Co-founding Megadeth bassist David Ellefson has gone public with the sad news of his brother's passing.

Eliot Gordon Ellefson, 51 years old at the time of his death, was memorialized in a May 19 post on David's Facebook page, including photos of the Ellefson clan and a note reading, "With much sadness, my brother Eliot Gordon Ellefson went home to see the Lord today after a two year battle with cancer. We love you El, you will be missed so much."

In his recently published memoir, 'My Life with Deth: Discovering Meaning in a Life of Rock & Roll,' Ellefson discussed his youth with Eliot on the Minnesota farm where they were raised. "I loved the farm, but I didn’t love farming quite so much, so my brother, Eliot, was always the one who was going to take it over from my father when the time came. He showed an aptitude for farming from a very young age. When I started getting into music at eleven or twelve, Eliot was focusing on being disciplined and working around the farm."

Although Eliot wasn't as passionate about music as David, his influence still proved crucial to the formation of David's first band, Headstone.

"Eliot had two high school buddies, a guitarist named Mike Cushman and a drummer named Kent Libra, who were both pretty good players," reads one passage in 'My Life with Deth.' "We formed a band within three months of me starting to play the bass, and played covers of songs by Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Kansas, Kiss, and other bands, just copying what our heroes were doing. We did our first concert out on the porch of Mike's farmhouse one night, in front of all the parents. That was the first time I performed live in front of an audience in a rock 'n' roll band."

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