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Daisy Berkowitz Dead: Former Marilyn Manson Guitarist, Co-Founder Fought Four-Year Battle With Colon Cancer

By Lorenzo Tanos
Published on: 22:51 PST, Oct 22, 2017

Scott Putesky, better known for his time in Marilyn Manson as guitarist Daisy Berkowitz, died after battling colon cancer for the past four years. He was 49-years-old.

According to a report from the San Antonio Current, Putesky’s death was announced on Sunday, more than four years after he announced that he was suffering from stage four colon cancer. He was best-known for the six years he spent as a member of shock-rockers Marilyn Manson, having played guitar on the albums Portrait of an American Family and Smells Like Children, though he had left the band in 1996, departing over creative differences as the band worked on their breakthrough album, Antichrist Superstar.

After initially gaining fame in the rock music scene as Marilyn Manson guitarist Daisy Berkowitz, Putesky then played in a number of other bands, including Jack Off Jill, Godhead, and Three Ton Gate, as noted by Loudwire.

As he recalled in a 2014 interview with Noisey, Scott Putesky, together with friend Brian Warner, co-founded the band then known as Marilyn Manson and The Spooky Kids in January 1990, with Putesky coming up with the idea for the original band members’ stage names – a combination of the first names of beautiful female celebrities or fictional characters and the surnames of serial killers.

Warner, being the frontman of the band, combined the names of Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson to become the eponymous Marilyn Manson, while Putesky blended Dukes of Hazzard character Daisy Duke with David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz to become Daisy Berkowitz. Other band members during Marilyn Manson’s early years (e.g. Jeordie “Twiggy Ramirez” White, Stephen “Madonna Wayne Gacy” Bier) would also follow a similar blueprint when it came to their stage names.

With Marilyn Manson gaining fame and notoriety in the mid 1990s, Putesky abruptly quit the band, leaving in the middle of recording for the platinum-selling 1996 album, Antichrist Superstar, and switching stage names from Daisy Berkowitz to the initials of his birth name, SMP. According to Putesky, he left Marilyn Manson because he felt he “wasn’t getting the respect and appreciation” he deserved for his work.

“We had a number of unreleased songs that were contenders for Antichrist that Brian didn’t want to do or [producer] Trent [Reznor] didn’t want to record so I was being slowly muscled out as far as my contribution. And, that’s pretty much it.”

Putesky also told Noisey about his then-recent cancer diagnosis, admitting the challenges he faced as he oftentimes fought the disease “alone,” but stressing his desire to stay positive despite the harshness of his situation.

“It’s tough. I’m doing well with it but sometimes it will be the middle of the night and I’ll be trying to sleep and I’ll start thinking negative thoughts. It just happens.”

Scott “Daisy Berkowitz” Putesky’s death comes almost a decade after another early Marilyn Manson band member passed away at a young age. In 2008, bassist Bradley Stewart, also known by the stage name Gidget Gein, died at the age of 39 from a suspected drug overdose. Like Putesky, Stewart left the band before Antichrist Superstar hit stores, having been fired in 1993 due to alleged drug problems, as noted by MTV News.

[Featured Image by Kateryna Biloshystova/Shutterstock]

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