This day in 1991: “Stairway To Haven” played at KLSK-FM (all day)

January 23, 2023 174 8 5

Lots of people love Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” After all, it isn’t a beloved staple of classic rock radio for nothing. But on Jan. 23, 1991, KLSK-FM in Albuquerque, N.M., took that love to absurd new heights.

The Albuquerque, New Mexico, radio station KLSK FM plays the Led Zeppelin song “Stairway To Heaven” over and over for 24 hours to inaugurate a format change to classic rock. It plays more than 200 times, eliciting hundreds of angry calls and letters.

Police show up with guns drawn after a listener reports that the DJ had apparently suffered a heart attack, later because of suspicion that – this being eight days into the Gulf War – the radio station had been taken hostage by terrorists dispatched by Zeppelin freak Saddam Hussein. Weirdest of all, lots of listeners don’t move the dial: “Turns out a lot of people listened to see when we would finally stop playing it.”