20 Mind-Blowing Facts You Never Knew About Stephen King
10. John Mellencamp And King Wrote A Musical
His love for music doesn't stop there. In 2012 King teamed with American rock star John Mellencamp and composer T-Bone Burnett to write the musical Ghost Brothers Of Darkland County. Mellencamp had bought a house in Indiana some years earlier that was said to be haunted by the spirits of three siblings who were accidentally shot in the surrounding woodland and were said to still hang out there.
The singer approached King with this ghost story and they set to work. Ghost Brothers Of Darkland County is a Southern Gothic tale about two argumentative brothers whose father forces them to spend a night in a haunted cabin...where they are visited by the ghosts of two brothers who also hate each other.
Mellencamp wrote the music and lyrics, with Burnett on production and King providing the libretto (basically a fancy opera term for the script/actual plot of the musical). It's actually done pretty well, too, the production continuing to tour to sold-out crowds across the United States, was well-reviewed after King cut down the length of his story a little and you can buy the soundtrack album.