Credit: Far Out / YouTube Still

The 1965 song Stephen King couldn’t live without

Fri 24 April 2026 16:22, UK

The titans of 20th-century culture are varied and widespread. Across a range of different mediums, there are totemic pillars of wondrous creativity and cultural importance. Some are immediate, like The Beatles or Andy Warhol, while a few others go a little under the radar. With countless books and a host of movie adaptations, Stephen King must also be considered within this esteemed bracket.

Likewise, Bob Dylan is one of the most far-reaching and imposing figures in music. The folk legend carved himself out a niche in personal and poetic pop music when he arrived on the music scene in the 1960s and has never really wavered from that MO. It is a career in which, along with finding critical acclaim, Dylan became one of the most widely loved singer-songwriters of his generation. King is a man with as much influence but admittedly in a different field.

What links Dylan and King, beyond their sheer output, is a shared commitment to exploring the darker edges of their respective crafts. Neither artist has ever shied away from discomfort, instead leaning into it as a way of uncovering something more truthful. Whether through Dylan’s shifting characters and cryptic imagery or King’s deeply human portrayals of fear, both have built careers on confronting the unease that sits just beneath the surface of everyday life.

There is also a similar sense of restlessness in how they have approached their work over the decades. Reinvention has never been a calculated move so much as a necessity, driven by an unwillingness to remain static. That constant motion has ensured their relevance, allowing each to speak to new audiences without losing the core identity that first defined them. It is this balance that places them in such rare company, figures who continue to evolve while remaining unmistakably themselves.

There are few more imposing names in the world of horror, both on-screen and off, than the extraordinary writer Stephen King. Naturally, for an artist growing up in the era of music he did, King has routinely leaned on his love of pop to litter his books. A huge figure in the world of film, King’s works have always been underpinned by the expert use of music—but what were King’s most cherished songs? It’s a question that was thankfully answered by BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs who gathered up the eight songs Stephen King couldn’t live without. However, there was one song he treasured most of all within the list.

The Bob Dylan covers performed at Woodstock — Credit: Far Out / Bent Rej / Press

Bob Dylan is one of the most prolific songwriters still active today. The freewheelin’ troubadour was never one to rest on his laurels and has always been striving to put his best foot forward. Equally, a man who doesn’t know the meaning of standing still is Stephen King. One of the most potent and productive novelists of recent years, King has become the foreword in horror fiction among many other notable genres. With books like The Shining, Carrie and Pet Sematary, he carved out a career no writer can ever truly imagine. Despite what many library-bound snobs will tell you, he is, without a doubt, one of the most important writers of our generation.

It’s why Desert Island Discs came knocking at his door. It’s impossible for us to over-sell BBC’s stalwart radio show’s importance in the dense tapestry of British pop culture. It’s a time-honoured tradition that has seen prime ministers and rock stars alike walk through its studio doors. Created by Roy Plomley way back in 1942, the format is always the same: each week, a guest is invited by the host to choose the eight records they would take with them to a desert island. As well as their eight discs, a complimentary collection of the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible, the star in question also gets to choose one luxury item and one book.

For King, the choice of a book was always going to be a difficult one, he chose to avoid prose and instead focus on poetry, picking WH Auden’s collected works as his preferred choice, perhaps to enliven his own resolve or to simply avoid picking a prosaic piece. His luxury item was a choice pushed by comfort as he picked out a water hammock to while away the days on the deserted rock. However, naturally, our inclination was what songs he would pick.

Across eight choices, King selects The Beatles and their track ‘She Loves You’, which is a tune that speaks to King’s sensibility around music at large. Next was the somewhat inexplicable choice of Rihanna’s ‘Pon De Replay’ and songs by Pretenders, Ryan Adams, Old 97’s, Bruce Springsteen, James McMurtry and, of course, his favourite Bob Dylan. We know it’s his favourite as, at the end of every episode, the interviewee is asked to select the one disc they would save from being washed away—the one song they couldn’t live without.

After King talks about watching the turquoise waves, our host, Kirsty Young, sees her moment and poses the question: “If the waves did crash onto the shore and washed away the discs and you had to run across the sand to save one of them, which is the one disc you would save?” King quickly replies, “The one disc I would save would be ‘Desolation Row’ by Bob Dylan.”

While many of the other songs selected in the programme are connected with lighthearted moments and seemingly fun times, selecting Bob Dylan’s ‘Desolation Row’ was connected with the troubling relationship he shared with his “sore subject” father. In the interview, he reveals that his father was a “home movie buff” and “wrote short stories he submitted to the men’s magazines,” but that he had only ever seen him “in motion” once in one of the movies and “I’m not even sure it was him,” as such, he says before selecting Dylan’s track “The next record is the place where my father, were he still alive, would probably be living, it’s Bob Dylan’s ‘Desolation Row’”.

Written about a tragic sexual assault connected to travelling circus workers, Dylan channels the poignant lyrics into a meandering tale for the ages. Heartening and heartbreaking, it works well to distil the very fabric of what made Dylan such an inspiring talent at such a young age. Rarely played live, the 11-minute studio version can stretch up to 45 minutes long when given room under the spotlight. It is one of Dylan’s finest early works, and the one song Stephen King simply couldn’t live without.