Songs like “Magnet and Steel” by Walter Egan are pretty much the reason that older-leaning Classic Hits stations like WHPY (Hippie Radio) Nashville exist. You can’t hear those songs on most major-market Classic Hits outlets as they push further into the ’90s and beyond, but you couldn’t really hear them on Classic Hits even when that format was centered in the ’70s. 

It’s been gratifying to see Hippie Radio find a place playing an older/deeper version of Classic Hits for more than a decade now, and to see other stations successfully follow suit.

Now, Walter Egan is hosting a show on Hippie Radio. The one-hour “Walt’s Record Vault” debuted May 19. The show is devoted to “all the original (and sometimes eclectic) hippie tunes from the late ’60s and early ’70s that were a big part of the hippie movement.” The debut episode was devoted to West Coast rock of that era. Next Sunday is the UK’s turn.

When the station debuted in the early ’10s, I remember a person or two suggesting the name was a misnomer. Older oldies-leaning stations were still, at that point, for the audience alienated by “In a Gadda-di-Vida” and the Doors. 

I wouldn’t have pegged Egan as a fan either. Like Egan’s first two albums in general, “Magnet” was an American Graffiti-era throwback by one of Fleetwood Mac’s first post-Rumours protégés. I never really wondered what he would have listened to (or been playing in other bands) in between, in part because I never followed my peers to AOR radio during those years. Songs like “Magnet and Steel” were among the rewards for having stuck with Top 40 in the late ’70s.

But on the first episode of “Walt’s Record Vault,” Egan recalls being at the Jefferson Airplane’s first show as well as seeing the Doors “about five times.”  He also brings up Columbia Records’ “five debut singles at once” stunt said to have sunk Moby Grape’s credibility at the time, before adding “I was on Columbia for about four hours. We’ll talk about that another night.”

Here’s the first hour of “Walt’s Record Vault”:

• Jefferson Airplane, “Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil”
• Grateful Dead, “Sitting on Top of the World”
• Big Brother & Holding Company, “Down on Me”
• Moby Grape, “Come in the Morning”
• Country Joe & the Fish, “Super Bird”
• Blue Cheer, “Summertime Blues”
• Byrds, “Renaissance Fair”
• Buffalo Springfield, “Everybody’s Wrong”
• Spirit, “Nature’s Way”
• Love, “Softly to Me”
• Flying Burrito Brothers, “Hippie Boy”
• Doors, “Roadhouse Blues”
• Beatles, “All You Need is Love”—the teaser for the next show.

In recent years, I’ve been a little more curious about the rock radio I missed growing up. When I hear it, though, it’s not like hearing Classic Rock in real time. Even in the mid-to-late ’70s, depending on the station, it’s still a broad playlist, only occasionally offering an enduring song. 

I suspect I enjoyed “Walt’s Record Vault” – an hour curated by an artist I like – more than I would have wading through progressive radio in its “punctuated-by-cricket-noises” early days to hear those songs. (I also liked picking out the odd little ’60s R&B influences on some of those songs – “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” for “Pooneil”; Major Lance for Moby Grape).

And here’s Hippie Radio earlier that afternoon in regular format with Bill Edwards:

• Ike & Tina Turner, “Proud Mary”
• Rick Springfield, “Jessie’s Girl”
• Glen Campbell, “Gentle on My Mind”
• Little River Band, “Help Is on the Way”
• O’Jays, “Love Train”
• Rod Stewart, “Young Turks”
• Pink Floyd, “Another Brick in the Wall”
• Johnny Cash, “Ring of Fire”
• Styx, “Lady”
• Stevie Wonder, “Higher Ground”
• Who, “Behind Blue Eyes”
• Bob Seger, “Mainstreet”
• Blood, Sweat & Tears, “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy”
• Dexy’s Midnight Runners, “Come On Eileen”
• Simon & Garfunkel, “Bridge Over Troubled Water”