Cleveland Rocker and Air Personality Michael Stanley Dead at 72

RADIO ONLINE | Monday, March 8, 2021 | 12:02pm CT

Michael Stanley

Noted Cleveland musician and award-winning radio and television personality Michael Stanley passed away Friday at the age of 72 from lung cancer. Although never quite finding that breakout national hit, he will be remembered for songs like "He Can't Love You," "Lover," "Falling in Love Again and "My Town."

In a 2019 interview with The Plain Dealer, " before receiving the Cleveland Arts Prize Lifetime Achievement Award, Stanley said, "I had three pretty good, separate careers with music, the television, the radio. Did we accomplish everything we wanted to? No. But we accomplished things we never thought of. I've been making a living doing something I love. This is what I dreamed about as a teenager, and I ended up doing it."

A statement issued by Stanley's family via his social media pages read: "Michael battled lung cancer for seven months with the same strength and dignity he carried throughout his life. He will always be remembered as a loving father, brother, husband, a loyal friend, and the leader of one of Cleveland's most successful rock bands."

Fellow Ohio rocker and longtime friend Joe Walsh, who played on Stanley's second solo album and covered his song "Rosewood Bitters," told Clevelend.com: "Michael was the king of Cleveland, and of course the Michael Stanley Band became a Midwest powerhouse. Michael has always been a master at the craft of songwriting. His songs have a way of getting in your head and became songs you end up singing to yourself over and over from then on...His music will always be part of me"

Holly Gleason, a noted music critic and author, grew up in Cleveland and later became Stanley's friend. "If you were a kid coming of age in Cleveland in the 70s or the 80s, he was our hand on the brass ring. He was the promise of rock ‘n' roll delivered. He believed in rock ‘n' roll. He believed in sports. He believed in Cleveland."

Stanley won 11 local Emmy Awards as co-host of WJW Channel 8′s "PM Magazine" from 1987 to 1990, and then spent another year on the station's "Cleveland Tonight." He played himself on an episode of "The Drew Carey Show." He also spent more than 30 years on WNCX, weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings, ending just last month.

"There's no one that will take his place," said WNCX's Bill Louis, who worked with Stanley since 1995. "Hundreds of thousands of Clevelanders loved him on concert stages, then on PM Magazine and for the last 30 years they drove home with him in their cars every weekday on WNCX. That body of work will prove to be without equal. "Michael was a very bright light locally that we could call ours.

While Stanley never broke through to the same kind of multi-platinum success as some of his populist rock peers such as Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger and John Mellencamp , his 1983 album "You Can't Fight Fashion," peaked at No. 64 on the Billboard 200 - and there was some national notoriety via TV appearances with Dick Cavett, Merv Griffin and on "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert."