Extended interviews: R.E.M., Dolly Parton and John Legend

first of all what does it mean to you all to be recognized for songwriting I always thought I was a songwriter and certainly it's a better songwriter than a guitar player um and you know we lived or died on the strength of our songs that's it you know so this is a huge honor you to be notice for something that it is what I do yeah it's so interesting how many artists musicians think of themselves first as songwriters I mean is that true for for all of you you know for me it's it's it is the hardest part I mean literally almost anyone can pick up a guitar or play a piano or do those things to one degree or another yeah but not anyone can write a good song it is the hardest thing that we do and it's the thing that we've worked on the most from the very beginning I think we're we're pretty proud of because we had to well I mean really early on just to put food on the table we had to write songs as fast as we could go out tour them into little places what made you want to be songwriters The Beatles really really when I was seven I heard that and it was like that changed my life yeah meet the Beatles yeah punk rock punk rock yeah you can't play covers all night long no and some a lot of people do well and that's great I mean I've done it but uh once we once we realized we could it's sort of it was like the keys to the kingdom once we realized that we could actually sit down and create these things yeah that then we could play them for people and lift everybody up it was it was magic and so so writing songs was the key to to doing the things we wanted to do which was play music and make people dance yeah Peter we had a bunch of songs when we first started and they weren't great yeah and then about 6 months in all of a sudden these songs started appearing you know radio for Europe and sitting still and gardening night and it was all in the space of about three or four weeks and all of a sudden just like wow we have an identity now we're not just this band that does this kind of song or that kind of song we have a a group identity what what was that identity it was the four of us doing you know we're all unique players and singers yeah these guys are better technically that I'll ever be but we all have our own styles that are no one else sounded like you still have the best right hand in the business this is true man and the songs we were writing um we realized it didn't really sound like anybody else you know with some of our earlier songs that we wrote you know you could kind of trace the lineage of where we got it from but with these new ones we were like okay these are our songs they sound like nobody but us yeah and this is where we're going yeah how would you describe that sound what did you hear that's not that's not for me to say um somebody no somebody once said that every band member was soloing from beginning to end of of each song yeah I I think I think we all did the wrong everyone did the wrong things well work well Peter's arpeggiated guitar playing yes leaves a lot of room for me to have fun with the B CU I'm not going to sit there and play the root all night long so Peter's creating Melody by playing the arpegios I'm creating Melody on the bass bill is the most orchestral drummer I know so he's he's not just bashing drums back there he's creating a drum part that fits that song yeah and Michael of course is one of the best melodists in the world so we just have all this melody going on and all this self-identity going on and that's what made us one thing made us special I've never been called a motus before I I'm not even sure that's a word I kind of like it I made it up I guess it has to have been accidental essentially I mean you couldn't have you wouldn't have known that this was going to work it felt like Kismet to me it did when yeah when it happened it felt right yeah but the first songs that we wrote really were not very good but then it all kind of as Peter said it all kind of happened and then we were like oh wow we can really actually do this I remember the first the very first practice uh bill and I had some stuff left over from our band in Mon and we showed it to Peter and Michael and they took it to places even that very first night that I didn't expect and we were I was thrilled I said okay I love what these guys are doing with what bill and I have been bashing around for the last year and a half and and they just took it to brand new places and we said okay this I said this works for me when you start writing songs at I mean you guys are not long how old were you at that time I mean I was 19 when the bed started early1 was was there a was there a direction in mind or were you just trying anything Our intention I think from the very beginning was not to be categorized in there were there were a number of different in 1979 1980 there were all these different you could be New Wave you could be punk you could be kind of not quite hardcore we didn't want to be uh C categorized as any of those things so we worked really hard not to have categorization niape someone finish someone for me please like you've talked in the past I know about wanting to write songs that appeared to not come from any particular time which I I mean can you do that by design it was it was not just the writing of songs but the but the recording of the record The Sounds you use the instruments you use we didn't use the the hot keyboards of the day and uh and writing songs yeah because we were lucky enough to find that when we wrote songs they had our identity as I said they they they stopped sounding like us trying to write other people's songs right and they start to sound like our songs and that in itself when you've got as many disperate influences as the four four of us have you end up with something that is kind of Timeless because you can't really pin down where any of it comes from and the same thing goes to the records you listen to a record from 1983 and it could have been made two years ago right among the many reasons you are distinctive you all four of you write which is pretty unusual for a band we're lucky that's the way it should be I I'm either a total communist or democrat or something but my feeling was all of this is writing you know chord changes Melodies baselines drum Parts yeah I can't couldn't imagine working in a group where then you sit down and argue about who did what and who gets owed what I just won't work like that yeah yeah second best decision we ever made was was when Peter said we're going to split the songwriting four ways what was the first uh getting Birds STS to be our adviser here here both of those are wise decisions but it work in your case because all of you are involved in this music not I me obviously not equally in every song but you've all had a role in the strong R which I I can't think of many bands that's true of it's true when we when we first started it was just for me an idea it was like a Teenage Dream yeah it didn't occur to me that I would have to actually like write lyrics and perform I mean the it just felt like well that'd be a really cool thing to do yeah and I really set out to do it and then we were doing it and then it was like uhoh this actually requires some modum of talent not sure that's in there but you know we dug deep and it finally appeared I mean I know every song comes in a different pathway but I mean was there a process no I mean it you know some of them we just make up at sound checks one of us will bring in chords or ideas you know some of them take as long to write as they do to play yeah um you Peter would come in with an idea and within five minutes we'd have a song or sometimes we'd have to work on it for weeks before we ever got where we wanted it what is or Yours lyrics are not easy and and the more the more I wanted them to be great and for there to be something there for everyone yeah uh the harder they got yeah I mean you said you're not an autobiographical songwriter no I'm not no no I I try to fictionalize at least if I'm pulling from real life um it it's never it's never autobiographic I would think in some ways that made the songwriting process harder I'm not a reader these guys are the readers so I guess I'm an observer Maybe than anything else I look a lot and pay attention and then put it together and create stories yeah I saw an interview with you yesterday from years ago you said I just encourage the public don't confuse the singer with the song yeah yeah that was always true yeah yeah and we gave you so many songs these guys are really prolif well think about what he had to write 10 to 12 Songs per record and it was a record a year I mean that's a lot of words and stories to try to tell I'm glad it was not to mention the songs that never made the cut that he wrote lyrics to sometimes if you're forced to write it's it's better sometimes it's not it's a thin line and no one knows it better than the three gentlemen flanking me my left and pressure is a good thing yeah too much pressure shut is like us shut down it wasn't always up to me you know we were all really involved in uh in the final thing and and and these guys were great uh and very supportive of of my struggles with writing lyrics yeah uh and they're great editors so you guys were remarkably prolific a lot of bands really struggled for periods of time to come up with material and and that and sometimes that deadline or the pressure of another album just shut people down but it doesn't seem to have happened to you well we were we were lucky in the sense that we loved the the craft of songwriting so much that I mean I couldn't walk past a guitar or piano without picking well pick up the guitar not the piano and try to play it uh you know Peter was Peter was always playing the guitar always all day long every day and when you do that and you've got some sort of talent and inspiration in there it's going to come out and we also realized early on that that this was important to us having great songs was the thing that was going to make this fun for us and make it work for us so that was just something we worked on all day every day while we were younger together in the same town in the same house and we tried really hard not to repeat ourselves we tried to do something and then move on and and challenge ourselves and we challenged ourselves over and over and over again yeah with each record I I'm curious what songwriting means to each of you personally what has it given you something to do at 3: in the morning when I can't sleep I mean it's just an obsession I've had that's not necessarily always healthy yeah and it's ongoing and yeah you know I'll be sitting on my pajamas at 3:00 in the morning going is there anyone on Earth who cares if I finish the song yes the answer is is I guess me no one else yeah um and it's just an obsession I'm assuming at some point it'll kind of quit but yeah obviously if you keep doing it it has to give you something in some way yeah I mean absolutely but you know for me the memory is always first time we play it together or hearing the record come back at you or just the rehearsal where it all felt come you know comes together yeah that kind of means more to me than the struggling trying to put chord A after chord right yeah it's like it's like making a building a puzzle completing a puzzle cuz okay I've got this and this is good but what's the piece that I need that's going to make it right and make it cool and when you come up with that it's just very satisfying to look back on it as a finished product and go wow that's that's very cool emotionally personally is it important to you in any way in terms of what it allows you to process I mean as medium scale music is incredibly profoundly emotional and and goes straight to the heart I I I wish I was a really good actor I'm but I know that all actors wish that they could write songs and they can't but they that's what they really want so there's a sense of ownership and a pride about that when you have written something and you know that it's not just good but possibly great yeah that's a really great feeling yeah but you don't always recognize that at first do you no hell no no no no how long does it take to see it or do you have to see it through other people's eyes usually usually sitting in a room with someone who hasn't heard it and you you you feel the vibe you feel the energy you know you you know where it needs to change or be changed yeah or if it's perfect yeah when we made records all through the 80s I would always take the cassette uh of the Final Mix and I would go to my favorite bar in Atlanta and we'd shut the thing down and I'd play it for my friends yeah and that was when out of the context of the studio and out of the context of being with these guys I could kind of hear it through someone else's ears and that's when I would go like holy cow this is a great record you didn't always know until it had some different context and then then they just blew me away to do that was so much fun because they'd all be thinking wow that's amazing and I go you know you're right it actually is the other thing about RM though is that we didn't always write music or songs that people connected with on the first listen sometimes it took seven or eight or even 10 lessons before yeah the melody is sunk in you wake up singing it the next day and then you know you've got something yeah that is true what does that say do you think we're very complicated intelligent people it it means the last I mean so many songs you you them on the first list and then after four or five you're like okay that's enough of that I know but that those were always my favorite on albums in the end is the ones you discover that take you a while to really discover because you'd listen to the whole album and you'd kind of be like well I've heard the songs I really like but I'm going to leave this song because it takes energy to lift the needle and then after a while that's the song that STI sticks with you for reasons you don't really understand and that's a gratifying part of songwriting is you can write or something first of all that people would have the patience to listen to them multiple times that's kind of amazing but uh but the fact that you can you can write something that actually stands up to repeated listenings and scrutiny and actually gets better as as it goes along is kind of it's very satisfying yeah also talk about Peter the or Bill the the what it is to to put together an album you know you start off with a bunch of stuff yeah that's it and it's like got 30 pieces of music and no lyrics and what are we doing and you know it's it's that's the hardest part is when does it start being in Cate and start telling you what it is yeah because you know you want the record to flow from song one to the very last yeah and you're just kind of like I don't even know what we're doing right now yeah I mean that happens when every record I've ever been on I was always always relieved when we got to the sequencing stage yeah that's a little work I mean it's kind of not easy but it meant the songs were done there's the oblig of songwriting that comes with an album that you have to put out and I mean was obligation a good thing or a bad thing obligation to each obligation to write to create you have to come up with songs right you know you're sitting there they the labels waiting for another record and then Peter bucks waiting for another record sorry guys were you the Taskmaster yeah yeah um not because I wanted to but yeah certainly not like I could get these guys to do anything to they didn't want to do it was just I'm kind of a you know let's just do it and let's get it done yeah and there'll be something in between and at the end it'll be finished and then we go on to the next thing yeah yeah somebody's got to drive the train and and we were all more than happy to have Peter be sort of our motivator in terms of like okay it's time to write these songs get the next record going more than happy may not be the phrase that I would use looking back let's say there's a body of work that wouldn't be there had you not been pushing us as hard as you did yeah that's when you you realize wellow this is really quite something that we did quite an accomplishment yeah well I mean it's a hell of a body work I mean it's pretty amazing when you when you dive into it I don't know how often you guys go back and listen to it zero zero occasionally we've heard them I you know I don't listen to radio I don't watch TV yeah you know somebody a friend of mine texted me and said oh this song is the favorite song you guys ever did and I went I don't even remember what song that is so I had to go to YouTube and look it up and it was on our last record oh yeah that is a good song yeah but you know it's kind of like yeah once I do it it's gone yeah for you it's over the minute we okay the Final Mix it's just over yeah why is that got somewhere else to go I don't know more songs to write more songs to right so you don't sit there and celebrate them necessarily well you have to perform them you have to perform them so and you do celebrate them I mean it's you're you're aware that that while you feel great about accomplishing that you've still got the next one to do at some point but but yeah you have to give yourself perspective and and enjoy what you've done but you can't just sit there and go wow we're great because we finished that uh because there is pressure from within we gave ourselves a lot of this pressure to to do the next record to write the next bunch of songs and and have them be great yeah yeah that's great but what are you going to do now yeah and you know we sort of preempted any record company or anything like that from given us pressure we just put it on ourselves and so anything they said or did was nothing compared to the self motivation that we had to to get out and do this how did you guys do under that pressure I mean it seems like you did pretty well unfortunately writing songs are something we love to do at least musically speaking I mean we loved getting together and making noise and seeing what came out of it yeah or showing each other I'd come in with a part I was very excited about and I'd show it to Peter and Bill and they' Peter go okay here's the chorus and we' like wow that's great yeah it was it was just the thrill of working together and and and creating these little pieces of whatever they are that was so satisfying right we're also here to tell the tail and we're s we're sitting at the same table together with deep admiration and friend life life life on friendship a lot of people that do this can't yeah claim that and so that's kind of great why do you think that is why do you think you can all sit at this table when so many bands can't together ego and lawyers not ours theirs I think we quit at the right time yeah I think that we all saw that the end into the road was there and that it was becoming the circular thing that we were going to do it every you know and I think we all just kind of came to this conclusion that this is a really good place to finish you know great tour great album go home yeah yeah any second thoughts about that anybody ever no never no pretty happy yeah Bill did you ever have any second thoughts about walking away of course I did you did you okay yeah it that was a weird time for me I bet and I made it weird for these guys too that's no it wasn't weird we respected your decision 100% yeah cuz we're all sitting here friends again yeah still but it was hard it was I was going through a tough time yeah well you I mean you had some major health issues that you had to yeah I'm not going to use that as an excuse you're not no what would you attributed to um maybe it reduced maybe that thing in Switzerland yeah brain aneurism and successful surgery it may have lowered my energy level yeah I was type A hyperactive until that yeah and I just didn't have the drive I once did yeah to do this so you knew you had to you had to give it up yes and I didn't regret it at the time um I sort of regretted it a little later yeah that was a long time ago it was over a quarter of a century ago but obviously it's still emotional on a certain level well yeah yeah I'm close to these guys and I was close to what we did yeah yeah it was we did some amazing stuff you did I want to talk about a couple of songs um you guys mentioned I mean Radio free Europe was your first single um it was obviously not the first song you wrote but you from what it sounds like that's kind of one at the point where you started knowing what you you actually sounded like it was one of the first four or five songs that we just felt like oh yeah this is who we are at least this is who we are right now that we had a individual identity like I said radi fre Europe sitting still gardening at night yeah um romance which never end up on a real record but all these songs were just kind of coming out and all of a sudden it felt like pretty persuasion pretty persuasion and then all of a sudden it seemed like our set started to sound like wow a real band would do these songs yeah you know yeah that's got to be pretty much of a thrill we kind of grew up in public you know we we didn't really know what we were doing these Mike and Bill are really great musicians Peter and I are not and so we were learning all together how to do this thing and and and um but you know there was a moment where it was like wow we don't sound like the people that we came into the room as fans of the people that were big influences on us uh each individually different and a lot of overlap we suddenly started to sound like something very different yeah and that very different became RM so we pretty much always started with with music that you guys would bring to Michael did you ever write a lyric first yeah you did it never worked it never worked they never wanted to I mean never it never it never turned out that the that that that that that the lyric was the motivation for a song being written around it right but that's probably partly my fault as well I'm a bit of a perfectionist yeah but that's one of the things that that made us stand out I think was the fact that when the three of us wrote a song it had to be interesting on its own without lyrical without lyrics or or singing vocal Melody we had to enjoy it and enjoy playing it and it stood alone already yeah and so when you add Michael to it it it took it to the stratosphere so that was I think one thing that gave us a leg up on a lot of lot of other bands in terms of song rating yeah I distinctly remember um these guys came up with an idea for a song during a sound check and it was uh and I had written a letter that month and I heard this Cadence while they were playing and I was on stage yeah and I was like wait a minute I think I've got something for this and I went into my dressing room came back with the letter and it became Evo the letter yeah it was but it was all there I don't have the original letter uh I have a scan of the of the original letter the lyric is exactly as it's sung in the song it's just wild that that it came straight from the letter yeah wow yeah yeah I picked two I picked two sentences and repeated them and that became the chorus yeah some songs came remarkably quickly to you Losing My Religion was one of those right not for me but but no no it was Peter I mean I I kind of had brought it in on mandolin and within an hour we were playing it exactly like the record it took me it took me a little while to come up with the Baseline yeah but you were doing perfectly well the second time through then Michael had lyrics like the second day I mean exactly like the record yeah then I think we only played it once in the studio I was like yeah we know that yeah you were just messing around with the mandolin you just started playing yeah and I still don't play mandolin you know I would just had one there and I I don't I mean every time I do a session so me go so bring a mandol in I'm like don't play mandolin could throw a rock and find a mandolin player that's better than I am but um I just happen to write it on mandolin yeah yeah so funny where did you pull that lyric from so quickly no idea no idea I remember originally it was that's me and the kitchen not not the spotlight yeah and then of course turned the spotlight onto me the singer that's where the singer the singer don't confuse the singer with the song yeah but yeah um and the title came from something your grandmother Los Rel yeah that well I love lost my religion is a southern phrase and I torqued it slightly for the title yeah you all didn't really think that much of that song did you I love the song but we never thought it was going to be a hit it should not it's like a bumblebee they shouldn't be able to fly and that song should have been a hit but boid they did fly so when something like that happens to a song what how do you react to that I mean what do you what do you make of it because you guys created that thing that took off no no I mean I kind of well about time I mean you know we made a lot of really good records and and then randomly we had a hit single off this thing with the lead mandolin I like go figure yeah yeah you can't design it can you no when you look back on songwriting and the whole process and all the success you had what do you make of that process do you think you figured it out would it is it any easier now than it would have been 25 years ago or is it still just the same I think everything gets harder as you get older do you well you've done it you know it's like how do you avoid repeating yourself right and that becomes kind of high up on the list of of what you're thinking when you're writing a song it's like oh shoot I've already done that yeah I wrote a great song once and I was like man this is really cool and I was like wait it's it's Freebird yeah I can't can't write that so is that part of the why you guys disbanded was he there's just nowhere else to go one of many one of there were so many reasons why that was the right I think the main reason was that at that point we there wasn't anything we could agree on really musically right what kind of music how to record it are we going to go on tour for you know it's like yeah we could barely agree on where to go to dinner yeah and now we could just agree on where to go to dinner and don't have to worry about the whole you know we work in very different ways I can't believe I'm going to quote the birds but to every thing turn turn there's a season our season you know the the time it had come it had become the time for us to encapsulate our Legacy to to to be able to look at it and say that's what we did we didn't drive it into the ground we did it we can walk away from it and remain friends and look back on it and go wow we did this beautiful thing as you say you don't really listen to your stuff a lot do you ever have you ever sort of looked at as a body of work and said well look at this you know cuz it's pretty impressive it's so self-indulgent to do that I mean none of us are really quite that self-indulgent am not to that like so when we be re-releasing these 25 year anniversary something now at that point it's a legitimate time to listen to the record again and think about it songs get stuck in my head though and the only way to exercise that is to listen to them and these songs because we wrote them are part of our DNA it's like you pick up even if Peter forgot a song off of one record the second he hears it he's like oh yeah I you know I remember a part of that right yeah so the only way to exercise it is to listen to it yeah and then I I wind up on YouTube uh and I watched some live performance I'm like wow I can't believe we did that like we did we did things I know and we did it really well from time to time yeah it's really wild that is pretty cool to look back on it means a lot to people and you know I I was going to say earlier I music is a great medium but what you really want as a as someone who creates things is to respond to the moment to respond to the present and to somehow Elevate or or lift not just yourself but the people around you in some way yeah and our job as songwriters was to kind of int it or feel where we were in that moment and then translated into music and when we did that and it and and it hit it really hit I mean you know this people take an ownership of them and they become incredibly personal well it's like Peter said once we finish the record it's it's not our anymore it belongs it belongs to everybody else yeah but it is yours it is but it's not just ours yeah now yes of course it'll always be ours but now it belongs to whoever whoever likes it whoever wants to listen to it and like it I got to ask the question that everybody's going to ask me if I asked which you know is coming which is what would it take to get you guys back together one more time a comet super glue super glue it ain't happening is what you're saying no no why is that it' never be as good that's why I mean it never is you know I go I go see all the bands that have been t for a million years and you know we had our time and we did it as well as we could I just I don't think I have any interest in going back and celebrating our past or yeah you know giving I just don't know what I'd be trying to accomplish if we got back together yeah you don't think that there might come a moment where you just want to get together and play all those songs one last time somewhere but then what yeah there's no one last time yeah because if we get what if we got together just the four of us goof and of and play a sign oh great let's do this again it's like all the reasons you don't want to do it are still in place yeah it's It'll like Peter said it'll never be as good we we we are lucky enough to have a don't really love the word a legacy that that we can leave in place and not mess up yeah and you don't get that opportunity but one time and once once you change that you can't go back yeah I remember when The Velvet Underground came back together after decades apart and toured and I as a fan I was invited but I didn't want to see it you know I was like ah I want to remember it the way what what what it meant to me as a teenager and as a young adult I don't really want to see their version of it now yeah I I now of course completely regret not going to see that but it would it kind of Might maybe would have been its own thing it would have been quite amazing but yeah so there's no chick big enough there's no no I mean we did it we we had our we had our day in the Sun and and and we we we we grabbed it uh ran with it and ran with it yeah MH we celebrated uh Peter's birthday a couple years ago and over dinner after several glasses of wine a guitar came out and we all performed a little version of one of our favorite songs together and it was really nice you know but it was a private dinner but that's about as close as a reunion as you're going to go yeah yeah yeah that sounds like a nice moment it was good food too if you were working in the studio trying to write something how would that work somebody brings something in I would do something like this yeah somebody would bring in an idea and and show it to the rest of us and then we just start messing with it sometimes we would literally just start playing without plan at all yeah just everybody played what they felt like playing and sometimes it would morph into a song yeah was that typically productive I mean did no it's not it's not it's not a very efficient way to write songs but sometimes when you don't have any ideas you just like throw it all in the pot and see what happens yeah yeah I mean did did did that work it did work sometimes there were a couple of times when we'd come up with a song yeah yeah can you can you think of it an example me and honey yeah that's well me and honey was I was sitting here playing that bass rift and you were sitting it was one of the few times you were at rehearsal and you were sitting right there and I was playing that little riff and you're like keep playing that keep I was like it's really hard keep playing it so I kept playing it and you you like in the time it takes to play it you wrote the song I said okay it needs one more chord so we added the the fifth and it was done yeah fastest song we ever wrote I would often hang out in the front room yeah cuz the the the the sound is muffled to so it's like your neighbor's playing some music and you like it or you don't yeah when I liked it I was like oh there's something there there's something that thing and that's easier than being in the room with the amps and with everything sometimes yeah so you can kind you're kind of eavesdropping I'm Eaves dropping yeah yeah y but you can that allows you to sort of filter everything that's interesting God I've never heard anybody do that before in the songwriting process well then if I had an idea I'd come in here and sing it and uh you know on the mic and and these guys would hear it and they would then maybe play off of that a little bit or it sounds like once you came up with a sound in those that early group of songs you were talking about you became relatively convinced in your ability as songwriters or did that take a while now we knew pretty quickly I'd say we knew within a year well I knew right away the very like I said a very first rehearsal I I I loved what Peter and Michael did with the songs that bill and I had yeah so I knew something good was going on that didn't mean we could write good songs but but the foundation was there and then pretty quickly like like we said once we started with hitting things like gardening at night and all that we said you know we can legitimately write some songs here yeah as soon as we got good at something we would push ourselves to not repeat ourselves so we would try to really push the limitations of our abilities and that turned into a bunch of different sounding records with a lot of different kind of material yeah were you aiming for anything in the beginning world domination we're in a band we write songs that's it I mean it was it just becomes part of your daily routine and you know when we were here we came in 5 days a week and rehearsed and at some point would have a body of work that seemed like it was a record yeah you know we're all music fans so to write something that that would excite other people like ourselves yeah maybe if there was a goal it was something like that yeah well I mean I guess what I'm trying to get at is the is the whole is how you structured the process if in fact you structured it there sounds like there was some kind of structure to it you had to show up you had to show up I'll show up at 1:00 and bring in any ideas that we had yeah and see if it inspired anybody else to do something with it yeah and that was it and like I said sometimes we had no ideas and we would just not Jam but we would just make noise and sometimes something would emerge from that but it was it was only structured in the sense that we had to be here at one o00 that can run off the rails pretty easily I mean it it does in most bands I think well we we didn't push it you know if we showed up and we played like Peter said if we played for 45 minutes minutes and nothing was happening we like okay let's not beat our brains out yeah come back tomorrow I remember when I guess Drive came out as a single and I guess it's kind of wild that you have this song that doesn't have a chorus as your first single yeah I kind of went yeah I guess it didn't really have a chorus did it it just felt like a complete piece of music yeah so it was really intuitive so how did you know when it was a song in the room when it felt right really you just know if you enjoyed playing it and listening to it yeah then it was a song yeah you hated it out the window and you trust your own immediate judgment pretty much who else it was just us so yeah we did and and like I said when we started writing what we considered real songs it was pretty clear that we had an idea about what was going to work and what wasn't yeah I was looking at a quote from uh I guess what turned out to be kir Cain's last interview and I know you guys were friends with him but I mean he was incredibly flattering to you all and said something to the effect I wish I could do with those guys do I don't know how they do it um what does it mean when you hear something like that I wish we could tell him how to do it yeah you know but but we just did it it wasn't everyone thinks it's this calculated plan of here's how you you know like like squeeze fantastic band but they they had a rule where they had to write a song every day one song every day and out of that they came up with a ton of great songs we didn't have that sort of we didn't want that sort of discipline we didn't we didn't want this to be a job even though we we very serious about doing it we didn't want to make it honorous and and put even more pressure on ourselves by having to do this in a certain order in a certain structure we just wanted to have fun and and and the more you relax really the more you relax the more you're going to come up with good stuff anyway did you write mostly in here starting in ' 86 yeah yeah to the very end yeah yeah this is where we'd put everything together put it in its final shape so yeah this has been the place before that it was Mike's living room right on Barbara Street and that's where I remember we wrote uh Little America in that front room a lot of that record a lot of that second record yeah there was one I I can't remember what it was it was one album you wrote almost entirely on the road I think that's the way you described it maybe it was that was uh yeah new adventures yeah new adventures right yeah we went on the road with nothing and just sound checked and by the end of the tour we were playing eight songs I think and then finish the rest up I think I was just trying to push us in a direction that was like this is different from what we've done before let's put some pressure on ourselves I mean you talked about I think in a couple of the interviews I read the sort of adrenalized State you're in obviously on a tour I mean does that does that accelerate the songwriting process does it does it help it or not it was really hard for me to focus when we were on tour I I I was I gave everything to the performer perance and and you know my body was my instrument and so it took a beating uh I didn't have the head space really to write songs but what I what could what what would happen and did happen with new adventures in high-i is that I got ideas yeah and maybe I just get a little bit of an idea but that was enough to then after the tour I could go back and finish finish it it took a lot it took a lot of focus uh and sometimes that Focus was about not focusing it's such a peculiar state the being on tour I mean it's so unnatural but I don't know if it's conducive to creativity or not I think I mean I'm I'm I'm trying to think of like the the song belong happened in a hotel room the song departure happened uh after a flight from Singapore to San Sebastian there were a lot of things that did happen on tour as Peter said do you remember where most songs come from have come from I do you do some not all yeah cuz and in your case is there sounds I mean that come from somewhere yeah it's not even really particularly cathartic I'm just putting together pieces of the puzzle to bring in the show to everyone else yeah I you know sometimes I remember really well when I comp with something and sometimes I don't even remember having been involved in the song so that must be a pretty weird feeling it is I you know I'll hear something on the radio yeah that sounds kind of familiar oh yeah that's me what is that what does that feel like it makes me feel a little on the stupid side you know and I was with somebody once and something came out on the car radio it was something I played on she's no that's you that's not me she that's you I said it's not me and I asked the guy who's working at goes yeah that was you you played that all the guitars like that I I don't have any memory of doing that at all I mean gosh for everyone that we record there's five that we don't yeah and it's just it's so much a lot of stuff then you're kind of going did I do this has this been used before do we end up making a record of that I don't really remember yeah yeah we listen to Old demos sometimes when we were trying to get the extra content for the reissues we were doing and yeah and like I don't remember that demo at all did you did I write that did you write that who played guitar on that and sometimes we just we don't know because you you weren't thinking that hard about it you were just writing it recording it getting it ready to maybe give to Michael maybe not and and uh all the circumstances around it just get lost were you guys pretty good at archist about of the stuff that you made and all that stuff yeah yeah that's I mean we never you know speaking of The Beatles we never had camera crews in the rehearsal space while we were actually composing music I mean right that that is the best way to just shut it down really fast yeah uh we're more interested in the work than our our presentation on TV or in the movie theater of the work did you ever figure out a a way to sort of create the most ideal environment to make music was that just here well we we love this place we are very comfortable here yeah I mean it's the attitude you walk in with is it yeah this is a safe place you can't hear anything we're doing from the outside that's right yeah it's comfortable yeah years ago there used to be a air conditioner right here remember the yeah mhm window unit yeah and it kept this room nice and cool but it made that room like a furnace for all the year when you say there's an attitude you walk in with what what is that attitude do you think positive nice to everybody yeah a lot of good work got done in here we had a lot of fun in here we created a lot of great pieces of music and we knew it for for a lot of them it looks pretty much the same as when I was here like 12 or 13 years ago it hasn't changed it hasn't I mess with perfection come on it's called the Dolly Parton experience yes it is it's a multimedia experience yes it is you were trying to put all of your life into one show which seems to me almost impossible well we did a pretty good job of it Dollywood they really got some wonderful people putting things together here and then I have my team out of Nashville working on it as well we used to have a museum where we had all of our artifacts and all then we thought well we need something bigger we need something better so we got to keep up with the times and everything is so uh digital so it was an easier way and a much more exciting way and I think people were late to it more these days than they you know do just looking at the the things so but we really it tells my story from my childhood uh all the way through my career all the people that I've worked with we go through everything from my family and the clothes the hair the the stories and it just really covers everything well there's a lot of chapters do I know well I've been at this and long time I know they're a long way to go they're all so interesting and they're all so different I was struck by the fact that I mean and and I know this is ground you've covered before but in so many ways when I go back and read your story it feels like you knew this was going to happen well I just started so young yeah that I you know the music was in our blood as we talked about uh you know we've you know we're doing a history of you know documentary and stuff of my family and Tracing Our musical Roots all the way back but I just always loved it and I had had an uncle that really took great interest in me my Uncle Bill he saw early on that I was so serious about it you know from the time I was 78 n years old when I started learning to play the guitar he's the one who took you to audition for a TV show when you were 10 yes that was the cast Walker show yes so yeah my Uncle Bill you know helped me a great deal cuz he was a musician himself and dreamed of stardom of his own but you know we we wrote a lot of songs together but he was that person that really helped me the most in those early days when you auditioned for that show and you were 10 years old were you were you nervous of course you're always nervous I'm still nervous when I do stuff everybody says oh you seem so relaxed I said well I am once the spotlight hits me once I'm on stage I'm there so it's either die do or die kind of so to speak so I'm always fine but you while you're waiting backstage to go on your you know your that's where they say butterflies in your stomach you're just really but I think that kind of energy though that nervous energy even any energy of any kind is good as long as you make it work for you as long as you don't panic with it but even as a little kid I I I love the excitement of getting to sing in front of somebody yeah I like the attention of thinking that somebody was looking at me yeah and some I was doing something that somebody appreciated it made me feel big and you know and special so that that was a that was something that kind of you know it was I kind of got addicted to that I think early on and I thought yeah well I got to get better and better so yeah I can keep doing what I do cuz I like that feeling you said you always believed in your talent well I did and I do where did that belief come from I guess my mama did it because I was always writing these songs stuff I never lived and love songs people getting killed in the war I would hear everybody talking and I'd write all these songs and mom was fascinated with the fact that I could do that so anybody that would come to our house mom say run and get your guitar and then she'd say uh I want you to hear what this little young just wrote so and then everybody would listen and they think oh that is really that's really something so I think I believed in it because I felt like I was doing something that everybody else wasn't doing at that moment at that time yeah and so that fed back into that whole thing I was getting that attention and then being from that biger family you know you didn't have time for a lot of special attention with each child as your parents you had to fight for every minute yeah so I think was fighting for but I do believe that I mean there's a lot of people more talented than me that write songs better but I don't think there's anybody out there that loves doing it any more than me and I believed that I had enough talent to take that and and do something with it and make a living out of what I love to do yeah and have yeah somebody in one of the articles I read who who had worked with you called you a musical Savant well I I wouldn't go that far U the idiot part would be would be more like it but the songwriting part has always seemed to come very naturally to you I don't think you get enough credit as a Lyricist well thank you for saying that because I take myself more serious as a songwriter than anything else and if I had to give up every other part of the business I would choose to be a writer yeah because that's my therapist my guitar is my friend anything that I feel that I'm going through anything that I see other people that I love going through that don't know how to express it I able to do that I'm able to to channel their feelings as well as mine and I love that I can rhyme I was so early on I was able to rhyme yeah you know I can rhyme words good I it's not just your rhyming Dolly it's the words you pick it's the words you use thank you it's really I mean you've written some amazing songs well I love doing it let's put it that way and I hope I can always uh write and of course I love singing the songs I write love recording them and I love hearing other people sing songs I write and that's always a Big Thrill to any writer to hear somebody else do your songs yeah you made a cameo appearance on Beyonce's country album yes and she did Jolene it must be nice to keep hearing your music come back like that well it is and a lot of people ask me well what did you think about Jolene I wish you'd have done it you know like the real Jolene I thought well I said look I wrote that song for some years ago times have changed Beyonce is not you know your average artist writers love it when people take their songs and interpret their own way I was proud of what she did I was I didn't had not heard it I was just assuming it was going to be the you know the Jolene the traditional way but when I heard it I thought wow boy she put a lot into that yeah she put a lot of thought and effort into Jolene but yes it's a it's a great feeling to hear your songs done by other artists and that was a great album of hers by the way do you have a process not really uh it as a as a skilled writer or somebody it's just a way life with me what I do everything I do is just part of who I am I don't even think about that I'll be walking through the house going to do something else and I'll have a a a basket of laundry or something and I'll see my guitar sitting there and all of a sudden I'll set the basket down go get my guitar and sit down for a minute and you know I may write a song and I may get back to the laundry I may not but my point is it's just natural for me if something hits me I everything is a song to me yeah everything is a song and I can always you know every situation that I see on TV I think of it almost like in in in a song I think how that make a good song you're turning it into a song in your head in my head it's like uh so I get a lot of ideas from just watching the news or watching TV uh that's where that's where most writers find their inspiration just everyday living so when you get those ideas what do you do with them what do I do with the ideas yeah I mean cuz there I mean if you've got this stuff flowing through your head obviously you have to write it down or put it somewhere do sometimes I'll if I've got a Melo if a Melody comes to me sometimes I'll just be humming and I'll think oh that's good and I know if I don't go do something about it go put it down you know record it I'll forget that Melody now may it just may be a piece of the melody yeah and or it may be a you know more maybe a verse and a and a maybe a verse Melody and a course Melody yeah but I want to get that down so I don't always or sometimes if I write down a bunch of lyrics that are coming to me just lines yeah then I don't want want to lose that and then sometimes when I have the time I'll go back and start to work in both of those then sometimes which is my favorite is when I get a chance to sit down I'll just start playing and the words and the music just come and I just start I don't always uh like all writers I don't always perfect the words if I've got a good Melody and a good thing going I'll just make up a bunch of words just to fill in the gaps to fit that Melody and you know and then I think well I'll go back and critique that later and and work on that so it just comes it's just different every time but but it's there every day it is because given how busy you are I'm I'm just I'm amazed you can even have time to write songs well that's the one thing I do easy I'll be putting on my makeup and I'll can write two or three songs or I'll I'll come up with a funny idea something I'm thinking to make me laugh out loud myself and I think you know you that would make a funny song so or that would make a good song so it doesn't matter where I'm at in the kitchen or if I'm cooking or if I'm riding I'll see something I always keep a notpad or some way to you know to record something close close by do you get excited when you get a a good lyric yes I do are you a writer cuz you know I only another writer would know that sometimes if I get a good line I go yes where' that come from you know that has to be something Divine out there cuz I'm too stupid to have thought of that like my line of tumble out out of bed and stum to the kitchen pour myself a cup of ambition that just rolled right out I hadn't even thought about it's it's a great line and then when I thought of that one I went wow that's that's as good as this cup of coffee is going to be it's so it's really special when that happens I know it's a fun but some that's not that flippant but uh sometimes you know I just get a line and I whoa that's pretty good for me cuz I said it has to come from somewhere cuz I ain't that smart well is the wonderful mystery of it all isn't it yeah it is I love that though but I love that I can write that's one of the things I appreciate so much you know of all the things that I do I love that I can write because I can express everything when you got on the bus after you graduated from high school and went to Nashville you went there to be a singer not just a songwriter no I went to be a star which was going to involve uh songwriting and singing recording had not at that time thought anything about being in the movies yeah took me years and years to even want to do that I had no real interest in that at that time I just wanted to be you know become a country music star and have my songs recorded by other people and and record them myself I just I was just thinking I wanted to be right you know be a star but when you went down music row everybody turned you down as a vocalist and yeah even yeah you I think everybody that walks the streets of Music Row at that time time they still call it that but at that time they had the Country Music Hall of Fame was down on music Road and had the fountain there and I wrote a song called Down On music Road yes and it really talks about my journey when everybody you know going into these offices oh don't wait they won't be back just leave a tape we'll listen you know but I never gave up I just kept why didn't you give up well because giving up ain't in me I never once thought about it I told my mom and dad when I left yeah that I wouldn't be home till I had something show for it yeah and meaning you know I got to I'll have to do something my knew could always come home so that gave me you know I was going to be poor here I was going to be poor there for a while so what's the difference where you're going to be poor you can always you know manage but I I had my Uncle Bill though don't you know it's like he he was working on the road a lot with other people playing you were writing with him yeah we rode a lot of stuff together we had the we had the number one BMI song of the year in 66 a song reced by someone else a song we wrote together called put it off until tomorrow which is still a country considered a country classic but that was one of the first things and I was singing the Harmony on that particular record and that's kind of how I got recognized with the radio stations people were calling who's the girl singing that harmony with Bill Phillips you know this record so it's just everything in life is a journey step after step this this and that but uh I always dreamed and hoped that I would make it and I I used to wonder what i' what I'd be how I would think about life after I got older but think back on my life and now that I am older yeah you know it's nice to know that you know when I go through this you know this this Museum here yeah the experience the dolly experience they call it well nobody knows Dolly better than Dolly and I got so emotional when they had that all put together going back reliving my life yeah you know how how they say sometimes that uh when you're when you start to die that your whole life flashes before you yes well it about killed me going through there cuz I got so emotional about so many of the pieces and you know Mom and Daddy are gone now but seeing them so alive and Kenny Rogers and so many of my friends and and it it just really was overwhelming but looking back on my life uh there's very little I would change and looking back on it did any parts of it surprise you in any way I think I'm more surprised now yeah uh looking back on it like going into this Museum seeing all the things I've done I never slowed down I didn't even realize I've done all that yeah you know I mean I know you know it but you you know to see somebody say is where'd you get that how'd you get your hands on that I've never seen that you know it's that kind of a thing and then when you see that whole body of work yeah it's like wow that's a a lot of times that's a lot of miles travel a lot of Tears shed you know a lot of pain yeah and a lot of Joy so to see your whole life laid out before you're in a museum like that especially at my age cuz that's pretty much I'll do some more things hopefully uh you know like my Broadway musical and other things my life story is that I'm sure there'll be other projects but for the most part I've pretty much you've written most of the chapters yeah I've written most of the chapters I'm on my last chapter because of my you know my age and everything but I I want it to really be the best one yeah I want the story to end really well are you working on an ending h no well I'm working every day on an ending and when that ending comes I hope it's quick and fast don't you yes one of the most interesting chapters to me in that whole Saga is is the Porter Wagoner chapter because it's such a complex period for you CU you get lifted up but you also kind of get held back it there's so much going on at the same time that was a mixture of love and hate kind of a a thing like when we were both bullheaded both very strong willed and it was poor to show but I you know it was me with my dreams and I'd never gone to Nashville to be somebody's girl singer I wanted to be the singer in the girl singer in my own band but I was very fortunate and lucky and I don't take anything away from that I learned a lot from Porter I learned a lot of things to do and I learned a lot of things not to do it really and many ways it was kind of a crash course in the in the entire industry it was and in life yeah so it's like I said to Porter you didn't you didn't discover me working at a Q-tip Factory I had already been on Grand op Pro for you when I was a kid yeah but you know those are the kind of the fun things that I've added in the show where we you know in the Broadway show where we both are very comical we both had a great sense of humor so a lot of the ways that I've dealt with the porter doly years in the in the musical is through through songs and through the comedy of it all cuz it was just ridiculous you know the the fights we had to have in order to try to get our point across yeah and all that but I wouldn't take nothing for it now cuz it's all those things and all those people that make you who and what you are yeah and but I mean to the point of what you learned I mean you were doing two duet albums a year two solo albums a year 200 shows a year and a TV show no that's what I said you when you're doing that you don't think about what you're doing you're just doing it that's what I mentioned earlier about when you see your life before you in the museum yeah and you think how in the world could anybody cover that you know that much territory in a lifetime and did it phase you at the time I can't well I don't guess you think about it like that you're thinking about survival not just of your personal self but also for your you for your profession you think well you know you got to become a professional really quick yeah what do you think you learned then well I learned to stand up for myself yeah I learned to stand on my own yeah I learned to really use my talent as my strength and my power cuz I thought well if I can't do this on just my own stamina and my own grit and gut I will just write so many good songs yeah I'll just outdo him I will just be so good that I'll just have to go if he won't you know if he won't let me go he would not allow me to have other producers and he didn't want me going on other people's shows you know like when I started to get famous within the show like with the like say Johnny Carson Show yeah you know how everybody wants like a new girl singer but anyway it was everything was kind of a threat with that but Porter was good I love Porter it was really like a it was like I don't know I guess we were there there's a line in one of my songs like we're either so different we can't get along or either we're so much alike yeah so I think there's a lot of Truth in both of that in both of those yeah I think it was meant to be though you wrote I'll always love you yes as you were trying to leave mhm that was the only way that I could get uh through to Porter because I was want to go on my own I had said I'd stay five years I stayed seven yeah and it was just and I was really growing I was out growing the show if Porter wasn't willing to work with me for us to even be better I would have been willing to stay with the show we could have made the show evenig big but it was the PO show not the dolly show and I respect that and I don't blame him yeah but I stayed and we just our it got to where we were both very uncomfortable it was nothing but a you know just tension and all that you took that song to him you played it for him I said you know sit down Porter I've written a song for you and I you I started singing the song Just Me him a guitar yeah and he started crying and he said that's the best song you ever wrote and if you let me produce it you can go I said okay I'm out of here you can do it but anyway he he produced a couple more of the songs that I did yeah and there was a gap you know between where Porter sued me and all that but after years went by we became friends again and I was with Porter when he was dying that whole story is a movie in and of itself I know well it's a big part of the uh well it's just there's just so much going on in it it's so interesting um I I have to admit I had not heard the Elvis story and I was shocked that I hadn't heard it how did Elvis pitch you about that song well I knew uh one of Elvis's producers Felton Jarvis anyway so someone called me and said El was want to do I will always love you I think it was Felton Jarvis that had called me that night and he said Elvis likey to come down to the studio cuz he's doing all always love you and so I was so excited because I called and told everybody yeah Elis was doing my own I was going to meet him yeah and so later I got the call from Colonel Tom Parker and he said no you know we don't do any songs that we don't publish or have half publishing and I'd already had a number one song on it of my own and I said well no I can't do that he specifically said we won't do this unless we get half the publishing half the publishing he wanted all the PS and I said well it's going to be the biggest heartbreak of my life you can't have it I can't do that cuz this is my most important copyright it was not Elvis's fault he loved the song yeah in fact Priscilla told me later that was something you know when they were walking down the steps you know at the courthouse when they divorced he he was singing that to her that I will always love you that's how much he loved it yeah wow you put a song on your recent Rockstar album about Elvis oh I wrote the song cuz yeah cuz I I mean I was heartbroken when he didn't do it and I could just hear him singing I will always love you and I thought I'm not I'm not W to just let something go so uh Ronnie McDow is a guy that sounds just like Elvis yeah but he don't dress like him he doesn't he's not an Elvis impersonator but he used to travel with Elvis and when Elvis's voice was bad he used to kind of cover you know for Elvis you know back there behind the scenes so I asked him if he'd come and sing on that because I wrote the song I dreamed about Elvis and in it I got to sing uh I will always love you with an Elvis sound alike but it's a funny cute story about the about that whole story about Colonel Tom yeah and them taking it so yeah I you actually you actually recorded that like 22 years ago I did that song when we got ready to do the rock album Kent Wells who produced The Rock album he's changed a few instruments around but my voice everything on that the backgrounds that was the real Jordan AES yeah wow singing on that yeah so anyway it was special tune how many more tunes do you have in the drawer oh I got all kinds of stuff in the drawer songs included how many songs have you actually released do you know hundreds and hundreds I don't really know with the career like mine but I've written thousands of songs you have well that's what I do yeah I mean I started young and I'm old now yeah so you can only imagine how many songs I've got stuck in drawers and in chests and all kinds of things do you think about Legacy yeah that's what I'm doing with this I think that's what you're here for to talk about I didn't know so what's important to you in that well I love the idea of my rou my musical roots and and involving my family but I want to be known as someone that cared not only just about myself and about my music and about my family very spiritual person but I like to help people just like My Imagination Library where we give books away to children from the time they're born once a month they get a book until they start school and that's been a wonderful program cuz my dad couldn't read and write and so that's what inspired me to do that that program and got my dad involved you know when it started years and years ago so now it's become a worldwide thing we've given way over 200 million books so I'm proud of that so that's part of my legacy that I'm proud of but I'd like to be thought of as a decent human being I want to be thought of when you when you think of me when I'm gone I'd like you to smile to think oh she was funny or oh she had a good sense of humor you know even when she was sad she didn't make a joke about it or you know so I just want to be I would just like to be known for what I think I am which is just a regular person I always say I'm a I'm a Workhorse that looks like a show horse but I'm a you know I work you know I I work for what I do and I love my job love that I can make I live and doing it but I just hope I leave something good behind for other people to enjoy and to draw from how long did you spend planning this well we've been thinking about it for years but about 3 years it's taken to really get all of pieces together and all the storefronts and all the beautiful things like that butterfly this is for all your costumes well yeah everything in here I'll explain it to you this is called behind the scenes and of course when you get behind the scenes you get to know everything about all my clothes and how they're done you know who the people are that put it all together little bit of your hair oh well that's a big one there that's I've had it bigger than that I know you everybody said you that hair was wearing you yeah well this is kind of where we plan all our things and keep all the jewelry and where all the you know the people working on the costumes and try to figure it all out and plan it all out how many wardrobe changes do you have in a year it must be oh a year it would be hundreds it really would and we have different people working on Steve Summers is the one that kind of is our creative director and designer and he makes sure that all the things are good because we have all kinds of different things that we do everything is like something like this never casual not really do I want to have it a little casual do you do you ever rewear these or are they like one I do uh or take pictures in them and sometimes if it's something I love I will have it remade redone if it fits good and shows the right things in the right places yeah but yeah we usually uh I would wear something like if we we played something here at Dollywood like the opening and I loved it it might be something I would wear on on tour if it had all the right sequins and think oh love that so won't you put split the side up a little bit and you know plunge it just a little and yeah you know everything you wear is thought out planned and custom for you absolutely well the things that have to do with show I got Junk clothes like everybody else but anyway the ones I'm most comfortable in but I'm also comfortable in rhinestones I've lived my life in rhinestones but yeah and that's kind of what this is about behind the scenes My Life in rhineston is what it's called I love this over here I don't know if you've done this have you oh this is the most fun thing I don't know if you remember but all the little paper dolls yeah well this is like color forms we were talking about it and kids you know they get to kind of yeah go ahead I can actually dress you darly you can dress me sticks on there and you know and then you can get all your the hair dos and thing and you can pick out well they're all big can you get that for I got that one my nails are too long yeah put that one you go ahead and dress Dolly okay come on Dolly I dress her every day but we also got to give you a there we also got to give you a guitar oh let's see or a ban show which one do you like I like this one okay well it's your show give her a guitar thank you oh that's perfect well I just think this is the most fun thing and kids love playing and stuff like that yeah yeah we may have to merchandise that someday make my own paper dolls dolly doll that's what we can call them but all of these costumes are things that I've worn on different shows in TV and or on movies that's one of my rock and roll outfits when I did my rock album I had all these rocking clothes and I loved it the boots are fabulous too oh yeah you got to I'm a big shoe person cuz I'm so short I love the tall the tall shoes but I actually loved high heels when I was little before I knew I was even going to be short yeah but through the years they've served me well some of these heels are a little precarious they are they're at least 5 in yeah some of them more some of them four but you know it depends on what what I'm doing yeah but I like them High the older I get the little I get so the taller my shoes get this is gorgeous too I love this oh that was made Years Ago by a designer called Tony Chase who's not with us anymore but that was one of the first things I ever had made that was like a customade thing in Hollywood I thought that looked very Royal it's overdone but no it's not I'm often overdone that's my uh your thing I've been run some yeah are those bell bottom for fabulous yeah you can hear them ringing from here can't you I can but anyway these are all that's a slogan of mine it's hard to be a diamond in a rhinestone world that's one of those lines you would asked me about in an interview we did about some of the lines you as a writer you you get excited about that was one of them when I thought it's hard to be a diamond in a rhinestone world so but that was one of those but anyway well these are clothes this was I did a series on Netflix yeah uh all based on stories from my songs yeah and this was the Jolene show we did and so these were just costumes you know from the from that particular movie they gave you wings oh I know I got my wings I'm No Angel I just play one on TV often I don't know why they think I should play an angel cuz I'm fair I guess white hair that's great it has to be [Laughter] that anyway I have my own line of cosmetics and see these are my perfumes and I've got a new line of makeup coming out but these are all the different that's you've always wanted to have that the makeup line I have and I'm going to have it now it looks like you've had the foresight to Archive pretty much everything you've had and done over the years my best friend Judy Ogle uh she's been my best friend since third grade and we travel together and so she started early on yeah saving everything yeah everybody thought she was just a hoarder and but now then they see that so much of this had it not been for Judy we wouldn't even have it wow yeah and so different members of my family my niece Rebecca sver yeah she works in my archives she's my little niece my namesake she's known me since she's a baby yeah so she picked up where Judy left off and she's the one that helps put all of these things together yeah you know for the cuz one of the things I loved in I mean all of this but also some of the other artifacts like I was looking in Song Teller that the the dry cleaning receipt that you wrote Cod of many colors on the back of I love that I know I did too that was when I was with the port Wagner show and he was I just remember this coming to my mind on the bus we were traveling on his bus at that time and so he was walking through he just picked up his costumes at the cleaner and we were going on tour and I just saw that tag and I had nothing to ride and I just grabbed that tag off his uh off his clothes and I started writing Co any colors and then later he gave that to me so he'd kept it he had kept it and then he gave it to me later wow that's just I love that you said something you said something else in the book that really struck me you said as a songwriter I have to leave myself wide open I suffer a lot because I am open so much I heard a lot I wanted to talk to you about that well how much hurt do you want me to tell you you can tell me all the hurt you want I just mean in order to be a songwriter you have to leave your heart open and your your mind open because that means you've got to feel all that stff you have to feel it well either that or you just do feel it and that's why you write songs that could go either way I guess but of course like I had told you earlier is that I'm not only write for myself I hurt for other people as well like say if I have a friend or a sister going through a breakup or a heartache if they can't ride it I ride it and then it's therapy for them right and they love it and then they got you know I made something out of that is that the way you have processed your feelings and emotions you think from the beginning yes I think so cuz when you grow up as I mentioned in a in a big house there's a lot of Racket a lot of noise you have to make your own space you have to find your own place and then you get used to that place and you love that place and that's where you can go and nobody else can go and you find your peace there and you find all the things that you need yeah and where all the the tools are that you need to work with right what do music meant to you everything yeah yeah music is a way I express everything that I feel yeah everything I know yeah and it if it had not been for a song none of this would be here everything began with a song for me yeah you've decided to weigh in how come well I think politics affects all of our lives and we're all citizens we all have a stake in what happens in this country we pay taxes here our kids are growing up here going to schools here and uh so we all have a stake in what happens here and I I don't want to sit out I want to make sure that my voice is heard but also that I lift up other voices and make sure they're heard too so uh not only am I here myself but I spend a lot of my time and energy going around the country talking to people uh in communities we've been in Louisiana recently in Detroit and Cleveland listening to their concerns thinking about the issues that matter the most to them and how we can be helpful and uh hopefully our politicians are doing the same thing I heard someone the other day describe kamla Harris as famous and yet not wellknown meaning that they don't know all the details of her biography maybe not all the details of what she believes so for people in that category just getting to know her you've endorsed her why what do you like about her well I live in California so I've gotten to uh watch her run for election multiple times uh gotten to support her in those uh elections and seeing how smart and charismatic and empathetic and how um ready she is for this you know uh being vice president is you know it's a tough job because you're kind of like the understudy and you don't necessarily get a lot of attention but she's in all these meetings where they're meeting with foreign dignitaries they're talking about policy that's going to affect everyone and so she's uh through all these different experiences as district attorney as attorney general as Senator and then vice president she's prepared herself for this role she is eminently qualified to be president and then she also has the right character traits I think to be a great president which means she cares about people's lives wants government to work for people and improve their lives and she really um got into her original role as district attorney because she cared about people and wanted to provide safety and protection for them and do what she could to make make our community safer you know after Joe Biden gave his speech on Monday night there was a moment I think a lot of people at this point it was way after midnight may not have been awake but she was on stage with Joe Biden and they had an emotional exchange they hugged he kissed her yes uh and there was a real connection there as someone who's been close to her uh who knows her a lot better than most people what do she like as a human being as a person I think she cares so much about other people and whenever you talk to her she's always willing to give advice she's always given great hugs and and and really sees you and pays attention to you and I think we need politicians like that people who actually care about the people they're uh interacting with and they're representing and caring about making other people's lives better and not just in it for themselves yeah you're not the only celebrity that's going to be in the United Center in the next uh few days uh I've seen quite a few Democrats seem to do a heck of a lot better with the kind of famous person vot fair to say well I think the creative Community I I don't think of us as just being famous I think we're all creatives and I think being a creative person makes you have kind of a more liberal disposition you're uh you are more uh open uh and you don't put a lot of boundaries and barriers around uh issues like race and and uh sexuality and gender expression and so I think the Democratic party I think is just a more hospitable home for Creative people because we're just liberal by disposition we care about Freedom we care about uh being open and and uh uh the other party not not so open and and and and freedom loving you you touch on there I think uh just barely but you you get over to the question of policy if there are one or two or three areas of policy that say this is why I'm a Democrat and this is why I support kamla Harris what are they well I grew up in Ohio and I grew up in a UAW family my father uh built trucks for a living so you know people look at me now and they see the Glamour and the celebrity but I grew up in a bluecollar family in a blueco collar town in Ohio and from my experience through the years the Democratic party has cared more about those types of families making sure life is better for workers people who are struggling to stay in the middle class struggling to get into the middle class and that means caring about housing cost caring about social security caring about a safety net that protects people and and make sure their children have an opportunity to grow up and have opportunity and thrive in this country and I just I've seen the Democratic party over the years be more concerned about that and when they're at their best and uh that's why I tend to vote for Democratic politicians you know the the fact that Democrats seem to do better with creatives with celebrities it cuts both ways sure sure on the one hand hand it creates a lot of interest particularly young among young people but on the other hand it allows Republicans to look at the party and say it's the party of coastal Elites it's just Hollywood Elites I understand it's the party of Hollywood it doesn't care about you and your life everyday America is the phrase you hear yeah but then they're represented by a guy who grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth who was gifted a real estate company grew up in New York City uh and is only famous because he was on National Television playing a businessman so you know I it doesn't ring very true for them to to to accuse us of being the Hollywood Elites I'm from Springfield Ohio uh I I grew up in a blue collar family uh I I I would not even comprehend the kind of upbringing someone like Donald Trump had but you know politics is not always rational people are people people are emotional they come to decisions for all kinds of reasons sometimes they're starting in a good place usually they are it doesn't mean they're going to end up where you end up what convinces you as John Legend that the celebrity support for the Democrats and for KLA Harris is a is a benefits Democrat actually helps I think it can go both ways like you said but I think it's important for KLA Harris and Tim Walls to focus on the people don't focus on us go out there talk to the people listen to their concerns and you can tell from the policy pronouncements that uh vice president Harris put out last week talking about the economy she's not doing that for me she's doing that for everyday Americans and that's what she needs to keep her eye on and keep her ear to is the concerns of everyday Americans and as long as she's doing that going out and listening and then proposing policies like you know benefits for a firsttime house housing buyers uh benefits for folks with children who are struggling to raise their kids that's what great leaders do and that's what great politicians do is listen to the people and and propose policies that will actually improve people's lives don't worry about me don't worry about what I need uh worry about all those folks around the country who are are the version of me growing up in Springfield Ohio and uh and families like ours but but take your neighbor say in Springfield Ohio in that workingclass Community when they hear that a major recording artist has endorsed a candidate do you think that makes a difference in how they vote I I think for a lot of people it doesn't for some it might but I think the the job of the campaign is to go out there and press the flesh talk to the people listen to their concerns and deliver for them and so what's going to make a bigger difference is those volunteers out in their Community people who live down the street from them going to Canvas and what I've Loved about what's happened with the KLA Harris campaign is the volunteering has gone way up and so you got people on the ground out there speaking for the campaign well this is so interesting cuz what I hear you saying is that you're not you're not a political scientist you're not necessarily sure if celebrity support helps or hurts Democrats but just John Legend as a person cares about politics sure and so that's why you're involved I do care and some of my fellow uh artists and actors don't care and they don't spend a lot of energy focus on it but I do care so I go out there and try to do what I can to make a difference but I'm I'm not convinced that me saying I'm for KLA Harris is going to make anyone change their mind but I do believe that I'm a citizen too and I'm GNA speak out about things I care about you know we had uh we Jamie Harrison who's the chairperson of the Democratic National you know Jamie okay and I pointed out to Jamie that we've been hearing Beyonce uh on the uh speakers kind of they're testing out the audio and you see a lot of people wearing kind Beyonce hats a sash Cowboy comma it raises the question raises the question of whether Beyonce herself we all have questions I don't have any answers though I would think you might have answers I don't have answers apologize people you know I wish I knew I wish I could tell you I mean I still wouldn't tell you but I wish I could you wish you could okay all right so this is an honest note any other potential surprises I don't know man I don't know what's going to happen but you're telling me you don't have a you don't have a text message on your phone right now from someone like hey I happen to be in Chicago and you're like no way what's going on I I I know I have a show tonight and I'm excited for that but uh I have no idea who's going to be performing on the convention stage what do you think the winning argument is in closing here for the Democrats in 2024 well I think they've been making it is that KLA Harris and Tim Walls care about people like you they care about ordinary Americans and they want to make life better for ordinary Americans and their opponent cares about enriching himself and his other rich friends and the difference is very clear last question it's sort of academic but it's important question of whether people are convinced by celebrity endorsements MH USA Today put out a poll earlier this year and found that they actually don't make a difference with one exception oh what's the exception John Legend the Obamas have some impact well they're not celebrities they're they they've become celebrities but they their roots are in politics and Barack Obama's roots are in community organizing represent the people in this uh Community here in Chicago and then becoming a senator representing the state of Illinois and so he you can call him a celebrity now but he's a politician and he's done the work you know he's gone out there campaigned sat in living rooms in Iowa and listen to people's concerns and then got elected yeah so it's different