As someone who grew up on Chicago rock & roll, Gary Loizzo was the unsung hero behind the American Breed single "Bend Me, Shape Me" which went to #5 in 1967.
His true calling came in the '70s when he opened his own Pumpkin Studios in Orland Park Chicago and began working on local jingles in between sessions for local bands. One such band was Styx, who enlisted Loizzo to engineer their 1974 album Man of Miracles, He would be nominated for a Grammy for his engineering work on 1979's Cornerstone.
During that same period, he engineered REO Speedwagon's You Can Tune A Piano But You Can't Tuna Fish and Survivor's Premonition.
For some strange reason, I always remember him for his work with Bad Examples on their self-released cassette Meat: The Bad Examples, which featured a catchy tune called "Not Dead Yet" that Loizzo would later bring to the attention of Styx, who recorded the song for their 1990 comeback album. Edge of The Century.
For those of us sharing bills with the Bad Examples back in the day, seeing a song written by a local guy get plucked from relative obscurity and be given the royal treatment by a million-selling band, thereby introducing it to a national audience, was a story made possible in the first place by Loizzo.
In recent years, Loizzo had continued working with Styx, participating in sessions for 2007's Big Bang Theory and 2010's Regeneration.
Gary Loizzo dead at the age of 70 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.