Former MARILYN MANSON Guitarist DAISY BERKOWITZ Dies After Four-Year Battle With Colon Cancer

MARILYN MANSON co-founder and original guitarist Scott Putesky, a.k.a. Daisy Berkowitz, has passed away after a long battle with stage-four colon cancer.

The 49-year-old musician found out he had cancer when he underwent a colonoscopy in August 2013 after nearly six years of mysterious abdomen pains, some of which were severe enough to land him in the emergency room.

Putesky performed on MARILYN MANSON's "Portrait of An American Family" and "Smells Like Children" albums before leaving the group in 1996 over creative differences during the writing sessions for what became the "Antichrist Superstar" LP. Putesky went on to join JACK OFF JILL, GODHEAD and later launched his own band called THREE TON GATE.

Marilyn Manson paid tribute to Putesky, saying in an Instagram post: "Scott Putesky and I made great music together. We had our differences over the years, but I will always remember the good times more. Everyone should listen to 'Man That You Fear' in his honor. That was our favorite."

In a 2014 interview with Noisey, Putesky stated about his exit from MARILYN MANSON: "I left because I wasn't getting the respect and appreciation and work I deserved. I did a lot of demos more or less a year before we started recording. When we started recording, I had about ten or a dozen demos for Brian [Warner, Marilyn Manson's real name] to listen to so we could develop something. I don't know if he listened to any of them, but he never wanted to work on any of them. We had a number of unreleased songs that were contenders for 'Antichrist' that Brian didn't want to do or ['Antichrist Superstar' 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."

During the same chat, Putesky said that fighting cancer didn't really change his perspective on life and music. "It's become a huge annoyance," he said. "It really gets in the way. It doesn't get in the way with the kind of work I do, but the amount of work I do. When I started chemotherapy in September 2013, I thought I would have down time where I could relax and work on music or artwork. But, I quickly realized that downtime would mean extreme fatigue where I didn't really feel like doing anything. The most I could do was catch up on movies. I didn't realize how much it would take out of me. I have lots of plans that have just gone to the bottom of the things-to-do list."

In 2004, Marilyn Manson settled a lawsuit against Putesky and Empire Musicwerks Records over the distribution of an album and DVD of material from Manson's early band THE SPOOKY KIDS. In the suit, Manson alleged that the album and DVD made unauthorized use of illustrations from Manson's book "The Long Hard Road Out of Hell" and the musicians' likenesses. The suit also alleged that the purported infringements constituted a breach of an October 1998 settlement agreement related to Putesky's exit from the band. In June 2004, Empire Musicwerks announced that it would remove all artwork with Manson's likeness from the album and DVD.

JACK OFF JILL mourned Putesky's passing on Sunday (October 22),writing on Facebook: "Saying good bye to Scott, friend, band mate, artist, hero...RIP Scott – 'always touched by your presence dear.'"