Judas Priest frontman, Rob Halford, performed alongside Dolly Parton when she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame last year. Metal Hammer gave Halford a load of kittens to play with and asked him about heavy metal, becoming a gay icon and (sort of) being Dolly Parton's BFF.

The following is an excerpt from the feature:

Today, Rob is not only a well-loved member of the metal community, but of the mainstream. In 2022, Judas Priest were finally inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, alongside country music legend - and gay icon - Dolly Parton. The ceremony unleashed a bizarre yet brilliant spectacle, with the Metal God joining forces with Dolly or a rendition of her massive hit "Jolene", resplendent in a long, black, glinting jacket with vertical, stud-embellished white strips.

“Somehow, instinctively, I knew we were going to meet,” Rob explains with a radiant intensity. “I always tell the story of my mother’s grandmother, who was a clairvoyant, and I still think I’ve got a little of that in me, because something went, ‘You’re going to meet Dolly Parton.’

"Two or three days later, these emails come into the office, and Dolly’s reached out, asking, ‘Would you sing some lines on 'Jolene'?’ You sit at home and go, ‘Oh my god, this is truly going to happen!’ Being a gay guy, ‘I’ve got nothing to wear!’ I know that she likes to sparkle and I like to sparkle, so what I wore on that night was apropos.”

When they first met at the rehearsal, the two legends clicked immediately. “She goes, ‘I love your beard!’” he exclaims, “and she starts to clean my beard! It was so surreal! I’m meeting this living legend and she’s tickling my beard and going, ‘So you’re going to sing some 'Jolene' with me?’ I was just floating.”

In 2023, the two duetted on the song "Bygones", for Dolly’s crossover album, Rockstar.

Read more at Metal Hammer.