the Revenge box (the one with Ron struggling a blood-covered Iggy, although I by now learned that this is from the "Death Murder of a Virgin"-show which was strictly speaking a post-Stooges/solo-Iggy affair.).
To me the swastika is such a gruesome reminder of mass-murder that I just can`t understand people wanting to use it (except for neo-Nazis), even for shock value or even less so for playing around with it. Yeah, same reaction to the later use by punk artists or the earlier use by USA bikers (I think in some hippie movement movie - Woodstock? - you can spot bikers with Nazi helmets and nazi symbols - how does THAT go together with "peace and love"?). Manson comes to mind as well but then he wasn`t really a hippie to me either but rather something like a sinister opposite of it.
By now I am a bit more relaxed about the matter I guess - I learned that there is some fascination with Nazi stuff and some crude Nazi humour in the USA and England that does not necessarily mean that the people utilizing it are really Nazis but just a bit flippant about it.
I have to remember that I once used a badge with soviet symbols on my guitar strap for some gigs and that that might just as well have irked victims of the so-called "communism" of Stalin-era soviet union, yet for me it was a ambiguous mix of doing something odd and a bit shocking but then at the same time displaying a sympathy for socialism in general, so you can call that flippant as well.
Was Ron ever concerned that he might be mistaken for having sympathies for Nazis when wearing this outfit? Or was it clear to him in his social context nobody would take it as a serious political avowal anyway?
(PS Siouxie once wore a swastika brassard as well - and IIRC later tried to make good for it by writing the song "Israel".)

I think Ron was a genuine collector of Nazi stuff, as you say Communist iconography in Russia and China is also similarly collected.

The one photo of Ron that I have always found most disturbing is this one: (I didn't block out the swastika, the photo was like this) - what does the German say by the way?

It says "Mehr sein als scheinen!" (To be more than to appear/seem) which is a (somehow twisted) reverse reference to the saying "Mehr Schein als Sein" (To seem/appear more than to be - in the sense of being of substance). A english equivalent for the original saying is - according to leo - "All kippers and curtains". I also read "more style than substance" or "all show and no-go". I think you get the idea by now. Just that Ron turned it around.

I don't know of anyone who has said anything other than that Ron was a very gentle soul. I don't find that photo disturbing. He looks great!

As you say "a ambiguous mix of doing something odd and a bit shocking" - and the Nazi paraphernalia exploited (and subverted!) by the hippies and the punks can't be taken as evidence of fascist sympathies any more than it can be seen as a provocative challenge to the prevailing general herd-mentality.

On the other hand it's true that some record company suits were freaked out by Ron's historical/sartorial interests, but that just shows what a bunch of stiffs they were.

What better way to demean a symbol than to misappropriate it?

'To be more than appears' ??? Exactly!

Interesting to get your perspective on this as a German fan, Ken Wood (welcome by the way!)

Of course the swastika is also an ancient Indian symbol ..

(Nice to see this thread raked up again - seems like a VERY long time ago when I first started it ..)

Thanks Nadja! Yeah, I know it is a indian symbol too - and also features in even more cultures.
To me it will always be connected to the third reich (and something that "strong" is pretty hard to misappropriate, woody, though I know what you mean).
Before I know the Stooges very well (but already saw photos of Ron with his Nazi fetish) I read or was told that Iggy was cool but the rest of the band were all real a-holes. I looked at the photo and though "how fitting he wears this stuff".
Getting quite a bit deeper into Stooges history and personalities with the help of this forum I figure the comment was crap - especially with Ron who really appears to be more that he seems. ;-)

So right! That comment is more than crap.

Ron was always cooler - modest, inspired, stoic-heroic, and the true soul of the band.

Sure the Stooges wouldn't have been the same without Iggy, but where would Iggy have been without the Asheton brothers? and Dave A? Those two albums were the essence of the band, and they were the products of a true band.

Ron in jackboots was always going to be the perfect foil to Iggy in a tutu.