Thanks for posting this, Wesley--The Stooges have a special place in my heart. Being a Michigan guitar wannabe of a certain age, they were like older brothers--doing what we wanted to be doing, and getting all the gigs, girls, and trouble that we wished we could have.

I knew the guys slightly, Jim (Iggy) a little bit more than Ron, but when it actually got down to playing music, Ron's guitar playing was the model--it was simple, straightforward, wild, and raw. Everything a kid could want.

Ron once said something like, "The difference between us and other bands is that they try to control what they sound like."

That was what they did, probably better than anybody.

It wasn't blues, which we loved, but it used blues techniques, and it was definitely not "heavy metal", though a metal crowd would listen--it was something identifiably different--the rock equivalent of the perfect storm.

At the time, people didn't realize how new it was, and no one had any idea how influential the style would be over time. Lucky, perhaps, because that would have spoiled the fun--to us, it was just garage band music, too loud, too wild, and to undisciplined for the rock middle of the road, and just right for us--