“The best rock and blues band of all time,” according to Stephen King
Author Stephen King is one of the finest creators of horror in history. Known by fans as the ‘King of Horror’, the title says everything about the gravity of his work. The man behind the likes of Carrie, It, Misery, The Shining, and many other classics, King has given popular culture some of its most spine-chilling moments.
Across the decades, King has proven to be one thing above all else: a storyteller. So much of his work has seamlessly transferred to the cinema screens that it is arguable he has become the greatest in living memory.
But it isn’t just words on a page that King has a good grasp of. While the Maine native is hailed for the gravity of his prose, he’s also noted for another reason: his taste in music. The Beatles and Bob Dylan have all played a major role in his books.
A big fan of the rock ‘n’ roll of his younger days, King has made no bones about drawing inspiration from some of his favourite artists and, on occasion, has sought to include references to his favourites. Famously, The Beatles frontman John Lennon even partially inspired his masterpiece The Shining.
Another prominent musician King had a lifelong love affair with is Bob Dylan. “I must have been 14 the first time I heard Bob Dylan. I was sitting in the back of a car going home from a movie,” the author told Rolling Stone in 2016.
Adding: “This is in rural Maine back when AM radio was big. There was a guy on WBZ radio out of Boston, and he had a show called The Night Express and played a lot of off-the-wall stuff. He played ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’. Hearing it was like being electrified. It was like this pressurised dump of lyrics and images.”
Consequently, there have been several instances where the influence of Dylan’s efforts has seeped into King’s novels. The most notable example of this is King’s 1974 debut, Carrie. It references two Dylan songs, ‘Just Like a Woman’ and ‘Tombstone Blues’.
Clearly, Stephen King knows what he’s talking about regarding good music. He has consistently shown this over his career, with his appearances on BBC Radio’s Desert Island Discs and Paperback Writers confirming this. A fan of everything from mainstream rock to the niches of music, his list of favourite songs includes both The Beatles and Bob Dylan, as well as The Cramps and, dare I say it, Rihanna.
Among his favourite tracks is the 2000 single ‘Stiff Upper Lip’, by Australian hard-rock heroes AC/DC. As is well-known, the band are one of King’s all-time favourites, with his love extending to the point that he enlisted them to soundtrack his only directorial feature, 1986’s Maximum Overdrive. The author loves AC/DC so much that when he appeared on the BBC’s Paperback Writers in 2015, he labelled them “the best rock and blues band of all time”.
A serious claim though it is, it is also hard to argue with. The Young brothers, whether fronted by Bon Scott or Brian Johnston, always delivered such a sincere dose of blues and rock that they earned their name as a powerhouse.
