Dolly Parton and U2’s collaboration for their track, Torn, came about after the late country legend believed that their music was ‘too Irish’ for her
U2 have shared an insight into how their collaboration with the late Dolly Parton came about. The late country legend teamed up with the Irish rock band for their song “Torn,” taken from their new album, Carnaval De Luz, which was co-written by the band, Dolly, and Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid.
However, Dolly believed that U2’s music was “too Irish” for her. It also became her last ever recording, with Dolly dying aged 80 in August of this year, following a “brief battle with cancer”.
Speaking on BBC Radio 2’s Track Of My Years With Vernon Kay, the band’s frontman Bono – real name Paul David Hewson – explained how they came together.
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He said: “We were looking for something to unify our album because it would be nice if when the characters in our album could deal with what’s going on in the outside world.
“It’s a really fractious time that we live in where everyone’s got a point of view and, you know, you’re the enemy if you don’t agree with them. She’s the penicillin for that, isn’t she? She’s the antidote to all that.
“But we didn’t know it would work. And Dolly has started a song called Torn. And she said, ‘Look, you can take it whatever way you want, you know, and I might like where you take it.’ And we took it quite a ways away from where she started. So, when we sent it back, it was very different. It was a kind of sci-fi country soundscape.”
Guitarist The Edge, real name David Howell Evans, added: “Basically she said, ‘Your songs are too Irish for me. So, what about this one?'” Bono then explained that the folk album they were making “didn’t hit her voice”, which he suspected might have made her want to make changes to the track – which is about two brothers who do not talk.
“Or she was just being really smart and getting us to finish off one of her old songs. Whatever way I’ll take it. And this is one of the greatest songwriters who ever lived. So that’s how it started,” he said. Bono previously told Rolling Stone that he almost found the track – which Parton recorded two months before her death – too difficult to listen to.
“When she got ill, she got out of her bed to sing this song. And you can hear that. And I can’t even listen to it now,” he said. “She sang her heart out, and I cannot believe that’s an 80-year-old woman.
“It’s very moving to have had these intimacies with such a figure. The fact that they’re not there now, in any way you can call back, other than through her songs, is very sobering.” Dolly’s death was announced by her nephew, Bryan, on August 25. He said in a video that his aunt had specifically asked for him to be the one to share the shattering news when the time came.
At the time, TMZ reported that the singer had been hospitalised with “autoimmune and kidney problems.” Her health deteriorated over the coming days, with Dolly sadly dying just four days later. Her representatives later confirmed that she had been fighting cancer. A pal told the Mirror: “Amid all the heartache and upset that she has gone, we are all comforted by the fact she is with Carl again.”
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