Wow….how many music legends are we going to lose this year? The Beastie Boys founding member, John Berry, has passed away at the young age of 52. Rest in peace.
According to his father, the Brooklyn MC passed yesterday (May 19) at approximately 7:30 in the morning at a hospice in Danvers, MA after living with frontal lobe dementia. So young to get dementia that’s wrong.
Berry serving as the founding member and guitarist of the iconic group, is credited with coming up with the name of “The Beastie Boys” in 1981 for him and his high school classmates Mike “Mike D” Diamond and Adam “MCA” Yauch, along with drummer Kate Schellenbach. The Beastie Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame in 2012, only to lose MCA to his battle with cancer.
Berry left the group after they recorded Polly Wog Stew in 1982 as the project was the Beastie Boys’ first seven-inch EP. Schellenbach left in 1983 and that’s when Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz joined the group. Russell Simmons actually just said that if they had not left Def Jam after the release of their classic Licenced to Ill, the Beastie Boys could have had a greater impact than Eminem. The group than moved to Capitol Records after leaving Lyor Cohen and Rick Rubin.
Rest in peace John Berry.
