[MUSIC - Dolly Parton feat. Ann Wilson: Magic Man (Carl Version)]

David: Over the last six decades, Dolly Parton has become an icon in country music and one of the most beloved musicians anywhere in the world. She just released her 49th solo studio album, and it's the highest-charting album of her career. Yet with all that behind her, when she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022, she did so with a certain sense of trepidation, even a little embarrassment.

Dolly Parton: I tell you what, this is a very, very, very special night for me. I'm sure a lot of you knew that back when they said they were going to put me in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, I didn't really feel like I had done enough to deserve that.

David: Flash forward one year in Dolly Parton, age 77 has just released her first rock album. The album mixes covers from the rock and roll cannon, along with Parton's original songs like the title track Rockstar.

[MUSIC - Dolly Parton: Rockstar]

Emily Lordi is a music writer based in Nashville, who's written for The New Yorker about Gladys Knight, and Mariah Carey, and other greats. She recently spoke with Dolly Parton.

Emily Lordi: To get started, I wanted to actually refer back to our last conversation in 2020 where you said something that has stayed with me ever since. You said that it's not true that you have never been afraid. You said, "You are afraid, you do experience fear, but your desire to do something has always been greater than your fear." I'm wondering what if anything scared you about this project?

Dolly Parton: [chuckles] Well, it really was-- you got to take on a thing like this and you got to hopefully make sure that you're going to do it good. Just making the decision to do a rock album, it was made easier when they decided to go ahead and put me in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. As you know that little bit of controversy or whatever it was I didn't feel like I had earned it, but they told me that I had. Then when I went in, I thought, "Well I'm going to have to at least have something to say that I'm in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame."

I was a little bit more apprehensive, I guess. I was just more afraid that I might not do it as good as the-- I wanted the rock people to be proud of me, let's put it that way. I thought, "Well, I want this to be good." I don't want them to say, "Did you hear Dolly's rock album? It's okay. She did okay." I wanted them to say, "Did you hear Dolly's rock album? Man, she killed it." I went through those emotions more than just a deep fear. I was determined I was going to do it, and I thought, "Well, I'll cover up any fear I might have by bringing on some of these great people that I know will make it great."

Emily Lordi: One thing that's interesting to me is that the album includes nine of your original songs, including World On Fire, and I Want You Back. There are 21 classic songs, monster anthems like Purple Rain, Stairway to Heaven, Free Bird. It seems like an incredibly and beautifully audacious move for you to set some of your own original rock songs against some of these greatest rock songs ever made. I'm wondering if you felt that that was audacious, or what gave you the courage and the confidence to do that?

Dolly Parton: Well, one good strong reason was Kent Wells. He's the guy that produced the album, and he's been my musical director and guitar player for 30 years. I knew that he was a secret rocker and I knew that I could depend on him to help us with the melodies on these original songs. That would fit in with what we were doing, where they really would be rock songs not just a country version of a rock song. I depended on him a lot. Now, I really felt the songs held up, and I thought they really went well with the other songs.

It's like you think, well, if you're going to put something in it, you don't want to just do it to say, "Oh, I wrote some of the songs and I can publish them. I can make the money from the publishing." Of course, I did think that, but I wasn't just thinking that. I thought, well, I really need to have something really good so people know that I'm a artist too. That I'm a writer and that I can do this.

Emily Lordi: You and Kent Wells wrote a lot of the songs together.

Dolly Parton: I wrote some on my own. I wrote the title song Rockstar. I thought, "Well, I got to have a little story to tell." I thought, "What am I going to write the title of song about?" Then I thought, "Well, I'll write it about a girl rocker." I channeled Joan Jett and Melissa Etheridge who both play great guitar and they're really, really great rockers. They're both on the album by the way doing different songs. Anyway, I channeled them and wrote a little story about a rockstar having a fight with their parents and them thinking, "Well, what you in the world do you want to get in rock and roll?" I thought it turned out real cute.

[MUSIC - Dolly Parton: Rockstar]

I'm a rockstar (Rockstar)

They say if you can dream it, you can have it, so I play

Hear me play

Rockstar (Rockstar)

I stand before my mirror, play and sing and dream, someday

I'll be standing in the lights, selling shows out every night

Have 'em dancing in the aisles, I'll be famous

I'll be a rockstar

Emily Lordi: I'm wondering if you being sort of at the center of our collective affection, was there any tension for you between being such a beloved figure and playing the part of the rebel rockstar?

Dolly Parton: No, I figure people that know me and love me have to love me as I am, doing whatever it is I do. I think that's actually part of it. They know that I'm going to take chances and that I feel like I have a right. Another thing, I've been in this music business for a long time, six decades as a matter of fact. People feel like they know me and they're willing to allow me to try things and to respect me for it. I think, it's what I hope.

Emily Lordi: I'm interested in the fact that so many of the songs on the album are covers, and yet of course you're renowned for writing your own songs as we were talking about. Since covering songs is its own creative process, I'm curious to know whether there were any patterns that you detected in your approaches to covering other people's songs. Were there certain things that you noticed you kept wanting to do in order to dullify some of these classic rock songs?

Dolly Parton: Well, I tried hard not to dullify them too much. I have a certain way of singing. I have a certain sound in my voice. It's very identifiable. I guess they call it being a stylist. I'm like Willie Nelson or Patsy Cline. It's a voice you know when you hear it, whether you like it or not. You don't always like that voice. I know how I phrase and I know how things just come out of me. I was trying hard to be careful not to really make these songs like country songs. I wanted the phrase to be good.

In country music, I can sing anyway, anywhere, however. If I want to sing on top of the beat or lag along to whatever, but my voice is so identifiable. I just wanted to choose songs that would fit my voice that I felt my range would cover, and that my style that I could sing with emotion without oversinging them or trying to sing gimmicky or any of that. I wanted to not have people think, "Oh, she just sang all over that, or she did too much on that." I tried to be respectful of the songs.

Emily Lordi: There are some moments where I feel you are reaching and it's an inglorious sound. For instance on the outro to Stairway to Heaven, and I don't know that I have ever heard you felt quite so high.

[MUSIC - Dolly Parton feat. Lizzo & Sasha Flute: Stairway to Heaven]

There walks a lady we all know

Who shines white light and wants to show

How everything still turns to gold

Emily Lordi: I'm curious if you would speak to that and maybe more generally to how covering these songs, even as you said you wanted songs that would fit your range, how did they push you to explore new edges as an artist or as a vocalist?

Dolly Parton: That's a good question because I had some fun and some decisions to make when I was in the studio singing. For instance, singing that Stairway to Heaven, I was really into that song. It had never crossed my mind that I would ever try to do that high part that Robert Plant did. As the song was going by, I knew that was so high that I was going to strain my milk doing it. I was just going by there and I thought, "You know, I'm going to go for it." I just started singing that part because that was the kind of thing I would've thought that we would just do with music or maybe do with background.

When I let into it, I thought, "I can hit it. I can do it," but I busted a gut that was as high as I could go, but I did it. I thought, "Well, can I get a little emotion with this thing being this high. It was a challenge and it was fun and it just happened on the spur of the moment. I just went for it. I was listening to the music and I thought, "I've never had this chance before. I've never had this freedom before to actually challenge myself with these great melodies, because I write so much of my own stuff and so I kind of live comfortably in that. I thought, "Well, I'm just going to go for it." Worst is going to happen, we won't use it, nobody will ever know if it don't sound good. It was a treat for me. I had a lot of fun doing it.

Emily Lordi: I also noticed that in your collaborations, you do some incredible collaborations on this record. Interestingly there's a lot of women collaborators such as Miley Cyrus, you bring in Pink, Brandi Carlile, Stevie Nicks, Lizzo, Linda Perry.

Dolly Parton: And Anne Wilson, my God. Getting to sing with her, that was another great challenge I had. When we were singing in the studio I thought, "I can't let her get ahead of me." Of course, she can sing, but buddy, I would ride on her tail. I was just thinking, "You hit that note, I'll hit this one. You hit that one, I'll hit that one."

[MUSIC - Dolly Parton feat. Ann Wilson: Magic Man (Carl Version)]

"Come on home, girl," he said with a smile

"You don't have to love me yet, just get high awhile

But try to understand, try to understand

Try, try, try to understand he's a magic man"

Dolly Parton: We were just having fun. We were really just in a good singing musical competition, but it was fun.

Emily Lordi: Do you feel like you can be a little freer to take those risks now at this stage in your career that you might not have gone for it in the studio however many years ago, but you're willing to do it now?

Dolly Parton: Yes, I think there's a whole lot of freedom that comes with getting older. [laughs] When you've done everything you don't have to answer to other people. It's like, "Why wouldn't I be allowed to do this?" At my age, I'm 77 years old and I'm a rockstar. [laughs] I get a kick out of it, and that's when I-- the title of the album, it was kind of a little tongue and cheek kind of thing. I thought, "What am I going to call this album? Well, I'm going to call it Rockstar, duh." I'm willing to take more chances now because I can afford to.

Afford to in my career and afford to financially. I love mountain music and bluegrass music, but you never can really make a lot of money with doing that. When I've started making money, I said I had to get rich in order to sing like I was poor again, because that's the music that I love. Because I still feel that and I can still sing it with feeling. When I was doing the Rock album, I thought, "Man, this is an opportunity for me as a singer, and as an artist, and as a person." I thought, "Well, why don't I have a right to try it? I'll take any chance if it feels right to me."

Emily Lordi: There are, as we've said, so many women that you collaborate with on the record. I'm wondering, was it a conscious decision for you to change the story a little bit from the rock as a boys club idea and show that women belong there just as much as men do?

Dolly Parton: Well, I didn't think of it into that depth. I just knew I was a girl and I was going to do rock and roll. I knew there were some great girl rock and roll, especially in the early days like Joan and Melissa and some of the others. I thought, "Well, I need to make this about a girl rocker." I'm girl and I'm going to be singing these rock and roll songs, and then of course I love singing with all these women.

I thought, "Well, I'm going to ask some of them if they'll join me." With Joan, she was the sweetest thing, Joan Jett. When I said I wanted to do, I love rock and roll, she said, "Oh, Dolly, don't do that one. Everybody does that one. Why don't we do, I Hate Myself for Loving You. It's got a little more meat and you're a little more--" she said, "You got a little more depth than just singing. I love rock and roll." Which I thought was great because she's a writer.

[MUSIC - Dolly Parton feat. Joan Jett & the Blackhearts: I Hate Myself For Loving You]

I hate myself for loving you

Can't break free from the things that you do

I wanna walk but I run back to you

That's why I hate myself for loving you

Dolly Parton: It was conscious in the respect that I thought I needed to have a lot of these girls on here. I wasn't trying to do any Me Too movement or to really make a big statement of any kind. It just seemed to be the songs that I wanted to do and these seemed to be the voices that I heard on them.

Emily Lordi: I love how you bring out the reference to I Will Always Love You on the collaboration with Miley Cyrus on Wrecking Ball, and how you bring that lyric in and she sings it with you in the end of that song.

[MUSIC - Dolly Parton feat. Miley Cyrus: Wrecking Ball]

I came in like a, oh, like a wrecking ball

Yeah, I just closed my eyes and swung

Left me crashing in a blazing fall

All you ever did was wreck me

Yeah, you wreck me

Yeah, you wreck me

I will always love you

Emily Lordi: It kind of sounds to me like you're singing with her on her song, but then ultimately she's also singing with you on your song. There's just that sense of history, in other words, built into the record.

Dolly Parton: Yes, well, I love Miley. I've known her since before she was born. She's like my fairy goddaughter. We have a great deal of love for each other and we love to sing together. I think our voices really, really work well together. When I got ready to do the Rock album, I thought, "Wow, I'm going to try to incorporate a little bit of I Will Always Love You in this and I'll do The Wrecking Ball," which is one of my favorite songs ever. Certainly since it was Miley made it twice as special. We know where we're going to go. When we're singing, I can pretty much anticipate what note she's going to go for. I know how-to do-little things around her and vice versa. She knows how-- we're so familiar with our voices, or we'll think at the same second, "Wow, we can go here. Let's do this."

Emily Lordi: I read somewhere that you had hoped to collaborate with Tina Turner on this album. Is that right?

Dolly Parton: Yes. In fact, I had written a song that I thought would just be perfect for us. I had sent it over for her to hear, then I got word back that she was in very bad health that was really toward the end of her life. They said she liked it and said she was so sorry she didn't get an opportunity to do it with me. I would have loved for that to have happened, because I loved Tina Turner, always have.

Emily Lordi: I wanted to switch gears just a little bit and talk about one of your videos for one of the tracks on the record, which is the video you do for What's Up? with Linda Perry. I understand that you filmed it at Aiken Elementary School here in Nashville. I don't know what your intention was with the song and pairing it with that visual. However, I found the shot of the kids running down the hallway-- there's a black and white shot of them running down the hallway, that I personally found rather chilling in light of the recent school shootings here in Nashville and elsewhere. In the video, they run out onto the playground. Could you speak to some of that and what you were thinking with that choice?

Dolly Parton: Well, first of all, I love that song. Then Steve Summers, who also does all of my clothes, he's my creative director. He came up with the idea for us to do this, and we talked about it, doing it with kids. I changed a few lines in it to make it more kid-friendly. That part where I say, "I step out and take a deep breath and get real high." I didn't want that to sound like somebody smoking dope, so I changed it like, "I take a deep breath and I wonder why," for the video because if I was going to have children, I didn't want it to seem like I was trying to make some sort of a bad statement.

In my mind, when Steve and I were talking, we were thinking that it was more about the future, like what's going on in this world, in this crazy world? Are we going to deprive our children of a future? It's like you just want to get a grip and let's change things, and let's do it right, if not for us, for the children.

Emily Lordi: What you are saying about the meaning of What's Up? paired to the video made me wonder about World On Fire, of course. Which is a similar kind of Jeremiah and asking people to think about what is happening.

[MUSIC - Dolly Parton: World On Fire]

Now I ain't one for speaking out much

But that don't mean I don't stay in touch

Everybody's trippin' over this or that

What we gonna do when we all fall flat?

Liar, liar the world's on fire

What we gonna do when it all burns down?

Emily Lordi: I'm wondering what your most immediate inspiration for that song was?

Dolly Parton: Well, it was the inspiration of what's going on just right now all over this world. It's like, look around, can't you see the world is on fire? Not just literally

but in every way. That was back during the fires and everything too, but I was really just thinking about it in that one verse that everybody said I was being political when I said, "Greedy politicians, present and past wouldn't know the truth if it bit them in their astronomical egos," basically.

I was really saying in my heart and in my mind, leaders of the world, you better think fast, you need to make a change. I just don't get it that we're just willing to just hold on to some sort of a belief so strong that we can't see that we're allowing that to destroy us, when we could just care a little more, try a little harder, do all that? The only way I know how to fight back is to write songs to say how I feel. That song I felt really led to write, and it's just me trying to throw some light on some dark subjects these days.

Emily Lordi: I'm curious though about the line in World on Fire. You say, "Billy got a gun, Joey got a knife, Janey got a sign to carry in the fight." Is there an equivalence there between the armed violence and a peaceful protest with the signs, or is that not what you meant?

Dolly Parton: It was just what you see in the streets every day of like whatever. I was trying to be as poetic as I could to try to get the point across. People are marching in the streets, people are killing one another. People are destroying each other, and the ones that are not doing that are carrying a sign that's saying whatever. It was just about the times. It's just about what's going on in the world. They got their guns, they got their knives, they got their signs, they got their marching's, they've got this and that. I understand the frustration in everybody.

I understand the frustration in myself, but the only way I know how to deal with it is to be able to express it in music because that's how God has given me that voice. That's what I will continue to do. Anytime I see that there's a need that I can feel or something that I can do personally to make life a little better, I will continue to do that. I'll leave my heart wide open for any goodness that I can and try to be open to maybe a little more caring and understanding.

[MUSIC - Dolly Parton feat. Lynyrd Skynyrd: Free Bird]

Emily Lordi: I'm really grateful for the time and energy you've given to us. Thanks again for the incredible work.

Dolly Parton: Well, thank you so much. I'm glad you love the record, so thank you.

David: Dolly Parton's new album is called Rockstar. You can read some of Emily Lordi's essays on music and more at newyorker.com.

 

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