While he is an author first and foremost, Stephen King has had quite an impact on all sorts of media. Movies have been based his books, television mini-series have been made, and even comics are starting to use his material. While television shows haven't directly used his work, his name and work does come up frequently in dialogue on shows like Friends, Family Guy, and The Simpsons. While King hasn't yet broken into video game territory, his work has had an impact on the musical world.
Punk group Pennywise took their name from the name of the monster clown, and my number 1 pick in the top 10 greatest King villains, from King's novel It.
There is also another group who I originally thought took their name from King's work. The group is called King Crimson, which I took to be a clear allusion to the arch-villain in the Dark Tower series. They even have an album entitled In the Court of the Crimson King. As it turns out, the album came out well before the books which means it's the other way around and King was referencing them.
I discovered through a...quasi-reliable website that Nightwish, a metal band from Finland (who you should all check out because they rule), was inspired by King's Dark Tower series to write the song 7 Days to the Wolves. I decided to check the song out through Myspace's playlist function a while back to see if this was the case. I know Nightwish's music is heavily inspired by fantasy literature, but it never hurts to double check these sorts of things. The song that came up was an instrumental piece, which makes it hard to confirm or deny the influence. I gave it another listen today and this song does, in fact, have words. I guess the other file was screwy or something. Not only does the song have words, but the words are pretty clearly inspired by the book in question.
King himself is a member of a rock band consisting of other well known authors called the Rock Bottom Remainders.
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