Christine Interview - London (May 12, 1983)

[neo_trinity]

When Stephen was in London in 1983, promoting Christine, he was staying at Brown Hotel. While he did a large interview for Martin Anderson on May 13, it was on May 12 that he did a rather intimate 70 minute interview with Edwin Pouncey ("Sounds" magazine) in the hotel dining room. This interview was published on May 21, 1983 and later republished in "Bare Bones". During this interview Stephen discussed Pet Sematary (where he confirmed what he really thought about the story in regards to Doubleday's marketing claim), a new disease called AIDS, Kubrick's interpretation of The Shining and his children, that I don't believe were ever printed.

This tape was part of a set that included an inscribed copy of UK Christine to Edwin - thanking him for a pleasant interview, an inscribed ticket to a promotional talk, as well as a signed copy of the tape cassette and a letter confirming it was the only certified unedited copy. The set was originally purchased by George Locke of Ferret Fantasy booksellers in London, and later purchased by myself in 2005.

The first clip I have digitized is from the 13:35 - 15:52 interval. It is entitled: "What frightens Stephen King?". I hope you enjoy

Part 1: What frightens Stephen King?

Note. Gerald removed the tapes. Please go to post #31 for new links.

[Ari_Racing]

You HAVE to post more often! THANKS for sharing this info!

I'm opening the file right now.

[idlewarnings]

That's great, neo_trinity. Thanks for sharing.

[herbertwest]

Wow, very interesting!
Thanks for the backstory and the sharing !

[Mr. Rabbit Trick]

Thanks G, for the story and for sharing the recording.

[carlosdetweiller]

Very interesting! Thanks, Gerald.

[mae]

Thank you. Would love to hear the entire thing.

[Ben Mears]

Thanks for sharing that. Not surprised by SK's answer to the question of what really scares him; cancer weaves its way into many of his novels. The way his mother died understandably had a major impact on him.

[Randall Flagg]

Marvelous. Thanks.

[neo_trinity]

I am glad you like. I will share more short segments as I separate them with sound editing software, but unfortunately the entire interview is over 2 GB in size and would not make for a possible download. Another interesting story was his flight over on the Concorde and his concerns over what could happen at 56,000 feet.

[mae]

Encoded as MP3 instead of WAV, it should be much smaller.

[neo_trinity]

Hi Pablo. The original cassette was transferred to digital by recording it at 16 bit, 44.1 kHz Wav, in a recording studio, to try and preserve the original details as close as possible. Unfortunately, being 30 years old and recorded with a standard Sony cassette recorder in a noisy, active dining room, the background noise was less than perfect. At one point you can hear the waiter telling the interviewer that his credit card was declined, and asking him for another payment card. This was then encoded to lossless with WavPack. The file was then tagged, and transcoded to LAME 3.99 MP3, to see if the quality would hold, but it didn't. Even though the MP3 files were smaller, I chose to keep it in WAV because it was the clearest. I may try again in the future, but for now, this is the best option.

[Scoogs]

Try the FLAC file format.
It's an open source, lossless compression format so there is no quality loss. You'll still have a larger file than MP3, but much smaller than a WAV file.
My home music server is entirely FLAC based.

Alternatively, you could try a 320 MP3 to see if that would help. Most people cannot hear a difference at that bitrate.

Absolutely keep the original WAV files as your archival copy.

[Scoogs]

And thanks a lot for posting this!

[The Library Policeman]

Thanks for posting this, Gerald. Great stuff!

[neo_trinity]

Thank you Scoogs. I had heard of FLAC but never tried it. I am continually learning about recording formats as it is very interesting. I will try this when I am back in L.A. Yes I have the master copy kept in WAV, and will try to experiment with these smaller segments.

[Pasiuk57]

GREAT STUFF!!
Another King rarity!

[herbertwest]

Thank you Scoogs. I had heard of FLAC but never tried it. I am continually learning about recording formats as it is very interesting. I will try this when I am back in L.A. Yes I have the master copy kept in WAV, and will try to experiment with these smaller segments.

I used to se the free software DBPowerAMP to convert audio files. It works quite well, and you can choose / add different formats.

[neo_trinity]

In 1983, the world had a new virus called AIDS, Ronald Reagan was the U.S. President, and unlike the vampires of Salem's Lot, you couldn't just dismiss him when the movie was over. He was real.

Part 2: AIDS, The Stand and Reagan

[east-tennessee]

Nice stuff, thanks for posting it.........

[Mr. Rabbit Trick]

Thanks for the second part G.

[Ari_Racing]

Bumping. Let's hope Gerald has subscription to this thread and gets the alert.

And, of course, starts posting more often!

[Randall Flagg]

Winters killed the links to the tapes, so unless someone else is willing to share the tapes, this thread will be archived.

[Mr. Rabbit Trick]

I still have the original WAV file, "What frightens Stephen King." It is 45.6 Mb so I cannot post it here.

If only I was not about to have a few glasses of 40% alcohol, I might've got round to making it smaller and posting it somewhere. Aw well! Sighhhhh.

I've just noticed my UK Christine was inscribed on May 11 1983, the day before this interview.

[mae]

Just upload it to YouTube.