Stephen King

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and six.

Presenter0:28

My castaway this week is the author Stephen King. To describe him as best selling is to somewhat underplay his achievements. He's written more than forty novels, won twenty three major awards, and sold hundreds of millions of books worldwide.

Presenter0:42

Described as one of the great story tellers of our time, he writes tales of small town America corrupted by the supernatural and macabre, with novels like The Shining, Misery, Salem's Lot, and Carrie making him a household name.

Presenter0:56

But his battles with destructive forces haven't just been confined to the page. During his most productive period as a writer he was downing a case of Budweiser a night, along with any available drug he could get his hands on.

Presenter1:08

Then, in nineteen ninety nine, he was in a car accident which nearly killed him and made him think of giving up writing for good. Stephen King, given your considerable skills as a writer, you could write in many different genres. Why do you want to make your readers scared?

Stephen King1:23

I don't necessarily, and I don't think that it's a given that you can write many different things. I think that you're drawn in certain directions. You know, in some ways I'm in a really good position because I've seen an arc of critical approval for my work build over the years, which is a lot better, believe me, than starting out with a big bank of critical approval and then frittering it away.

Presenter1:53

You might then have the advantage, or would have had many years ago, of people having a relatively low expectation of your work. As you say, it's filed under horror in a bookstore, so what do you expect?

Stephen King2:00

And as you

Presenter2:04

And one of the difficulties was that very

Stephen King2:04

Right.

Stephen King2:05

That's a very good point, by the way.

Presenter2:07

One of the difficulties with that is, though, that it doesn't might not get to the people who might really enjoy it, because they're never going to go to the horror shelf. Uh

Stephen King2:14

There's something to be said for that, but that label has been put on me, and I never put it on myself. More importantly, in my head, I never said it's time to write another horror novel. I would just say, I have an idea, it's time to write a book. I've been able to tell stories from tales of outright horror, like Pet Cemetery, to stories like The Shawshank Redemption. And a lot of times, people don't believe that I had anything to do with writing that. So I wear different hats.

Presenter2:46

Back in two thousand three you were awarded the highly prestigious National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Did that make you feel that finally it was one in the eye for people who didn't respect what you'd been doing for all those years, even though your books had been selling in their millions?

Stephen King3:01

Well, it's a two-edged sword. In a way

Stephen King3:05

I feel to all the critics who ever got sort of stuffed shirty and said, Oh, but it's just a Stephen King novel. It's supposed to be good, but no, I haven't read it. It's just a Stephen King novel. It felt like in your eye, guy, take that. Here I am. I'm up here in my tuxedo, and if you don't like it, don't look, you know. But at the same time, it feels a little bit like winning Miss Congeniality in the Miss America pageant. You know, it's kind of like, well, you didn't really win the talent competition and you didn't really win the bathing suit competition, but.

Stephen King3:40

You sure brought a lot of people into the bookstore.

Stephen King3:43

What's your first record? The first record is The Beatles, She Loves You. Of all the Beatles songs, it seems to me that it's traveled the best over the years to my ear. It's the one that still sounds totally fresh when I hear it today, as it did when I first heard it when I was probably 16 years old. And it just gets in. It has one thing to say, and it says it.

Speaker 44:08

Did I

Speaker 44:20

Still think you've lost your love?

Speaker 44:23

Well I saw her yesterday, ayy, it's you she's thinking of

Speaker 44:30

And she told me what to say. She said she loves you, and you know that can't be bad.

Presenter4:38

The Beatles and She Loves You. So, Stephen King, you started off by selling your stories to friends at school. What age would you have been when you were doing that?

Stephen King4:45

Well, when I f sold that first suppressed Stephen King masterpiece.

Stephen King4:51

I think I was probably twelve.

Presenter4:54

Right, so h how many uh dimes were you selling this away for?

Stephen King4:58

Well, I was selling it for a quarter a copy and uh I printed them in my basement. My brother was my unindicted co-conspirator on that deal uh because he didn't get sent from school. I did in disgrace. Yeah.

Speaker 45:12

Uh

Presenter5:12

For doing it.

Speaker 45:13

Yeah.

Presenter5:13

Right.

Stephen King5:13

Yeah. It was the principal got a copy of the material and found it below her standard of quality, which is something you know, she was just the first of many critics in that way, you know.

Presenter5:26

Why was it important for you to sell it as well as write it?

Stephen King5:29

Well, because I was poor.

Presenter5:32

Talpur

Stephen King5:32

Well, pretty poor. My mother raised my brother and I, and

Stephen King5:37

We had happy childhoods. We never went to bed with our stomachs empty, but there was no indoor plumbing. There was a privy. And there was a a dug hand well. We lived way out in the country and it was good for nine months of the year, but the other three months of the year we dragged water from a neighbor's house to keep the water in the well. She basically lived what you'd call a peasant's existence over here, what I'd call a sharecropper's life.

Presenter6:04

So the money that you would earn from selling these copies in in school w was that going into the family coffers?

Stephen King6:09

Well, no. It it was going into my pocket, actually, or at least that was the plan, but I ended up having to pay most of it back. Where it ultimately would have wound up probably would have been Steve's college fund.

Presenter6:23

Interesting that given how poverty-stricken your circumstances were.

Presenter6:28

No poverty of the imagination. I mean, y you knew you were going to college.

Stephen King6:31

God gives you that.

Stephen King6:32

They can't tax it, the imagination that that belongs to rich and poor alike.

Presenter6:37

As you mentioned, then, uh, Dad was not around. He'd left when you were a matter of a year or two old.

Stephen King6:42

Mhm. Said he was going out for a pack of cigarettes and he s we're still waiting for him to show up.

Stephen King6:47

So, I guess it must have been an obscure brand.

Presenter6:51

How did your mother deal with that?

Stephen King6:53

Well, she was a single mom before single moms were a popular concept and we were latchkey kids moment.

Presenter7:01

So this would be right at the end of the forties. You were

Stephen King7:03

Yeah, yeah, I was born in 1947, so he left in 1949. At the time he left, my brother was four and I was two.

Presenter7:12

Uh Uh Uh

Stephen King7:12

Yeah.

Presenter7:12

Did he ever talk to you?

Stephen King7:12

But

Presenter7:12

In the early years of your childhood about your father.

Stephen King7:15

We got a legacy of shame and secrecy on that subject. We never got any detail. The detail that we got, we found for ourselves in the attic. He had been in the Merchant Marine during World War II and before, and he had sent her all sorts of curios from the South Seas. Maybe he even voyaged by the desert island where I am now marooned. And so there were little delicate pieces of china and little dolls and things.

Presenter7:45

They sound like quite exotic things to capture the imagination of two little boys.

Stephen King7:48

Even more so, my brother David found a couple of reels of movie film. My father was a home movie buff, and he also wrote stories that he sent to the men's magazines. I did ask my mother about that. We knew not to ask too much because he was a sore subject, and we never did. But I did ask her once about those stories, and she said he was very, very talented, but he didn't have any persistence. But we found the film, and we watched those films by ourselves, and they were of a ship in heavy North Atlantic seas, and in one of them, a man we were pretty sure was him, was standing at the bow, waving at the man with the camera. If that was my dad, that's the only time I've actually ever seen him in motion. And I'm not even sure it was him.

Presenter8:40

What's your next record?

Stephen King8:41

The next record is the place where my father, were he still alive, would probably be dwelling. It's Bob Dylan's Desolation Road.

Speaker 48:50

When someone says you're in the wrong place, my friend, you'd better leave.

Speaker 48:59

And the only sound that's left

Speaker 49:04

After the ambulances go.

Speaker 49:08

It's Cinderella sweeping up on Desolation Road

Presenter9:18

Bob Dylan and Desolation Road. So you were always going to be a storyteller then. There was no other life that you imagined for yourself.

Stephen King9:24

For yourself.

Presenter9:26

That's what I had. You you won a scholarship to the University of Maine. You were clearly academically capable.

Stephen King9:32

Mm-hmm.

Presenter9:32

Didn't have to try too hard.

Stephen King9:33

Basically, I went to a a really good high school and they put together an aid package for me that included, get this, a five hundred dollar scholarship and a five hundred dollar

Stephen King9:47

loan and a five hundred dollar work study program. And that was enough to send me almost. Then the last

Stephen King9:55

year that I was in high school, I went to school from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon and then I worked an eight hour shift in the mill from three to eleven and then I'd go home and I'd sleep for six or seven hours, try to do my homework somewhere in there and do the whole thing again. And my mother by then had a paying job and uh she was able to send twenty, twenty-five dollars uh a week too. So that was great.

Presenter10:19

Given you had this talent to write, there was this drive to write, a lot of people in your position might have just dropped out, saying, Hell, I'm going to be a writer anyway, why do I need a degree?

Stephen King10:26

Well, I know, but my mother wanted me to get the college degree and there was never any question that I was going to try to do what she wanted. She'd never had anything in her life, so to speak, and she deserved that and my brother gave it to her and I wanted to give it to her too. And there was something else that we haven't even discussed that was going on at the same time, and that was Vietnam and the draft.

Stephen King10:46

if you fell below that grade point, if you lost your scholarship and loan, and a lot of kids in the poverty belt of America were in that situation.

Stephen King10:57

You fell into the war machine, and then, boom, the next thing that you knew you were in Dong Ha Province, with a rifle in your hands.

Presenter11:04

Great motivating force to keep you in college. By the early seventies you'd started selling these short stories to men's magazines.

Stephen King11:12

Mm-hmm.

Presenter11:12

You were also by that stage married to Tabitha.

Stephen King11:15

I was

Presenter11:16

And and by

Stephen King11:17

and the lovely Tabitha Spruce of Old Town, Maine.

Presenter11:20

And you'd met at university. Y you'd started drinking quite heavily by then too.

Stephen King11:24

Yeah.

Presenter11:25

How much?

Stephen King11:26

Yeah, uh as as much as I can afford.

Stephen King11:29

I don't really remember, but I do remember

Stephen King11:34

Oh, God, how long since I've thought My friend Philip Thompson would come over. After classes were done on Friday afternoon.

Stephen King11:44

With a six pack in one hand and the Doors record in his other hand, and he'd say, Steve, it's Friday afternoon. Let's pull a horror show.

Stephen King11:54

And we did.

Stephen King11:55

We did. We'd get drunk and the doors would play. This is the end, my friend. It's not on my desert island, because it reminds me too much of drinking. But those are good memories, too. The sun would go down on the land and the sun would go down on our sobriety at the same time.

Presenter12:13

So your third record then is not the Doors. What is it?

Stephen King12:15

It's James McMurtry and Choctaw Bingo and a lot of times on his live album James will say, you know, I discovered at some point that I'm not really a singer at all in these clubs. I'm a beer salesman, and that's all right.

Speaker 412:29

Uncle Slayton's got his Texan pride Mac in the thickets with his Asian bride He's got an Airstream trailer and a Holstein cow

Speaker 412:44

Still makes whiskey cause he still knows how he plays at Shocks Tarpingo every Friday night you know it hadta leave Texas buddy

Presenter12:57

James McMurtry and Choctaw Bingo. The story of uh people living a sort of white trailer trash lifestyle there. In the early days, you you were uh a very well educated man and title of that track.

Stephen King13:08

It sounds almost surreal in a British accent.

Stephen King13:12

I'm sorry if I didn't do it justice.

Speaker 413:14

Oh, you did it more than justice.

Presenter13:16

In the early days, you and Tabitha were in fact yourselves living in a trailer. You'd two young kids in quick succession. How were you paying the rent?

Stephen King13:20

Do it. Um you

Stephen King13:25

We were paying the rent out of a teacher's salary, but the starting salary for an English teacher was about sixty two hundred dollars a year, so there wasn't a cent left over. And I was still working summers at the laundry to make ends meet, and still there was always a shortfall, and every now and then she would say, Think up a monster Think up a monster

Stephen King13:46

Where did you write in the trailer? It was in the laundry room. It was between the washer and dryer. I had a little kid's desk. She had an Olympus typewriter. And I.

Presenter13:49

Uh

Stephen King13:55

would sit there and bang out these stories and magazines like Cavalier and Dude and Gent would take them, sometimes for two hundred, two hundred and fifty. And the last one that I published was a a longer story called Sometimes They Come Back and They Paid $500. And that was a big payday.

Presenter14:15

Uh one day you started to write a story about a girl called Carieta White, but it but it ended up in the in the bin, in the trash can.

Stephen King14:18

But it but it and

Stephen King14:21

Mm-hmm.

Presenter14:21

What happened?

Stephen King14:22

What happened?

Stephen King14:23

Tabby fished it out. She wanted to see what I'd been working on because I hadn't been able to find traction on anything for a while. And so uh she brushed off the cigarette ashes and and straightened out the pages and sat down in a chair and read'em. And she's got this little Mona Lisa smile that she gets on her face sometimes and she got it then and she said, You ought to go on with this because this is good and good fiction always finds its audience. I remember her saying that.

Presenter14:52

There is an extraordinary recurring theme as you talk, which is the strength of of Tabitha's presence in your life. You say you've been married for about thirty five years now.

Stephen King14:57

You say

Stephen King15:00

Yeah.

Presenter15:03

It's maybe inappropriate to say you wouldn't have done what you'd done without her, but it almost seems true that if if she hadn't been around providing solace and wise words and counsel and fishing things out the bin and keeping you focused, then you maybe wouldn't be the Stephen Kink you are.

Stephen King15:14

Yeah.

Stephen King15:16

I don't think I'd be alive.

Stephen King15:18

I don't think I'd be alive if she hadn't pulled a drug in alcohol.

Stephen King15:22

intervention on me in uh I think it was nineteen eighty six, I probably would have gone down the chute.

Stephen King15:29

You know, and I'd just be another name on a long stupid list of drug fatalities. So, you know, you could put me up there with uh

Stephen King15:39

uh Morrison and and Dylan Thomas and uh nobody would put me in Dylan Thomas's

Stephen King15:46

category of Scott Fitzgerald or his either, but you see what I'm saying, but I was I was spared that, so.

Presenter15:53

We'll come back to the drugs and the alcohol and the terrible mess you got yourself into a little bit later. I want to concentrate for a moment on Carrie, though, because it was selling the book, selling Carrie.

Speaker 416:02

The

Presenter16:02

That enabled you to radically change your circumstances. You bought a house, you moved closer to your mother, life changed much for the better.

Stephen King16:08

Mutt

Stephen King16:09

I had been living with my wife in circumstances that were much worse than the ones that I grew up in. We were the working poor. Once, and Tabby had said, don't you ever let my parents find out that this happened, she went down and got donated commodities at the place where the government had surplus food. When the news came that Carrie sold, it meant that I could stop teaching school. My force was like redoubled or trebled, and I was able to just concentrate on my work.

Presenter16:41

And your mother had lived to see this success.

Stephen King16:43

She lived to see the success. She didn't live to enjoy the fruits of it. And that's one of the things that I've always felt badly about. But my mother did know that this was happening for me, and I think that that was good.

Presenter16:54

She must have been incredibly proud. I mean that was the same thing.

Stephen King16:56

She was terrifically proud, you know. Yeah, she was.

Stephen King17:00

Bustin Urban's.

Presenter17:03

What's next?

Stephen King17:04

Ah, next is The Pretenders and middle of the road, Chrissy Hine.

Presenter17:08

Why have you chosen this?

Stephen King17:10

Or that's that person that stands out there in the middle of the road and says,

Stephen King17:15

Here I am. If you like me, that's great. If you don't like me, get outta here.

Speaker 417:20

I'm standing in the middle of life with my pants behind me

Speaker 417:26

But I gotta smile

Speaker 417:28

For everyone I mean

Speaker 417:32

As long as you don't tire dragging my bed Dropping the bomb on my street

Speaker 417:40

I'll give you the road

Speaker 417:43

Come on now.

Speaker 417:45

They in the middle of the road, yeah

Presenter17:50

The Pretenders and Middle of the Road. So, Stephen King, your mother had lived to see the success of the novel Carrie being signed and you making two hundred thousand dollars out of it at the time, which was a lot of money for you and a lot of money then.

Stephen King18:01

Lot of money.

Presenter18:04

I've read that you say you delivered the eulogy at her funeral drunk. Is that true?

Stephen King18:08

I don't think that I was actually drunk, but I was certainly high. And when she was in the hospital and and on her deathbed I was high most of that time. You know, I'd get about a six pack into me before I went in.

Stephen King18:21

You know, I'm I'm somebody who believes that everything happens for a reason. And, uh,

Stephen King18:27

At that time, probably I needed that kind of support to get through it. We got through that time, my brother and I in his our own ways. He had uh the Republican Party, Tupperware and God, and I had Budweiser.

Presenter18:41

Heavy drinking and drugs often go hand in hand. You mentioned a moment ago that you were taking a lot of stuff as well as just the Bud Visor. What were you taking?

Stephen King18:48

I need

Stephen King18:49

For a long time I was just basically I was just a beer guy. And then uh in the eighties I was discovering, you know, that I really was popular in a in a mega way.

Stephen King19:04

What the metaphor is, is they say, here's this wonderful banquet that America has to offer you, and for you.

Stephen King19:12

It's all free.

Stephen King19:14

and people pay you unheard of amounts of money to do it, so you become one of the fortunate few that we

Stephen King19:23

admit to the national sacred

Stephen King19:27

Real Church of America, which is the playground, where you get to play and we get to watch. And there are a few sports superstars that are allowed on that court. And there are a few movie stars that are allowed there at any one time. And recording artists are there. And we watch them play, and we're interested in their various on-the-court affairs and out-of-the-recording studio affairs and all this other stuff. So you've got this tremendous banquet in front of you, and it's all comp. They just don't tell you that you're the final course, that the final act that nobody actually comes out and talks about is the famous funeral scene. That's the John Belushi scene at the end where there's the flowers, and somebody says, I can't believe he was doing all those drugs. He just seemed perfectly all right. And that's the situation I found myself in. Somebody introduced me to Coke.

Stephen King20:22

I was balancing the two things off. Coke was an upper, beer was a downer, so.

Presenter20:26

You talk about that fascinating playground that you're admitted to that that very few superstars get into, whether they're from music or or the movies or

Stephen King20:32

But into

Stephen King20:34

Where the designated goof offs.

Presenter20:37

At the time that you are churning out these massive hits and the whole of America is going into bookstores and buying them and you've got so much money in the bank, you are surrounded by agents and lawyers and publishers. Do they just ignore the personal disintegration? Do they ignore the Coke habit and the beer because you're churning out the hits? Or do they not know about it?

Stephen King20:57

Well, later on they would say th they didn't know and that they were as surprised as anyone because no one wants to be accused of standing by like while somebody destroys their life.

Presenter21:08

You believe them?

Stephen King21:08

Um

Stephen King21:10

No, not entirely.

Presenter21:12

So how did it come to an end for you?

Stephen King21:14

Well, it was just a family intervention. People pour all this stuff out in front of me, the empty cans, the empty coke vials and everything. And uh finally I said I probably need to go into rehab and I cleaned up.

Presenter21:30

It's extraordinary that your marriage did survive. I mean, so many marriages fall apart because of addiction and substance abuse.

Stephen King21:37

And it's amazing how many marriages don't, too. I mean, uh I do know that there's been a uh there was a a long period

Stephen King21:46

where trust has to be reknitted. It leaves a scar the same way that a car accident can leave a scar, and it takes time for those things to heal.

Stephen King21:56

And with the kids, the kids were constant through everything. There was a lot of trust and support. And there was plenty of support from Tabby. It was just a case of regaining trust. And one of the things

Stephen King22:08

that makes regaining trust particularly difficult is nobody wants to put trust in someone they love who's let them down because love is an investment of its own.

Presenter22:22

What's your next record?

Stephen King22:23

Uh the next one is uh a great song, a great uh eighties barroom anthem by the old ninety-seven great uh great and funny pickup song called Bury a Reef.

Speaker 422:36

So we trapped the lights fantastic We ones are both made of elastic

Speaker 422:43

Midnight came and midnight went and I thought I was the president. She said, Do you have a car? And I said, Do I have a car?

Speaker 422:57

What's up?

Speaker 423:00

About the burial

Presenter23:03

Old 97s and Barrier Reef. In 1987, you wrote Misery, which was made into this huge hit movie starring James Cam and Cathy Bates. It's about this very badly injured writer who finds himself being looked after by his worst nightmare, essentially the obsessive fan. Your fans are a big part of your life. I mean, you go to book signings and thousands of people turn up. I mean, what place do they have in your life, the fans?

Stephen King23:31

Well, hopefully they read the books and love the books and, uh, you know, uh

Stephen King23:38

There's a thing that uh at the very beginning of uh

Stephen King23:43

the book Different Seasons that says it is the tale, not he who tells it, and it's my way of saying to the fans, back off. Uh my personal life

Stephen King23:55

What you see of it you see through.

Stephen King23:58

My books

Presenter23:59

When you say back off, what is the discomfort that you feel when they're getting too close?

Stephen King24:04

Well, there's so many of them, isn't there? I mean, and there's uh nobody wants to try and and live a life uh in something like the the window in front of a T V chat show. So I still live in in Maine where I grew up and uh people are used to me because I've been there for a thousand years. To me I'm just a guy from the neighborhood.

Presenter24:27

But wasn't there a a fan who turned up in your house and did want to cause you harm and your wife harm?

Stephen King24:30

Yeah.

Stephen King24:32

Well, he had some bee in his bonnet about how I'd stolen the idea of misery. My my son and I were somewhere else entirely. We were in another city at a at a basketball game. And my wife came down. She was in her nightgown and bare feet and he had come in through the uh kitchen window and uh he had a uh a backpack and he said it was a bomb and she didn't waste time trying to talk to the guy. She just went right out the door and across the street.

Stephen King24:59

And he thought it was a bomb. It was wired up with old dead batteries and wires and pencils. So.

Stephen King25:09

Yeah, you are. But and and th there have been several other guys. We get warnings from the state police, so-and-so has obsessed an unhealthy fascination with your work and he killed his wife and he killed his kids or something and he's on his way or something. And it just is it's not a day maker.

Stephen King25:26

when that happens. So

Presenter25:29

What's your next track?

Stephen King25:30

The next track is just straight ahead rock and roll. I think it's what Bruce Springsteen does best. It's called Ramrod. It's just guitar driven, balls to the wall rock.

Speaker 425:45

Come on, wait a while, come on, come on, say the tonight.

Speaker 425:50

Come on, come on, come on, we'll shoot dance with a man and we dance.

Presenter26:07

Bruce Springsteen and Ramrod. And so, Stephen, in an extraordinary incident of of life imitating art, I suppose, about twelve years after you'd written Misery, you yourself were in a horrific road accident in in the summer of nineteen ninety nine. What happened?

Stephen King26:21

Well

Stephen King26:22

I was walking and uh a guy came along in his van and I was where I belong, which was off on the side of the road. The last piece of memory that I have is of the top of his van coming over the

Stephen King26:36

hill and then I was in the ditch with my lap on sideways.

Stephen King26:40

That's the next thing I remember. What were your injuries? Uh I was pretty well shattered from the uh collarbone, ribs broken, skull fractured, spine chipped in two or three places, uh hip, pelvis, uh, thigh, knee, shins. So it was all busted up all down one side. Boom.

Presenter27:01

Uh your family thought you might not survive.

Stephen King27:03

Mm-hmm.

Stephen King27:04

It's true.

Presenter27:06

And they b is it true that they bought the the van that had smashed into you?

Stephen King27:11

Well, my wife bought it. The reason my wife bought it was she was afraid somebody else would and put it on Ebay.

Stephen King27:17

as the van that hit Stephen King and possibly or the van that killed Stephen King. It looked like maybe for a while.

Stephen King27:25

The State police who came to the scene reported me dead.

Presenter27:28

Do you remember?

Stephen King27:30

Yeah.

Presenter27:30

The moment that you

Stephen King27:30

You came right. Do you remember? Yeah, I do. That I remember. The guy was uh.

Stephen King27:35

sitting above me and eating peanuts from a bag and saying

Stephen King27:41

I never had an accident before, never even got a traffic ticket, and I have to go and hit the most popular man in Maine.

Stephen King27:50

And uh I said

Stephen King27:52

Do you have a cigarette? he said.

Stephen King27:54

No, don't smoke.

Stephen King27:56

The most popular man in Maine

Stephen King28:00

And I looked down and uh I saw this this great big

Stephen King28:04

Lump coming out of my jeans that was my leg, you know, it was just

Stephen King28:09

And I said, Oh, this looks very serious. He said, Yeah, you're gonna be a long time walking on that again. And then

Stephen King28:17

Very cheerfully, he added, if ever.

Presenter28:22

The whole thing sounds surreal. I mean, as if as if you play I was not sure.

Stephen King28:25

I was not you know, I was in I was surreal. I was covered with blood and I had glass everywhere and I didn't know if I was gonna live or die. I didn't know if I was paralyzed. I I didn't know really anything. I knew I was still in I didn't know what had happened to me.

Presenter28:39

What's your next record?

Stephen King28:41

The next record is Rihanna and Pondi Replay.

Presenter28:44

And this is very different from the other tracks as well.

Stephen King28:46

Well, for me disco never died and I I was never one of the I always liked punk, but I never put on a a p my punk jacket that said uh disco sucks or burn your disco records. I like this because it's it's got a great beat and you can dance to it. What's wrong with that?

Presenter29:01

Yeah.

Speaker 329:02

Well, I'm ready for it. Come let me show you. You want to groove, I'ma show you how to move. Come Mr. Dick some funny replay. Mr. TJ want to chant the music up. All the girl one day that's my wanting some more. Come, Mr. DJ, want to turn the music up. Come, Mr. D. Some funny replay. Mr. TJ want to chant the musica. All the girl one day that's my wanting some more. Come, Mr. DJ, want to turn the music up. Hey, Mister

Presenter29:12

See ya button, that's what one takes away.

Presenter29:17

Then the

Presenter29:18

Bucket

Presenter29:28

Brianna and Pond de Replate. So, Stephen King, selling those stories for a few dimes as a twelve year old back in school to now being this multi million dollar success that you are today with all all the books that you shift. D do you ever look back on those days and wonder what it was that propelled you into writing?

Stephen King29:46

No. I think that, uh, that's there from the beginning and after that, uh

Stephen King29:53

There's a work ethic involved, and that's also.

Stephen King29:58

Built in.

Stephen King30:00

The gift is something that you have, and it's a wonderful thing to have. It's a great thing.

Stephen King30:05

The person that I entertain before I entertain anybody else is me, and I have a blast.

Presenter30:12

This fictional desert island that we send you off to then, um, of course you'd be apart from your family and you'd be apart from Tabitha. How do you think you'd handle that?

Stephen King30:20

Well, that would be to the point where I the first thing I would do would be to start looking like in uh what would make likely raft material that I could get on and uh

Stephen King30:32

and sail away or

Stephen King30:35

In other words, I'd want to get back to'em. I I wouldn't deal with it well.

Stephen King30:38

I don't deal with separation.

Stephen King30:41

Not from my family, from from you or from the the the fans, that'd be just fine. Um yeah, that part of it would be okay. There there's a there's a certain appeal to the whole desert island thing from that standpoint, but if I could have my family with me, that would be even better. But again, that would be dragging them to something that they probably wouldn't be want to be involved.

Presenter31:03

You're not allowed to take them anyway, I have to tell you.

Stephen King31:05

I have to tell you. What about the fear? What about my dog?

Presenter31:09

No.

Stephen King31:09

Uh

Presenter31:10

What about the fear? Would you have any fear of what lurked on the island? Would your imagination run riot about the possibilities?

Stephen King31:15

Well, sure, I've watched Lost when this show was inaugurated. Nobody had to worry about the others at the other end of the island. But I think.

Stephen King31:25

If I had a worry, it would be that I would not not have anything to write on, that I couldn't write down stories that I had. So you'd probably I'd be the guy out there at low tide with a stick writing things in the sand.

Presenter31:38

Well, you are allowed a luxury, but we're going to come to that in a moment. Tell me what your eighths record is.

Stephen King31:42

The eighth and last record is uh Ryan Adams and When the Stars Go Blue. And for me it it sort of expresses that feeling of we all need some place to go where we can be safe and our imaginations take us there.

Speaker 431:55

Laughing with your lovers talk

Speaker 431:59

Didn't love

Speaker 432:07

Where do you go when you're lonely I follow you?

Speaker 432:14

When the stars

Speaker 432:20

Stars now.

Presenter32:24

Ryan Adams and When the Stars Go Blue. We give you on this island, Stephen King, the complete works of Shakspere and the Bible, and you are allowed to take one other book. What would your other book be?

Stephen King32:35

I think it would be the collected poetry of WH Arden.

Stephen King32:38

Because there's a lot there to read. It's a very thick book. And Auden is very rewarding. And poetry is something that's like music.

Stephen King32:48

You can read it again and again, and there's always something there that's new. You're allowed to a luxury reader. My luxury would be a.

Stephen King32:56

A water hammock not a water bed, mind you, but a water hammock that I could swing between two palms on the edge of the beach and watch the turquoise water as I listened to my music.

Presenter33:07

Well, what a I'm going to ask you then, if if the waves did crash onto the shore and washed away the disks and you had to run across the sand to save one of them, which is the w the one disc that you would save?

Stephen King33:17

Oh, the one disc I would save would be Desolation Row by Bob Dylan.

Presenter33:23

Stephen King, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Stephen King33:26

Thank you. Come and visit me again on my island. Yeah.

Presenter33:29

I will.

Presenter33:36

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.