I don’t often get nervous interviewing people, but Dolly Parton was someone I’d idolised since I was a child, driving my family crazy with off-key renditions of “9 to 5” and “Jolene”. Alongside my grandma and Shania Twain, she was one of the three big role models in my life. She was the queen of country music and so much more: a pioneer, a business genius, an exceptional songwriter and storyteller, a producer, a benefactor… in short: a one-of-a-kind woman.
As someone who has often been made to feel as though I am “too much” – something I know many women will relate to – Parton seemed to exist to tell you to be more. So in 2023, when I finally got the email that I had 40 minutes with her, after around three years of hounding her poor publicist, my heart flipped. Parton was notoriously tricky to interview – a mastermind when it came to dancing around a question she didn’t care for.
But the moment she answered the call, that famous southern trill coming out of a black video screen, she made me feel like we were old friends. I told her “Ro-sheen”, and that actually my university friends used to sing it to me to the tune of her most famous song, “Jolene”. Parton was in great spirits: playful, spirited, frank.
She was preparing to release her new album, Rockstar, which she recorded after trying to “bow out” of her Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination in 2022. After widespread objections, she relented, and debuted a song she wrote especially for the ceremony, “Rockin’”, on which she hollered: “I’ve still got rock and roll down in my country soul/ And I’ll be rockin’ it ‘til the cows come home!” She was very proud of it – she told me as much. Parton enjoyed (and deserved) the praise she got, but never waited for anyone to tell her how good she was.
The story went that she wrote two of her biggest hits – “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” – on the same day (Parton later said she believed she’d written them a few days apart). She was always writing: she had desk drawers and chests stuffed full of ideas, some written in lip-liner on paper napkins while she was out at dinner. On the Rockstar track “World on Fire”, Parton sang about “greedy politicians, past and present/ They wouldn’t know the truth if it bit ‘em in the ass”.
During our chat, I’d barely mentioned those lyrics when she jumped in, insisting: “I wasn’t trying to be political…” Parton was famous for shutting down questions about politics (though arguably they lay in plain sight, from her donations to LGBT+ charities and Aids research to her children’s literary foundation and the million dollars she gave to research a Covid-19 vaccine). She said in 2019 that she had “too many fans on both sides of the fence” and had “learned years ago to keep my mouth shut about things.” When she had cut in to deny being political, I expected that to be the end of it. So I was surprised when she started to elaborate on her worldview.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
