Dolly Parton is burning up, not burning out (Transcript)

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WorkLife with Adam Grant
Dolly Parton is burning up, not burning out Transcript
April 5, 2022

[00:00:00] Adam Grant:
Hey WorkLifers, it’s Adam Grant. Today I’m excited to bring you a conversation I had on Clubhouse with a legend. Thanks to our sponsors LinkedIn, Morgan Stanley, ServiceNow, and UKG for making it possible.
Joining me today is the one and only Dolly Parton, musician, businesswoman, actor, author, humanitarian, one of the greatest songwriters and most beloved humans in this galaxy.

Dolly Parton:
Well, thank you so much. I'm happy to be with you. Thanks for all those compliments. I don't think I deserve all that.

Adam Grant:
I'm pretty sure you've earned them all. And it's an honor to have you here.
So I'm very excited to talk about your new book and your album, but I just want to start with a quote of yours that I loved Dolly, which is you once said “after you reach a certain age, they think you're over. Well, I will never be over.”
I'd love to hear more about that. What keeps you motivated at this stage in your career to keep writing and working?

Dolly Parton:
Well, first of all, I love the music. I was born to be a singer and a songwriter, it was a song that brought me out of the smokey mountains to Nashville. It was a song that has taken me everywhere I want to go. And out of that song, so many wonderful things have branched out for me. Even if I had never made it in the business, I would have continued to do my music cause I can't help that. That's just inside me. Even if I'd have done nothing more than be a waitress, I'd have been saving them tips to go down and do a demo and try to get my songs still recorded and make an album. But like I said, I'd sell it out of the back of my car and all us artists have done that at one time or another, but I would continue to do it. Thank the Lord I'm not having to do exactly that these days, but that's how much I love the business and how much I love the singing and the songwriting.

Adam Grant:
That's beautiful. Well, you've also reinvented yourself very recently. “Run Rose Run” is your first ever novel. And of course it comes with an album. Of course we'd love to know what motivated you to write fiction and why now?

[00:02:12]Dolly Parton:
Well, James Patterson, one of the world's greatest writers ever, he contacted me and asked if I would be interested in writing a book with him. And I thought, well, why me? You seem to be doing all right on your own. He said, I have an idea. And I said, well, I’d love to hear what you got to say. So he flew to Nashville and we got together and he told me that he had gone to school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and had always loved it and always wanted to write a book about Nashville.
And I thought, well, you've come to the right girl, cause I know a whole lot about Nashville. And so,we talked about it and we came up with an idea to write about, a young girl’s struggles, and you have to read the book, I can't tell you the ending, but she's running from something and running to something–the character, Annie Lee, who will eventually become Rose, when all the secrets are out. Anyway, we were working on the book all of a sudden, like a light bulb went off in my head, I felt, well, I'm from Nashville, I'm a songwriter, why don't I just write, an album to go along with it, almost like a soundtrack to the book. And I don't know that it's been done before, but it seemed to me to make sense.

Adam Grant:
We will have no spoilers today, but I would love to hear about the creative process and how the experience of telling a story with Patterson was similar to and different from working on a song.

Dolly Parton:
I don't have many co-writers when I write songs. Very few, actually, because I liked the process of writing alone. It's a very sacred time to me, but I have written songs with a few other people. So it was kind of like that working with a co-writer on a book, but the process was pretty comfortable, actually the way we decided to work, we would call each other. We’d talk by phone emails, faxes, and visiting. He would come down and visit every few months. And I would send the lyrics to the songs.
He'd send stuff back and it was an unusual way to do it, but it didn't seem like a foreign thing to me. Cause I love stories. All my songs tell stories and he's a storyteller, I'm a storyteller. So it seemed to work out really well.

Adam Grant:
I'm curious about whether the process of writing the album actually influenced the book at all.

Dolly Parton:
Yes, it did. And vice versa, he would send stuff to me. And I would get a great idea for a song about something that he had sent and then I would send him the lyrics and he'd incorporate a lot of my lyrics into the characters in certain situations that would inspire him to come up with other ideas.
So it was really amazing how it all out even better than we thought.We'd never discussed me doing an album, but all of a sudden it seemed to be my, my best way to contribute to the book.

Adam Grant:
Well, I want to ask you a little bit about how your career has evolved over the last few decades. And obviously one of the themes that you've talked about for a long time is sexism and Dolly, one of the things I admire about you, among many, is that you don't run away from criticism. You reclaim it. You take ownership over it. You performed Dumb Blonde back in 1966, Backwoods Barbie in 2008. And now in your new album, you have “Woman Up (And Take It Like A Man)Woman Up (And Take It Like A Man).” Tell us why, what's behind all this.

Dolly Parton:
I just really love being a woman. And I think everybody should be able to be proud of who they are and use their own strengths and their own talents and be recognized for that. The two women Ruth Anna, the older woman that was once this big star then Annie Lee, the Rose character later on, you'll find out who she is, but they both write songs, they’re both independent. They both have a mind of their own, as I do, and as I always have– they were griping about this and that, and the men doing this and that.
And I thought, well, just don't gripe about it, do something about it. So I just started writing this song, woman up, take it like a man, be as good as, or better than–just woman up take it like a man. To me it was like a new little 9 to 5, like a new little woman's anthem, so it's just in praise of women. And I thought it was a clever title.

Adam Grant:
I thought so too. And I'm so glad you mentioned 9 to 5 because as an organizational psychologist, I study work for a living. And so that song could be the theme song of my life. And I'd love to hear a little bit about how has your view of work changed since you first wrote 9 to 5 and what is pouring yourself a cup of ambition like today?

Dolly Parton:
Well, that's a good question. I've got so many irons in the fire sometimes I'm burning my own butt, I have to get up earlier. I have to work longer and I have to have a bigger cup of ambition in the morning to get it all done but somebody like me, I always wanted to be a star and I wanted my dreams to come true, and they did, and there's always a dream within a dream within a dream. Cause as I often say, as a joke, but it's the truth that I've dreamed myself into a corner, meaning my dreams have come true so I have to keep them alive. Everything kind of springs off, it's like a tree with deep roots and many branches and many leaves. You get a chance to do something else because you build a brand and all that. Every day, something new comes up and I can't deny it, and I have to get in there and be with it, I can't just leave it as long as I'm living. I can't leave that in the hands of other people. I have to be on top of all of it to make sure that it's being done right. The way that I want it done.

Adam Grant:
Well, when I hear you say that, it sounds like perfectionism, but you've said no, I'm not a perfectionist. I'm a professionalist. What's the difference?

Dolly Parton:
There's a big difference! I am a professional professionalist when I say I'm not a perfectionist– I work hard I want things right. But, for instance, like if I've recorded a song and maybe it's not technically correct or maybe something happened, if it's emotionally right I leave it like it is. If it's a first take and it had that feel and that heart and that emotion, rather than doing it over and over and over until it becomes the words that don't have that same thing. And same like even hosting shows on TV. If I mess up, I just make that part of the show. I don't worry about that later unless I’ve really done something awful. But as far as– I just try to make whatever happens part of the show. I know some people that are perfectionists and they drive you up the damn wall. You know, I think I couldn't work like that. You know, I could not, because I like to enjoy my work. I like to have it be fun. And I liked the people around me to have fun doing it. But I'm professional in the fact that I stay with it, I'll work till I fall over to get things done and to get them as right as I know how to get them.

Adam Grant:
How do you deal with those moments where you do make mistakes or where something doesn't go as planned? It's so common, especially for women in this world, where women are pressured to be perfect, to beat themselves up. And you seem to just take it in stride. How?

[00:09:09] Dolly Parton:
Well, of course I don't like it. Everybody likes to do their best at all times. We don't like to mess up. I don't like to make mistakes, but like I said, if you've made a mistake, it's best you just pick it up, turn it into something positive, cause even on a show sometimes your best moments I've found in all the years I've been in concert sometimes the best part of my show is when I've messed up people know you’re human and they see how you're going to get out of it and you're right there in the spotlight. You have to deal with it. Same with life–I don't punish myself for that.

Adam Grant:
I love that. It sounds like you don't waste time shaming your past self. You're just trying to educate your future self.

Dolly Parton:
Yeah, exactly. And that's how you really need to look at it too. It's just like when I get bad reviews on an album or something I've done, a lot of people really just get all tore up and they're just depressed and do whatever. I don't like it, it hurts my feelings and it's embarrassing, but I look at it like, well, they must have had some reason to write that, there must be some truth in it surely nobody would be just cruel enough and mean enough just say something. I try to look at it deeply and think, well, you know, they probably got a point and I'll just try to look at that and try to change it and make improvements for the next time.

Adam Grant:
Dolly a lot of people call you a national treasure and obviously you are beloved by so many people, not just in America, but around the world. And obviously one of the things that comes with that level of love and celebrity is people are afraid to hurt your feelings or hurt their relationship with you. And I imagine at some points that might make it hard for people to be honest with you. And you're obviously someone who values honesty. I wonder if you could talk to us a little bit about how to make it easier for other people to tell the truth and how you also managed to be honest with them.

[00:11:04] Dolly Parton:
I have this saying and I’ve heard it before, “it's better choose what you say than to say what you choose.” Because you're not out to hurt somebody. In my position, I've had to hire so many people in my life and I've had to fire some as well and that is one of the hardest things I've ever done. I cry over it. I stress over it, you know, knowing that I'm going to have to deal with it, but I just ask God to give me the strength and the courage and the right words, if you do–if you're a person of faith, it’s good to pull on a little bit of that extra stuff by being more spiritual and how you'd kind of look at it through the eyes of God and try to think that every person is a human being, everybody hurts. So you just have to be smart about that. A good human being would do that anyway. Some people just want to be mean.

Adam Grant:
One of the things that I think is striking about you is how grounded you are. And I know that's in some ways part of your upbringing, you've said that you grew up dirt poor in a one-room cabin with 11 siblings. But it would be, I think, easy for a lot of people in your position to lose sight of that.
So how have you stayed so down to earth?

[00:12:17] Dolly Parton:
Well, because I was dirt poor I was born in a one room cabin right on the banks of the little pigeon. There was only three kids at that time, but we did move on over to our old Tennessee mountain home, where there were a few more rooms, but we kept having one kid after another there's 12 of us. My grandpa was preacher. My mom was very religious, very spiritual. So I learned all the good lessons about loving your neighbor as yourself and a judge not lest you be judged, through God all things are possible, and all those things that I learned. So I count my blessings far more than I count my money, I know that this could have not happened to me. I see so many people more talented than me that never make it. And the fact that I have just done so well, I'm amazed myself. It's almost scary sometimes. I hope I can always live up, you know, to the expectations of me. It would break my heart, you know, not to. But I'm very humble and that's because of my love for God and my trust in that.

Adam Grant:
Well, you've also taken incredibly meaningful strides over the years to pay forward the blessings that you've had. I saw one in the news just last month that starting in February, every employee at Dollywood who wants to pursue higher education gets a hundred percent of tuition covered. How did that come about?

Dolly Parton:
Well, that's something I'm very, very proud of. The reason we do it, we love our employees and they're wonderful people. We want them to have every chance in the world, because a lot of them are poor people as well, up there in the mountains, or people certainly couldn't afford to go to school or have that education. So we try to let them go to school and that's all of our employees. Everybody has the same opportunity. If you want to do it, we're going to pay for it. And we try to encourage them to learn, to study things that would be great. So when they do get that education they can come back and work with us, whether it be in culinary, whether it be in business or marketing.We have a list of things that we would suggest that they study, but they can go and go to night school, they can do it in their free time, or when we're closed for the winter. So they can do it in any number of ways, but if they want to get that education, we are going to pay for it.

Adam Grant:
I would love to see every company on Earth, make that commitment and follow your lead.

Dolly Parton:
Well, some of them might, I hope they do.

Adam Grant:
Let's make it happen. Those of you who are listening, who run businesses, this is the example to follow. Dolly, when you were just getting started out as a business owner, what was bad career advice that you received? Anything that people advise that either you regretted following, or you were glad that you didn’t?

Dolly Parton:
I had it more than once. The main advice that people wanted to give me was to change my look and to go simpler with my hair and the way that I dress, not to look so cheap, nobody was ever going to take me seriously, they would say. The way I look, and the way I looked then, was a country girl's idea of glam, just like I wrote in my backwards Barbie song, but people wanted me to change. They thought I looked cheap, but I patterned my look after the town tramp and everybody said she was trash. And in my little girl mind, I thought, well, that's what I'm going to be when I grow up. So it was really like a look that I was after and I wasn't a natural beauty. And so I just like to look the way I look. I'm so outgoing inside and my personality that I need, the way I look to match all of that.

[00:15:44] Adam Grant:
It's interesting to me when you talk about your work ethic, over the years when studying creativity,I find myself constantly having to tell people you cannot rush, creativity, great ideas take time. And yet your career suggests that that might be wrong. One of your biggest songs, “I Will Always Love You,” you wrote that in one night and then another Jolene in the same night. Who does that? How did you do it?

Dolly Parton:
Well, I don't really know that they were written the same night. When we found an old tape, they were on the same cassette ‘cause that could have been a few days apart, you know, cause of when I write, I would write, you know, just put things on little cassettes back in the day. But they also wound up on the same album, you know, the Jolene album had “I will Always Love You” on it. So they were certainly written within a very short span of time. But at that time, you know, I was very creative and I was very emotional during that time because when I wrote “I Will Always Love You,” I was trying to leave a bad relationship. Meaning I was in partners with Porter Wagoner. I was the girl singer on the show. That was the top show. But when I had started with Porter I had said that I would stay for five years. Cause I didn't come to Nashville be just somebody's girl singer. I wanted a career of my own with my own band. And I hadn't mentioned that before.

And so, as the years went by, we had recorded duets and a big part of the show, but the years were slipping by and I kept saying, I have got to go, I've got to go. And we were fighting a lot. We fought back and forth. A lot. Of course we disagreed on a lot of things, but that stubborn streak in me you know, was saying I'm going, no matter what it goes, you know, I have to go now. And I just knew that God was leading me because I had always asked him to, and I believe that He had, I was fortunate to have got the job, but Porter knew exactly what I was thinking before I even went in. But he was not hearing it.

And it was just a lot of heartache and trouble. So I just remember going home and I thought, well, what do I do best? How do I talk to this man? I write songs. So I wrote “I Will Always Love You,” took it back the next day, sat down and played it to him. And he was crying. He said, that's the best song I've ever heard. And you can go as long as I get to produce that song. And I had a couple of other songs after that, but I finally got out and got on my own. And the first song–I wrote a song on the way home after that–called “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” when I was leaving Porter’s show and I was really going to be free and that's the song that I wrote.

Adam Grant:
Wow. I'm curious about how that unfolds minute to minute, while you're writing. Vonnegut wrote about “swoopers” and “bashers”, where swopers basically pour out the ideas and then they come back to it later and edit. And bashers actually fine tune every word and every sentence as they go. Which one are you when you write a song?

Dolly Parton:
I'm all over the place. I just write what I feel. Just, sometimes the melody comes first, sometimes just some words I've got, but for the most part, they pretty much fall at the same time. But I have a lot of stuff I can't write right then. And I'll write something down and I try to get it to a little cassette if I've got a melody going so I don't forget it, so I can get back to it when I can. I keep a little tape recorder by my bed ‘cause sometimes I dream stuff. I used to think I'd remember it, but you don't. I just love to write, I don't have to write. Well, I do have to write because it's just so much part of me, but I mean, nobody makes me write. It's just something I love to do.

[00:19:23] Adam Grant:
With all the passion you have for songwriting and all the different hats you wear, it would be very easy for you to burn out. How do you avoid that?

Dolly Parton:
Well, I don't have time to burn out. I'm burning up. Sometimes I get tired, sometimes I get a little, you know, I say, Lordy, I'm going to slow down a little bit or I am going to burn up. Because I'm a creative person and every new thing will create something else. And you know, energy, begets energy and creativity begets creativity. So I just really have to stay with it. Cause I want to see things happen. I want to make things happen.

Adam Grant:
In those moments where you do feel a little bit exhausted, what do you do to re-energize yourself?

Dolly Parton:
Well, I go home. I cook, I read. I always have my spiritual work that I do.I would say when things are bad, I pray when they get worse, I pray harder. And that's pretty much the truth, I just relax. My husband and I have a little RV. We kind of travel around within a 100 mile raidus of home. Go see parts of Tennessee. We have picnics by the river, I love to play with my little nieces and nephews. I have them over spend the night, just swim. I have a trampoline which they love.I really reenergize through the kids.

Adam Grant:
Excellent. Well, that is actually a great segue to, are you up for a lightning round?

Dolly Parton:
Well I guess! How bad is it going to strike me? I’m scared of lightning…rounds.

Adam Grant:
Oh, I was thinking it would be, it will be electrifying for the audience. How's that? I've got a few questions. Short answers are great, but tell us as much as you want. The first is on the heels of this collaboration with James Patterson, I wondered what living person you would most love to collaborate with next.

Dolly Parton:
As far as music, I'd love to do something with Ed Sheerhan and I've always thought our voices would be so beautiful together.

Adam Grant:
Ed. If you're with us right now, we hope you'll follow through on that. What about your favorite song on your new album?

Dolly Parton:
My favorite song is “Blue Bonnet Breeze.” ‘Cause I love story songs and I got to do all those harmonies myself. And I just love that kind of a song. I love them all, but that's my very personal favorite.

Adam Grant:
Was there a proudest moment of your career?

Dolly Parton:
Well, I've had many proud moments. The first very proud moment was when I became a member of the Grand Ole Opry back in the late sixties and I was excited to be part of that, it’s something I had dreamed about all my life.

Adam Grant:
What about on the flip side, your biggest regret professionally.

Dolly Parton:
My biggest regret is that I have no regrets.

Adam Grant:
I have to ask you to elaborate on that.

Dolly Parton:
No, I'm just saying I don't look at my life in terms of regrets. Some people say where there's mistakes. I said, no, because what I did at the time was what I felt like I needed to be doing at the time. So I can't really. Call that a mistake or call it a regret. I was building.

Adam Grant:
Dolly I want to thank you so much for joining me today. It's been such a joy to talk with you. I want to remind everyone to check out, “Run, Rose, Run” by Dolly and James Patterson. And Dolly let me give you the last word. Do you have any advice for our audience on work, life, love?

Dolly Parton:
We have what we call in our imagination library: “Dream more, care more, do more, and be more.” So ponder that and do that.

Adam Grant:
I’ve had a chance to reflect on my conversation with Dolly and there’s a lot to process. She still has a fax machine. She wants to collaborate with Ed Sheeran. Maybe they’ll do a song called “Imperfect.” As I thought about the conversation, there were a few things that really stuck with me.

One: Her identity is anchored on being a creator more than a performer. It seems like performing is a means, but the end is self-expression. Dolly said she has to write because it’s a part of her, and something she loves to do. She’s not motivated to sell concert tickets–she wants to create and share music. When she said she was burning up, I thought of what psychologists call harmonious passion–creating for the sheer joy of it. That’s intrinsic motivation at its purest.

Two: she seemed remarkably unconstrained by concern about how she would come across. When I interview prominent people, especially live, I often catch glimpses of impression management worries– they want to be on brand and hit certain talking points. But as I listened to Dolly, watched and watched her over Zoom, it felt like she was thinking out loud. Has she always been so confident and self-assured? Or has that freedom of self-expression grown over time? I was reminded of a classic Hollander paper on idiosyncrasy credits–the idea that as you gain success and status, people give you license to deviate from expectations and express your own values. I think Dolly has accumulated a lifetime of idiosyncrasy credits, and I wonder whether that has made her less worried about conforming to other people’s expectations– and also if it’s made it easier to roll with mistakes when they happen.

Finally: it’s refreshing that she refuses to let routines dominate her life. I loved when Dolly said she wasn’t a swooper or a basher–she was all over the place. It’s a welcome contrast to all those productivity hackers who are admonishing people to have the discipline to stick to the exact same habits day after day–which sounds like a recipe for rigidity, not originality.

WorkLife is hosted by me, Adam Grant and produced by TED with Transmitter media. This episode was produced by Cosmic Standard. Our team includes Colin Helms, Gretta Cohn, Dan O’Donnell, Constanza Gallardo, JoAnn DeLuna, Eliza Smith, Jacob Winik, Hannah Kingsley-Ma, Aja Simpson, Samiah Adams, Michelle Quint, Banban Cheng and Anna Phelan. Our show is mixed by Rick Kwan. Our fact checker is Meerabelle Jesuthasan. Original music by Hansdale Hsu and Allison Leyton-Brown.

Dolly Parton: I don't care about fashion, although they call me a fashion icon and I think that's the funniest thing I've ever heard. 'Cause I don't, I never think of myself like that. Although I guess I've started a few trends, but that was just out of ignorance.

Adam Grant: More than a few.