Former Marilyn Manson bassist Gidget Gein, whose real name is Brad Stewart, was reportedly found dead in his Burbank, California home on Thursday (October 10th) of an apparent drug overdose, according to L.A. Weekly. The Los Angeles Coroner's office confirmed the death, although addtional details are not available yet. The 39-year-old Gein was an early member of the original Marilyn Manson band and played on the group's debut album, 1994's Portrait of an American Family, but was replaced by Jeordie "Twiggy Ramirez" White due to excessive drug use.

The Florida-born Gein moved to New York after his exit from the Manson lineup, where he formed a group called the Dali Gaggers.

He returned to Florida in 2000 to work as a "bag boy" in the south Florida coroner's office, where he retrieved and cleaned up after dead bodies.

Gein moved to Los Angeles about five years ago to pursue his art, which was often featured at local openings and parties, although he was also in and out of rehab several times.

Gein, whose stage name was a combination of 60s TV character Gidget and real-life serial killer Ed Gein, had just started playing in a new band called People and was planning both a book and a solo art show.
 

Soft drink maker Dr. Pepper's vice president of marketing, Tony Jacobs, told Billboard.com that the company is "putting the Dr. Pepper on ice" in case the long-delayed Guns N' Roses album, Chinese Democracy, sees the light of day on November 23rd as reported. Dr. Pepper offered to send a free can of soda to everyone in America if the record came out before the end of 2008. Jacobs remarked, "We're waiting to hear about Chinese Democracy just like all the other GN'R fans. But if the rumors are true, we're putting the Dr Pepper on ice."

Billboard reported last week that sources had confirmed the Sunday, November 23rd arrival date for the album, which has been 13 years in the making. No official announcement has been made yet.

The set will be exclusively available at Best Buy. One new Guns song, called "If The World," can be heard in part over the end credits of the film Body of Lies, which opened Friday (October 10th), while another track, "Shackler's Revenge," will make its debut on Rock Band 2 at the end of this month.

In other news, former Guns N' Roses drummer Steven Adler is featured in the new video for Alter Bridge's song "Watch Over You." The clip features scenes from the VH1 reality series Celebrity Rehab 2, on which Adler is a cast member. The new season will premiere on October 23rd.

Adler underwent detox at a center in Los Angeles last June as part of the series, but was arrested in July on a drug possession charged and ordered back into rehab.
 

Disturbed's debut album, 2000's The Sickness, has been certified quadruple platinum for sales of more than four million copies, according to Blabbermouth.net. Released on March 7th of that year, The Sickness featured the hit singles "Down with the Sickness," "Stupify" and "Voices." It remains the band's best-selling effort, although its next three releases, 2002's Believe, 2005's Ten Thousand Fists and this year's Indestructible have all debuted on the Billboard chart at Number One.

Singer David Draiman told us that Disturbed is fiercely proud to be able to maintain its success eight years after releasing The Sickness: "In a genre which has faded from the limelight somewhat, where there aren't many bands of our ilk left out there doing what we do at the level that we do it, we're very proud to be able to be standing tall and still doing it and doing it as ferociously as we are."

Disturbed's latest album, Indestructible, has sold 748,000 copies since coming out in June and looks set to become the band's fourth straight platinum release.

Disturbed is one of only six rock bands to land three consecutive Number One debuts on the Billboard album chart.

The group recently issued a digital EP called Live & Indestructible. The set will be available at all online retailers beginning Tuesday (October 14th) after an initial run exclusively on iTunes.

Disturbed will hit the northern U.S. as well as several Canadian stops on a new tour beginning on November 23rd in Rochester, Minnesota. The band will also kick off its fourth Music As A Weapon tour in March of 2009.