Before Dolly Parton was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in November 2022, she revealed that she would record her first rock and roll album to justify her induction as a country artist. “This has inspired me to put a hopefully great rock and roll album at some point in the future,” said Parton, “which I have always wanted to do.”
Soon after announcing the album, Parton started sharing names of artists she wanted to collaborate with, including former Journey frontman Steve Perry. “If Dolly says it’s true, then it must be true,” teased Perry on social media, confirming his participation early on. “Her voice is amazing.”
Parton’s 30-track album is a collection of songs she wished she had written, and features some of the biggest names in rock, including Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, Heart’s Ann and Nancy Wilson, Sting, Elton John, Melissa Etheridge, Lizzo, Richie Sambora, Rob Halford of Judas Priest, Michael McDonald, John Fogerty, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, Debbie Harry, and goddaughter Miley Cyrus, among many more.
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[RELATED: 2021 American Songwriter Interview with Steve Perry]
Dolly’s “Open Arms”
For her collaboration with Perry, Parton chose Journey’s 1981 hit “Open Arms,” released on the band’s seventh album Escape. “Steve Perry is singing with me on it, and he’s the one that had the original on that years ago,” said Parton. “It was a big hit.”
Written by Perry and the band’s keyboardist Jonathan Cain—who had just joined the band as the keyboardist and would become one of Journey’s key songwriters—“Open Arms” went to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 1981, the song was also featured on the soundtrack to the 1981 sci-fi film Heavy Metal and was a success for Mariah Carey years later when she released a cover of it on her 1995 album Daydream.
Parton’s tender revision of “Open Arms” delivered another feminine touch to the song, backed by Perry, who last sang the song while he was still with Journey in 1991. Perry’s final live performance of “Open Arms” was during Journey’s last appearance together on November 3, 1991 in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, as part of a tribute concert for later promoter Bill Graham, who died a month earlier in a helicopter crash.
“I’m so thrilled that everyone is as excited as I am about Dolly’s new record,” said Perry. “I have been a Dolly Parton fan for years and years and to sing one of my songs with her was truly a thrill. When I first got the track I could not believe how strong and amazing her voice was. I did my very best to keep up with that girl, but boy she’s got fire. And to quote her on my telephone she said ‘I think we harmonize well together, don’t you?’ And I said ‘Absolutely my dear. Absolutely.’”
A Missed Recording with Kenny Rogers
For Parton, there was another personal connection to “Open Arms” since it was a song her late husband Carl Dean suggested she cover many years earlier with her longtime friend and collaborator Kenny Rogers.
Throughout the decades, Parton and Rogers recorded five duets from the 1980s through the 2010s, including their 1983 Bee Gees-penned hit “Islands in the Stream,” “Real Love” in 1985, “Love is Strange,” the title track of Rogers’ 1990 album, “Undercover” from his 25th released Back to the Well in 2003. The duo also released a collaborative holiday album, Once Upon a Christmas, in 1984.
Before Rogers’s death in 2020 at age 2018, the friends shared one final duet, “You Can’t Make Old Friends,” the title track of his 2014 album.
“My husband always loved it and always thought I should have recorded it with Kenny Rogers, but I never got a chance to do that,” added Parton. “So, when I started doing the rock album, I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to record ‘Open Arms,’ and then I’m going to ask Steve Perry to sing it with me.’ I wish I had written it.
Photo: Jason Kempin/Getty Images
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