Rocker, radio star Michael Stanley dead at 72
CLEVELAND — Michael Stanley, a Cleveland-based rocker who with his namesake band reached the Top 40 in the 1980s with the hits “He Can’t Love You” and “My Town,” before going on to a long career as a radio disc jockey, has died. He was 72.
Stanley died Thursday after a seven-month battle with lung cancer, his family said in a statement. The rock radio station WNCX in Cleveland, where he worked for 30 years, posted a message from Stanley himself, saying:
“Hey gang ... Well, if you’re reading this then I am off to catch up with that big club tour in the sky. But before the bus pulls out I wanted to thank all of you for being part of my musical journey, both on the stage, on record, and behind the microphone here at WNCX.”
Accompanied by his signature, Stanley’s send-off continued: “Somebody once said that if you love your job then it’s not really work. And if that’s true — and I definitely think it is — then I have been happily out of work for over fifty years!”
The Cleveland legend released his first album while still in college and formed the Michael Stanley Band in 1974. After a brief period of national popularity in the early ’80s, sales fell off and the band broke up in 1987. Stanley, also a songwriter, continued to record and tour, and remained beloved in his hometown as a radio and television personality, performer and recording artist.
Amanda Gorman says she was racially profiled near her home
NEW YORK — Amanda Gorman, the 22-year-old poet who captured hearts at the inauguration of President Joe Biden, posted to social media that she was followed home by a security guard who demanded to know where she lived because she “looked suspicious.”
“I showed my keys & buzzed myself into my building,” she tweeted of the incident Friday night. “He left, no apology. This is the reality of black girls: One day you’re called an icon, the next day, a threat.”
Gorman, the nation’s youngest inaugural poet, lives in Los Angeles but did not specify where the encounter occurred. Her spokeswoman did not immediately return an email Saturday seeking additional comment.
The post was met with thousands of messages of support on Twitter and Instagram. She followed up her post with a second comment that said:
“In a sense, he was right. I AM A THREAT: a threat to injustice, to inequality, to ignorance. Anyone who speaks the truth and walks with hope is an obvious and fatal danger to the powers that be. A threat and proud.”