lifeblood: songs: backgrounds: i don't wanna talk about it

1994-02-18: unknown source:

interviewer: tell us about the experience of doing the song for philadelphia, you know, that experience, was that

emily saliers: well, first of all, it was important for both of us to be involved with something like philadelphia, because amy and i have been involved - i'm not trying to blow our horn, because there are people who have done so much more work than we have, but we've taken a strong interest in the whole aids issue and have tried to, you know, play our part when we can to do benefits, and so on. so, just to have a major hollywood movie take on the subject of aids was important and we felt honored to be asked to be part of it. we have our own issues with trying to make the whole aids thing mainstream, so that the american public can swallow it. in some ways, we wish it could be more bare bones. we've seen people suffering first hand, and we've seen families who don't accept their dying sons and daughters. so that's a whole separate thing. but just - i think philadelphia was a good thing, to finally have a major movie made about aids. and actually doing the song - [heh] - we didn't pick that song, did we?

amy ray: no. they picked that song for us.

emily saliers: [simultaneously] scarlett rivera.

amy ray: - played violin. and we all got together on it. you know, we didn't just - we didn't - it was a live thing, a live vibe, the whole thing was. we recorded it live, actually.

emily saliers: yup.

...

interviewer: what about - again, how did philadelphia come to you? how did it - who came to you? how did you get involved in that picture?

emily saliers: i don't remember how that started.

amy ray: how did that start?

emily saliers: russell, how did that start?

amy ray: oh, this is what happened.

amy ray: for philadelphia, jonathan demme was involved and actually offered our name up as a possibility to do something. yeah. which was good. because it's a great movie. and we - i think they might have messed around with some different song ideas, but this was a specific one that jonathan demme wanted to have recorded, and he wanted us to do it. and he was into our music at_this point, and this is one of his favorite songs. so he wanted us to do this song. so, that's kind of how that happened. and we did it.

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1994-05-13: world cafe radio program:

(live version of "dead man's hill").

interviewer: "dead man's hill" from the new one "swamp ophelia". indigo girls here and emily on the little lead line on that one. good song. in between records, we here in philadelphia were really happy you had a song on the soundtrack to the film "philadelphia". was that your pick to go in there or did somebody suggest that?

emily: jonathon demme picked that song.

amy: yeah, actually...

emily: i guess one of the guys from the company pitched us to him, and i guess he checked out our music and liked it well enough and then he chose that song.

interviewer: did you know the song before you...

amy: uh-uh.

emily: i had heard it. i had heard other people record it, you know, rod stewart and everything but the girl, i had heard their versions of it.

interviewer: right, had you ever heard the original, the crazy horse version?

emily: well we got tapes of it when we were learning the song.

amy: that's the one, that's the one i listened to.

interviewer: cause yours is truer to that one in a lot of ways.

amy: yeah.

emily: yeah. i remember amy saying when we were trying to learn it, she's like, "now how would the ramones play this song if they were going to learn it". because we were trying to, you know, trying to make it a little bit different from how it had been recorded, but there was only so far you could go i guess.

interviewer: well i tell you what, let's play that cause i love hearing it.

emily: o.k.

amy: all right, let's do it.

interviewer: indigos, another one of their great covers. this is danny whiten's song, "i don't wanna talk about it".

(album version of "i don't wanna talk about it")

interviewer: on the world cafe, "i don't wanna talk about it" danny whiten's tune. our guests the indigo girls, be back in a moment on the world cafe.