KCSN radio gets a little help from a friend — Paul McCartney

There aren’t a lot of university radio stations that that can claim a Beatle among their fans, but Cal State Northridge-based public station KCSN-FM (88.5) just became one.

“Paul McCartney called today to express his appreciation of KCSN and to thank us for our support of his new record,” station program director Sky Daniels tells Pop & Hiss. “He told us he was having dinner in L.A. last night and all of his ‘friends were raving about KCSN, telling me how you were playing multiple tracks from the album.’ ”

The impromptu phone call turned into an hourlong discussion about the recent 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” McCartney’s latest project (composing music for an animated film) and other topics. The full interview has been posted on the station’s website.

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“Paul’s call was so thoughtful, I found myself fighting back tears,” Daniels said. “He told us of how his friends all loved the station, and they told him that KCSN was playing a number of songs from ‘New’ and he simply wanted to say thanks.”

KCSN has been working to create an identity for itself with a format mixing new and classic rock music that Daniels has described as “smart rock.”

For bucking the trend of tightly formatted stations that narrowly focus on specific genres or contemporary Top 40 and R&B music, KCSN has won favor among some high profile musicians including Tom Petty, Jackson Browne, Stephen Stills and Lucinda Williams, who have performed for station fund-raising concerts.

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