INTERVIEW
Country music icon Dolly Parton, 77, talks surgery, crazy rumours and her new rock album – and reveals why her life would have taken a different course if she’d had children
While most of us are recovering from the excesses of Christmas, Dolly Parton rather comfortingly is still knee-deep in the festive season. Having done her bit as ‘Granny Claus’ for her great-nieces and great-nephews – riding down the lift in her home dressed in a Santa suit, dispensing gifts such as, ‘iPads, clothes, toys, whatever they want’ – she’s not finished just yet.
‘I have a lot of family who live up in East Tennessee, which is miles away from my home in Nashville,’ she says, ‘so between Christmas and New Year I do something special with them too.’ As someone who manages to keep her decorations up until after her birthday (which falls on 19 January), it will surprise absolutely no one that Dolly loves dressing up for the holidays. ‘I wear sweaters that light up, earrings that light up. I even have bulbs in my hair that light up! I’m gaudy as hell,’ she says, adding rather superfluously, ‘I’m real big on celebrating.’
It’s no surprise Dolly is big on celebrating because, well, she’s big on everything. There’s the hair, the clothes and, of course, the boobs, which by now are the stuff of legend. A photo of Dolly meeting the Queen after a Royal Variety Performance in 1977 shows even the late monarch looking mesmerised. ‘Oh, I was real happy to meet her,’ says Dolly, ‘but I was so afraid I was going to make a mistake curtseying or saying the wrong thing. But she was so sweet and down-home – just very warm and very generous.’
It’s a description that could equally apply to Dolly, who despite nearly seven decades in the business and a net worth estimated at $650 million, thanks to hits such as 9 to 5 and Jolene, still exudes timeless country charm. Yet there’s steel beneath the sparkle. She famously turned down Elvis’s request to record her song, I Will Always Love You, as it would have meant handing over half the publishing rights to Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, and was later vindicated when Whitney Houston’s rendition turned it into one of the best-selling singles of all time. Having risen to the top of a male-dominated industry without sacrificing her soul (‘I never slept with anybody to try to get to the top’), she’s spent a lifetime confounding expectations. And she’s not done yet. Country music’s most famous star has come out with her very first rock album – at the tender age of 77.
Called Rockstar, it features reworkings of classics such as Heart of Glass, performed
with Debbie Harry, Wrecking Ball with her goddaughter Miley Cyrus, and Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me with Elton John. ‘Elton an
