A Great Man John Berry Beastie Dead at 53

If anyone's wondering who he is (and didn't read the article), he was their original guitar player and left after their first EP, "Polly Wog Stew." He was eventually replaced with Ad-Rock. They were still a hardcore punk band at that time.It seems loads of people here didn't read the article. I'm seeing a lot of comments by people that think he was one of the three main members. He did contribute a lot to the group in the early years, though. Yeah, often times, during comment threads, you'll see people continue on with redundant comments that don't add anything to the discussion but simply restate the original few comments.

Totally true, there are a always a lot of band-wagoneers, but there's also a lot of people that grew up with group XYZ and don't necessarily know everyone's names. Granted the Beastie Boys were iconic individuals as well as an iconic group, but it's not particularly surprising to me that a lot of people see "Beastie Boy dead" and feel some nostalgic grief. It doesn't necessarily mean it's fake or pretend.One of my favorite bars plays (the patrons play it on the digital jukebox thing on the wall) a recently deceased musician's music for weeks. I can't tell you how many times I heard Purple Rain, Space Oddity, or Ace of Spades at that bar. It otherwise was never played.

Most people don't bother reading the article, and it doesn't help that the given title makes it seem like he was still a member of the band at some point during reddits largest demographics life time.But the music grew on us and we ended up loving their punk music also. So the beastie boys not only introduced my friends and I to hip hop but punk music also.In almost everyone's defense, nobody followed the beastie boys until after license to ill. I have action figures, posters, two books, every album, pins, patches etc. it sucks he passed away. But people are acting like it's common knowledge who this guy is was. You weren't doing that!! Just saying, ease up on the hate to others.

The same thing will happen when Pete Best dies. Ah, who I'm kidding, nobody will care when Pete Best dies. I'm not even sure if he is already dead and frankly, I don't think it is even worth looking up.That title would be misleading and also would upset fans of Guns and Roses and of Buckethead's solo work which is comprised of 768,352 albums from just this month.Edit: to avoid further comments about it he played with RHCP briefly after he played in Jane's Addiction. I thought they were still together (Jane's Addiction that is) and so I assumed Dave Navaro played in RHCP in the early 80's. I assumed wrong.