Hidden Messages and Their Meanings
Linking the musical inspiration to both creators and their adaptations.
It is no secret that music inspires many aspects of our lives. Cameron Mackey provides many ways people find inspiration in music in the blog post, How Listening to Music can Inspire Your Creativity. Music increases focus, lifts your mood or bring forth emotion, creates inspiration through lyrics, but Mackey details that music can also act as a powerful anchor, "Likely, there’s music from your past that each time you hear it brings you back to a particular moment, person or experience." Mackey elaborates, "This is called an anchor and can be used to transition you to a place in time that can help you with conjuring up ideas or feelings for a scene or character in your writing." These anchors are quite apparent in both King's and Kubrick's work in their versions of The Shining.
In order to evaluate the connection of influence that the lyrics of these songs had on Stanley Kubrick, it is important to first look at the evidence of their influence on Stephen King. First, it is necessary to state the dates in which the book and the songs were released to be able to see how this connection is possible. Pink Floyd released their album, Dark Side of the Moon, which contains the song, Brain Damage, which we will be dissecting, in 1973. The other song that we will be analyzing, Shine on You Crazy Diamond, was released on their album, Wish You Were Here, in 1975 (Pink Floyd, Discogs). King published The Shining in 1977. King was obviously a fan of rock bands of that time period, as other songs of this time and genre made their way into King’s books, with the inclusion of a portion of lyrics from Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Bad Moon Rising which was released in 1969 (292).
It was rumored that Kubrick approached Pink Floyd about writing the soundtrack for his movie 2001: A SpaceOdyssey, (Investigating the myths around the 2001'-Pink Floyd connection). Other versions of this rumor indicate that it was the other way around: Pink Floyd asked Kubrick declined. In either instance, his eldest daughter answered a similar inquiry on a Q&A Reddit session by stating, "I was aware that Stanley listened to anything and everything that might be useful in his movie," she continued, "It is entirely within the realms of possibility that he considered Pink Floyd at some point." It has also been stated that Kubrick asked the group to feature their album, Atom Heart Mother, in his movie, Clockwork Orange, but since he didn't give exact details in which it would be used, Roger Waters, front man for Pink Floyd at the time declined the request stating:
He just phoned up and said that he wanted it. [...] we said "Well, what do you want to do? and he didn't know. He [said he] wanted to use it 'how I want, when I want'." [...] and we said right away "Right, you can't use it".
The cover was noted to be shown in the movie twice, regardless of the decline (Investigating the myths around the 2001'-Pink Floyd connection).
It is apparent that Stephen King drew from inspiration rock and roll bands of his generation. We saw evidence that supports this in his use of lyrics from Creedence Clearwater Revival in The Shining. He utilized Bob Dylan songs in Carrie, along with The Doors and Neil Young in It. We can find many references, however Pink Floyd struck a chord in King and inspired him to create the main character of The Shining, Jack Torrance. Realizing this, Stanley Kubrick was also motivated by the same Pink Floyd songs, Brain Damage and Shine on You Crazy Diamond, to recreate King's novel of The Shining to tell an even bigger story, one that he used as an outlet to share clues of his involvement in the fake Apollo 11 moon landing footage. Jack Torrance had a dark secret he hid and so did Stanley Kubrick.