U2 were with Michael Stipe when Dolly Parton died: ‘This was an extraordinary event’
"We were in a van and he [fell] into a puddle and then I started to realise 'Oh my lord', this is a very extraordinary event.'"
By Nick Reilly
U2 have told Rolling Stone UK about recording with the late Dolly Parton on their next album and how they were with R.E.M‘s Michael Stipe when the news of her death was announced.
The group’s new album Carnaval de Luz features the final vocal performance from Parton, who died last month, on the song ‘Torn’. The emotional track is the tale of two warring siblings, written from the perspective of their weary mother, and was recorded just months before the legendary singer’s death.
“It’s hard to listen to, really,” said Bono of the track, speaking to Rolling Stone UK in Dublin last week.
He then recalled how the band happened to be with the R.E.M. singer when they learnt of Parton’s passing in August.
“We were with Michael Stipe when we heard the news of her passing and I guess as a singer from the south, a truly great singer himself, we were all of course shocked, but he literally just fell to the floor,” Bono said.
“We were in a van and he [fell] into a puddle and then I started to realise, ‘Oh my lord, this is a very extraordinary event’. She’s probably the only thing that the world agrees on at this moment – gay, straight, red states, blue states, wherever you come from. And that she gave herself to this collaboration was, and will be, one of the great moments of our life as a band.”
He added: “She closes Carnaval de Luz and if you listen on the deluxe version CD or cassette, it goes straight into ‘American Obituary’, into ‘Days of Ash’ and then ‘Easter Lily’.
“She’s a pivot point, but a masterclass as a singer too. I just wanted to stay out of her way, and it was just almost a spoken vocal for me till the very end because she just took flight and the fact that she got out of her illness to do this, or stepped outside of it for a period… We didn’t know how ill she was, so it was all the more humbling. That performance, particularly at the end, it just takes you to a different place.”
It comes after the U2 singer previously told Rolling Stone how Parton had defied her illness to record the song. “When she got ill, she got out of her bed to sing this song,” said Bono. “And you can hear that. And I can’t even listen to it now.”