And one thing nobody has really mentioned here is bad mouth. Alex has bad. >> Promise me if I tell you his nickname for me, you’re not going to use it outside here. used to call it old 20 naira. >> This is my song. to enterainment industry. >> I don’t know. I have no idea. I don’t know. >> Thank you. >> Thank you.
>> How are you? down. You always had a way to >> Sorry. >> Excuse me. >> Please excuse me. Hi guys, welcome back to Nigious Direct. family, friends, colleagues, fans, and well-wishes gathered together to honor the life and legacy of late Mollywood actor Alice Ikubo during his service of songs in Lagos today.
And guys, you can recall that Alice Eka sadly passed away on May 11th, 2026 after a courageous battle with kidney cancer. He was born in 1986 and departed his life on May 11, 2026, leaving behind cherished memories and a lasting impact on everyone who knew him. The emotional service of song took place today from
400 p.m. at the Monarch Event Center located at Leki Ek Expressway, Leki, Lagos. family members, close friends, toprated celebrities, colleagues and supporters turned out in large numbers to celebrate his life, share outf tribute and pay their final respect in the midst of tears and pains. In line with the family’s request, all attendees were dressed in white, symbolizing peace, honor, and a celebration of a life well-lived.
The venue was filled with touching moments as loved ones reflected on Alli’s kindness, strength, and the memories he created during his lifetime. Though his passing has left a deep void and pain in our hearts, today’s gathering served as a reminder of the life he touched and the legacy he left behind.
May his soul continue to rest in perfect peace and may God continue to comfort the family he left behind. Guys, watch the video to the end and see how the service of song of Allesi Kuba went down. >> Please give this please. It’s okay. Please your last word for Yeah. One video. >> Thank you. >> Thank you.
>> Yes. >> And what you would like to say to the family right now? >> I’d like to consult the family and say that um it’s quite touching. It’s a loss for everyone. It’s a huge loss to the entertainment industry, the creative sector as a whole. Alex was a good guy, general good guy.
You know, the turnout here is a testament of how good and how nice he was to all of us. We’re going to miss him. He was an amazing guy. He was also one of the most talented of our generation, our group, you know. Um, this has taught us that life short. While we’re here, if we can, let’s always make peace. Let’s love on one another.
Let’s look beyond our imperfections. Let’s judge less. You understand what I’m trying to say? Because nobody holy pass really, you know, and it’s when one is gone, you know. Let’s stop biting and pinching on people. When one is gone, we begin to say rip. But when this >> Hey, hello. How are you? This way. >> Like that. I just
want adventure. Okay. If there’s one thing you could say about
Alex, what would it be? Yeah, I would say Alex is everybody’s friend. Alex was Alexbody because everyone’s life coach and yeah, you always have to you know cuz I know you know my only me as well. Yeah, Alex was my guy. Alex was my brother. Alice was my friend. Alice was my friend. Thank you. Thank you. >> So, where’s Your last one
Mary move. >> Hello. Love your hair. His kindness is his love and his smile. I don’t know, guys. I have no idea.
>> I don’t know. Please. >> Guys, move. Please move. left. Okay, let’s not let anyone excuse you. pushing now. >> So reticles your last one for Excuse me, please. Excuse me, please.
>> Hey, you guys should play now. >> Hi. How are you? Come on. I’m outside. I just got the car. I’m sorry. How are >> you? Hello
Go go go go go. >> Let’s go. Let’s go. Move. Move back. Move back. Emmon, you’re looking great. you doing? >> How are you now? Mama, >> how you doing? >> I’m fine. >> Take video. Oh my god.
You too fresh. Hold on. >> How are you? See collecting your side. She’s calling your side. I’m going already. Hey pushing now.
>> Please give me please. Please please give me now. It’s okay. So give your back. Thank go for your mercy and your thank you that Jesus. >> Oh, this is my story. This is my song, oh Lord. is my >> all the belong. >> All the belong. >> Wonderful, merciful savior, precious redeemer. Who would have first
rescue the souls of men? Lord rescue us all. You are the one. You are the one that we praise. >> You are the one we are. I am your God. Yours is full of you. You are holy sing. My request is that you keep praying for
them. But my greatest request request is that you all give your lives to Jesus. You all give your lives to Jesus. You all give your lives to Jesus. After all said and done and all is done and said, unto him we came and unto him we will return. When we are born into the earth, we’re born with our fist clenched.
Meaning that we are holding our future and our destiny in our hands. But by the time we die, we open the feast showing that we have taken nothing away and we have left everything behind. But the only thing you truly leave behind it is what the Bible calls your thoughts and your works.
The things that you did, those are the things that you leave behind. So let this also be a remembrance for all of us in the name of Jesus. The Lord says in back. My question is very simple. >> Question. >> Yes. >> It was an honor to share this life with you and I promise you I’ll hold you down. kingdom. We don’t get to choose the story, but we can choose to cherish every page.
down and leave down. He always had a way to encourage and uplift people. You know, he shared, he was his giver. He was sharing. And we could see that the way he lived with his family, his friends, and through his philanthropic work, people he didn’t even know. And that’s if he was to give any of us an advice today, it would be be there for one another. Check up on one another.
>> Absolutely. Always the life of the party. >> Absolutely. >> One thing we need to take is a lesson that Alex left with us in the month of May. Probably the greatest lesson of my life cuz I didn’t even see it coming. >> No one did, >> you know. But he’s taught us to make sure we leave an impact, that we’re good to one another, that we’re kind to one another, that we remember that we’re not here forever.
One day just might have been the 11th of May >> for all of us, >> but his his legacy lives on. >> Absolutely. >> We are his legacy. >> We are his legacy. >> His family is his legacy. M looking on the screens if you look at the screen you see amazing amazing times he had with different people and that’s what we hold on to right now the beautiful memories he shared with each and every one of us and we will not give that up for anything in the world >> nothing in the world so so just take us into one The last word for Alex because he lives
forever in our hearts. So um what I can say is um let God give his family the latitude to bear this loss. He’s forever in our hearts and we’ll find a way to make his legacy live on in perpetuity. Thank you so much sir. >> Thank you. Thank you. Hey mom. You don’t get the number. >> Yeah. Sending message. You abandon me.
>> No no no. I can’t I can’t abandon. You’re my brother. You’re my brother. >> No no no no. But but why are brothers if you abandon me then a friend will be be there. You brother abandon me. I told you once twice. Once they laughing at you, they know you remember. >> How you doing? >> Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Condolences to >> So, you know, send me send me. >> Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. >> That was very nice. >> Send me Just send me WhatsApp so that the corner. Sorry. This side. >> This side. Mr. Brown. >> Hey man. Hi. Hi. >> Good evening. >> Good evening. How are you? >> I want to move to you. >> Okay. The other side. Thank you, Jesus.
You know the the booklets that you all have is not enough. The books that you have is not enough to celebrate the great man that has left us today. You know, on the 12th of May, when this news broke, more than what the family could say, more than what friends could say, people from all over the world, people that didn’t even experience him personally had something to say.
And reading all those tributes, they were beautiful, beautiful, beautiful things. >> You know, when we’re shooting that, Alex will bring his food. He was a foodie. I don’t know. He liked food. He liked and he always he made sure he was he was a chef. I mean he wasn’t married at the time. So he would bring his food in one stainless cooler hot or some we would eat it until it was done and then would go and create magic.
He he became a brother within the and though our hearts may be heavy today and we may be weary but our conviction and our happiness is that he’s in a better place. So we would not mourn like people that don’t know. We would mourn with that revelation knowing that as we too become children of God on the last day we all will gather together and see him.
Hallelujah. So it’s time to take tribles. If we’re going to take everyone I’m sure we’ll have so much to say and we’ll not be able to leave here today but for once of time we have selected a few tributes from his immediate family. Now to take the tribute of Mazi Alexubo or his father. Let’s make welcome Okino.
Everyone will clearly say about Alex is that he is he was a good man. His mother has said this. His wife has said this. His brother, his sisters has said this. Everyone who came in contact with him has said this. His friends, the industry, even down to his gardener have said Alex was a good man.
He lived for God. And you could tell he was so evident in the things that he did. He had a heart for people, a strong heart for people. And this was clear. And one thing Alex Shaw did was he lived for himself. He would always do things his way. And it just gives me great joy to know that he lived a life that felt good to him and in the process also felt good to everybody around him.
>> Absolutely. Nancy, you know what is most memorable about Alex for me is the fact that everyone that came in contact with him left with a smile. You couldn’t be around Alex without smiling or jumping or laughing or you cannot come down and leave down. He always had a way to encourage and uplate people.
You know, he shared he was a giver. He was here. And we could see that in the way he lived with his family, his friends and through his philanthropic work. People he didn’t even know. And that’s if he was >> absolutely always alive an impact that we’re good to one another that we’re kind to one another that we remember that but his legacy >> that’s what we hold on to right now the beautiful memories he shared with each and every one of us I will not give that up for anything in the world >> nothing in the world and so to just take
us into one thing Alex also loved the most which is worship Alex loves to worship worship if you ever worked with him our dearest wife you’d see she said he brought her closer to God and that was Alex he would always find a way to bring you closer to God even if it means through worship.
And today we want to bring every single one in this room closer to God through worship. While we lift our voices, we know Alex is here. Let us celebrate the ministration of Abuga songs and Peteropi as they lead us in worship tonight. >> In humility, we just rise to our feet as we worship the Lord. has dirty burn for the waters of my soul.
You are Lord of my heart desire and I toship. Let’s sing it one more time together. One more time. Let’s go. I’m stir the waters of my soul longe. You Lord, oh Lord, I my heart desire and I toship you. >> Lift your voice again. You alone. You are Lord. Oh Lord and my spirit. >> You alone. >> You alone are my >> desire.
>> Desire. Hello. You are my youship. >> Let your living water flow by my soul. Get away from your Holy Spirit come and sing on the very situation. Let every situation all my heart father >> father you are the face of the Lord. Lift up your hands everyone. Say father I’m a father. >> You are the living water. Father.
Father. Father. Father. Transition. And you know the best part about the best actors. They leave when the ovation is loudest. And look at what Alex has done. He didn’t wait till he was 1995. So we can all be dancing. Celebration of life. He’s like, “No, he has all of us ugly.
” But one thing at least did was he left us a lot of fine pictures. and a lot of beautiful videos. I remember somehow everybody had a fun video with Alex do a very fun video with you and one thing nobody has really mentioned here is his bad mouth. Alex had bad mouth. Promise me if I tell you his nickname for you, you’re not going to use it outside here.
He used to call me old 20 naira. The Alex he would make everybody laugh even when he was just sitting there just sitting down looking nice. So once you put the camera on his face, he must make sure he abs you. And you can never out Alex. Never. If you win him one day, pray you’re not on set to him the next day because as you’re landing from your car, he’s finishing you.
He must win you. He had the biggest heart. He loved to give. Even if the only thing he could give you is eating his food, he’ll give it to you and then he will jab you for eating that meat. Possibly tell you’re hungry. But that was Alex. And yes, he did leave when the ovation was loudest. That’s how sad do. That’s how they do.
You have to cry for them now. Why not? And the ovation will still ring on forever. He will always be in our hearts. And like I said, I refuse to accept that he’s gone. I just would take solace in the fact that he’s already transitioned because legends never leave. Alex was a big part of Mollywood.
He came and he dominated. He sure did. His performances is something to always look forward to. Alex was part of your film. It’s a big deal. It’s a very big deal. Just like he’s a part of this movie right now. You see how big a deal it is. We’re all paying attention. That’s how Star is doing today. We have half of the industry here, if not the whole industry.
If you’re part of the industry, where’s our camera? You’re part of the industry. You’re not here. judging you right now over here and would like to make our presence known by giving our tribute and uh first up to come on right now on behalf of the creative industry please make welcome Mr. She aren good evening everybody and um I would not say it’s nice to be here because we’re not supposed to be doing this and like uh Nancy just said probably the script and I wish I could just wake up and it’s gone and also I wish that this was just a prank. I would snap my
finger, close her eyes, open it and Alex would say hey it was just a prank. I just wanted to do how you guys how much you guys love me. But it is what it is. Pastor Jarius, I want to say thank you for that word. Thank you so so much. God bless you. It was really impactful. I met Alex many many years ago when he started.
In fact, it was Abuaka Yakubu who is now the president of the act of my journey. He’s here this evening. He was the one who produced that first film. It was iniquity and we had to go to Egaland to shoot. When we got there wouldn’t tell us that there were no fine hotels, there were no lovely scenes. It was just bare and we got there.
He had to gas on the floor. And that was when Alex intrigued me because I would have thought that for somebody who was going his car was coming out that he’ll be full of himself but he wasn’t not Alex down to earth. In fact he made mock of me when I was able to say he called me baba that’s let’s do the work that we came to do and he was such a fun loving guy all through and then we went on to do aliy went on to do so many other things together and then after Alex was born a star and Alex left as said Jesus Christ did not leave 33 there
are people who come into your lives and they don’t need to make a long long thing for you to understand them just stamp it and they leave and they leave their footprints on the sands of time and that is what Alex Eubo is gone to all of us. See in a long while Alex and when you finish the movie what do we all say when you finish movie it’s a wrap Alex has wrapped up the trailer and wherever he is smiling down and see what all of us are doing here I’m sure you’re a cinematographer your script writer on behalf of all the creatives
we want to say Johnny well Alex may god bless your soul and of course we’ll meet to part number and for the family say please condolence He came, he saw, he lived, and then he said goodbye. Good my >> And now, please to continue our tribute as part of what we’re doing today and the reason why we are here, please welcome a close friend of Alex, Omani Obulli. Thank you.
Good evening everyone. My name is your close friends. The people who were blessed enough to call him our bestie. Someone whose absence still doesn’t feel real. How do you put into words a life that meant so bad for this? Not at all. We’ve spent weeks planning today carefully and lovingly because Alex deserved that.
He deserved a gathering just like this, filled with love, good memories, maybe some laughter, and the people whose lives he touched. Even now, it feels strange that we’re here in his honor instead of with him. to Mune, Lilian, Tino, Yolanda, Ike, Ini. May God truly replenish and reward everyone, over a decade ago, Alex and I were at a Christmas party.
I turned, I looked at him and I said, “Do you speak pigeon English?” He said, “Very well.” And I said, “Okay, I’ll call you.” And that was how Obama I don’t know who’s seen the first lady here. That was how Obama was born. And Alex and I traveled the country, traveled the world, went to the UK, went all over to, you know, show this movie and promote it.
And every time Alice would look at me and say, “Why did you pick me for this role? It doesn’t make sense. His career was just starting. I hadn’t even seen him in anything. And I never had an answer for him because come on, such a fine boy to come and play a local tout. Like who would do that?” But I guess God just wanted to announce him to the world.
And when the accolades came, Alex never failed one day to say thank you. And in traveling around, we became very close. And that was how over a decade of genuine pure friendship was born. When someone leaves this world, people often talk about achievements, titles, and accomplishments. Those things matter.
But what has stood out to me these past weeks is something much simpler. Alex was loved. Alex was truly and deeply loved. I mean, look around you today. I was just saying to somebody earlier, I’m like, there are people I haven’t seen in 20 years, 15 years, 10 years. They are all here today. The messages, the tears, the stories, the phone calls, the tributes, they all tell the same story.
Alex had a way of making people feel seen. He showed up for people every single time. He made people laugh. He created connections that lasted. He left footprints on hearts. That is a rare gift. And like I say to everyone, Alex was not just a good guy. He was exceptional. Alex was intentional about being kind. As friends, we remember the moments that may never make it into speeches or tributes, the jokes, the conversations, the plans, the random calls, the late night hangouts when we ate much more than we could handle. Alex, Alex would
always say, “We didn’t bring more.” Ah, deal. But now they’re like precious treasures in our memories. Those are things we hold on to. Today our heart prospects with his gratitude that we got to experience his friendship. Gratitude that we got to love him and be loved by him. We’ll tell your stories. We’ll laugh about the moments we shared.
We’ll remember you with love for the rest of our lives. Rest well, my dearest friend. I have male friends, but I had just one male bestie. Now coming on stage to give his
QQ4 Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The friendship began on a live television program in November of 1986 in the 11 seconds after Bob Dylan called Keith Richards music derivative on camera. Keith Richard’s response to that assessment, one sentence said without anger, without performance, with the specific directness of a man who has nothing to prove and knows it made Bob Dylan laugh.
Then made Bob Dylan go quiet. then made Bob Dylan say two words that people who know Bob Dylan say he almost never said to anyone. This is the story of those 11 seconds and the 40 years that followed them. The program was a live music interview special broadcast on an American network on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The format was simple.
Two musicians, a host, an hour of conversation about music and the state of it. The producers had assembled the pairing of Bob Dylan and Keith Richards with the specific calculation of television producers who understand that two people with equally strong and potentially incompatible views about what music is and what it should do will produce better television than two people who agree about everything.
The calculation was correct, though not in the way the producers had anticipated. Bob Dylan was 45 years old in November of 1986. Bob Dylan had released Empire Burlesque the previous year and had been on the road for most of the intervening period as part of the True Confessions tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Bob Dylan was in November of 1986 in one of the most prolific and restless phases of a career that had consisted almost entirely of prolific and restless phases. A career that had moved through folk, rock, country, gospel, and back again, that had been declared finished at least six times by the music press, and at each time continued with the serene indifference of a river to the opinions of people standing on its banks.
Bob Dylan had been redefining what music could be. Since 1962, Bob Dylan had invented and reinvented himself so many times that reinvention had become his defining characteristic, not in the superficial sense of a performer changing costumes, but in the deeper sense of a musician who had never allowed his work to settle into a form that could be anticipated or categorized from the outside.
Bob Dylan understood influence and originality and the relationship between them better than almost anyone alive in 1986. Bob Dylan had spent 24 years thinking carefully and specifically about where music came from and where music was going and what it meant that those two things were always in constant conversation with each other.
Keith Richards was 42 years old in November of 1986. Keith Richards had been playing guitar professionally since 1962. Keith Richards had built a career on a foundation of American blues and rhythm and blues. A foundation that Keith Richards had studied with the systematic devotion of someone who understood that the tradition he was building on was not incidental to the music he was making, but essential to it.
that you could not understand what Keith Richards did without understanding where Keith Richards had come from and what Keith Richards had been listening to since he was a teenager in Dartford with American Import Records and a secondhand guitar and no teacher except the recordings themselves. Keith Richards had never pretended otherwise. Keith Richards had in fact spent considerable energy across his career making the lineage explicit, naming the artists, citing the recordings, insisting on the acknowledgement of influence that the mainstream music
industry had a long history of suppressing or ignoring or crediting to the wrong people. If anything, Keith Richards was more transparent about his sources than most musicians of his generation. Keith Richards had always said openly that the Rolling Stones came directly from the blues, that Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson and the specific tradition of the Mississippi Delta were not background influences, but foundational ones.
The music Keith Richards made was in direct and sustained conversation with that tradition, something Keith Richards considered not a limitation, but a responsibility and a form of respect. The interview had been running for 8 minutes when the host asked Bob Dylan about the current state of rock and roll.
Bob Dylan answered with the density and the indirection that characterized Bob Dylan’s responses to direct questions, turning the question over, approaching it from an unexpected angle, finding his way to what he actually thought through a series of observations that moved like a river rather than a road. Bob Dylan was not a straightforward interview subject.
Bob Dylan had been asked about rock and roll in hundreds of interviews across 24 years and had developed the habit of treating the question as an invitation to think out loud rather than a request for a prepared position. The producer Gerald Sherman said afterward that in the first 8 minutes of the interview, he had been slightly anxious, not because anything was going wrong, but because nothing was going anywhere in particular yet.
The interview had the feeling of two conversations happening simultaneously. Bob Dylan’s internal one and the external one visible to the cameras. And Gerald Sherman was not certain in those first eight minutes that the two conversations would converge into something. Bob Dylan talked about influence. Bob Dylan talked about originality.
Bob Dylan talked about the difference between music that absorbed a tradition and transformed it and music that absorbed a tradition and reproduced it. And then Bob Dylan made his assessment. And then Bob Dylan said with the precision of a man making a musical assessment rather than a personal judgment that the Rolling Stones work, and Bob Dylan was specific, naming Keith Richards as the guitarist whose approach he was discussing was derivative in a way that Bob Dylan found limiting.
Bob Dylan said it without hostility. Bob Dylan said it as a technical observation about the relationship between source material and the work that came from it. Bob Dylan said that Keith Richards played the blues the way the blues had already been played, rather than using the blues as a starting point for something that had not yet been played.
Keith Richards had been listening to this with the specific attention Keith Richards gave to things being said about music by people who knew music. Keith Richards did not interrupt. Keith Richards did not shift in his chair or display any of the visible signals of a person preparing a defensive response. Keith Richards listened to Bob Dylan’s complete observation all the way to its conclusion without interrupting and without displaying any visible signal of preparing a response.
Then Keith Richards said one sentence. The sentence was not a rebuttal. The sentence did not defend Keith Richards music or argue for its originality or challenge Bob Dylan’s characterization of what the blues meant in the context of rock and roll. The sentence was something else entirely, something that required a specific kind of confidence to say.
The confidence of a person who has spent long enough thinking about the same things as the person they are talking to that they can locate the exact point where their thinking diverges and say something useful about that point rather than simply defending their own position. The sentence acknowledged everything Bob Dylan had said, the assessment, the distinction Bob Dylan was drawing, the specific musical concern underlying the observation, and then turned it 90°.
Keith Richards took Bob Dylan’s own framework, the one Bob Dylan had used to analyze Keith Richards relationship to the blues tradition, and applied it back to Bob Dylan’s work with the same precision Bob Dylan had used to apply it to Keith Richards. Spare aimed. The sentence asked Bob Dylan something about Bob Dylan’s own music, about the relationship between Bob Dylan’s sources and Bob Dylan’s output that Bob Dylan had not been asked on television before.
The sentence did not attack. The sentence illuminated. Bob Dylan laughed. The laugh was not the polite laugh of someone responding to a joke. The laugh was the involuntary laugh of someone who has been genuinely surprised. The specific kind of surprise that a person of exceptional intelligence experiences when someone else’s intelligence exceeds their expectations.
Bob Dylan laughed for 4 seconds. Then Bob Dylan stopped laughing. Then Bob Dylan was quiet for 3 seconds in the way that Bob Dylan was quiet when Bob Dylan was thinking rather than performing thought. Then Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” The producer in the booth, a man named Gerald Sherman, who had been working in television for 14 years, said afterward that in 14 years of live television production, he had never heard Bob Dylan say those two words in a public forum.
Gerald Sherman said he had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions and had observed Bob Dylan in numerous other contexts and that you’re right was not a phrase that Bob Dylan deployed easily or often because Bob Dylan had spent 24 years being right about music in ways that other people eventually caught up with. And the experience of being right ahead of everyone else does not generally produce a man who says you’re right readily when someone else makes a point.
The host of the program, a journalist named Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said afterward that the 11 seconds between Bob Dylan’s assessment and Bob Dylan saying, “You’re right,” were the most extraordinary 11 seconds of television she had been present for. Patricia Wells said that what she witnessed in those 11 seconds was not a debate or a confrontation or a celebrity exchange of competing opinions.
Patricia Wells said what she witnessed was one musician recognizing another musician as an equal, which was in the specific context of Bob Dylan in 1986, not something that happened in public very often. The interview continued for another 42 minutes after those 11 seconds. The conversation between Bob Dylan and Keith Richards in the remaining 42 minutes was described by everyone who watched it as fundamentally different from the first 8 minutes.
The host, Patricia Wells, who had been conducting music interviews for 12 years and understood the difference between the performance of conversation and actual conversation, said that at approximately the 9-minute mark, something shifted in the studio. That the formal interview, architecture dissolved, and what replaced it was something less structured and more genuine.
Bob Dylan and Keith Richards talked about influence and originality and the blues and what it meant to build on a tradition without being consumed by it. They talked about specific recordings and specific musicians with the specificity of two people who had spent their entire adult lives thinking about these things and rarely found another person who had thought about them with equivalent care.
They talked about where music came from and where music was going and whether those two questions were actually one question or two. Patricia Wells said afterward that she had asked approximately four questions in the remaining 42 minutes because Bob Dylan and Keith Richards did not require questions. They required only a room and a camera and the shared understanding that what they were saying together was worth recording carefully.
She said it was the best interview she had ever conducted and that she had conducted the smallest part of it. After the program, Bob Dylan and Keith Richards were in the corridor outside the studio when the host Patricia Wells passed them. Patricia Wells said she did not stop because she did not want to interrupt.
She observed them for approximately 30 seconds from a distance. She said they were talking with the ease of people who had known each other for years rather than people who had met for the first time 2 hours earlier. She said that something had shifted between them during the broadcast that the broadcast had made permanent rather than temporary.
She continued down the corridor and did not look back. She said in her account of that evening that she had decided in that moment not to interrupt the conversation because some conversations are more valuable than any question a journalist might ask and that the conversation she had observed for 30 seconds in the corridor outside the studio was one of them.
She had been a music journalist for 12 years. She recognized the difference. Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have maintained their friendship across four decades. They have appeared together at various events, most significantly at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, where people who were present described them as inseparable for most of the evening, occupying the same corner of the backstage area and talking with the concentrated attention of people who only have a limited amount of time together and intend to use it
well. Bob Dylan has spoken about Keith Richards in interviews with the specific thoughtful care that Bob Dylan reserves for musicians whose work Bob Dylan considers genuinely important rather than merely culturally prominent. Keith Richards has spoken about Bob Dylan in similar terms with the specific respect of someone who recognizes in another person a commitment to music that goes deeper than career.
Neither Bob Dylan nor Keith Richards has made a public statement specifically about how the friendship began or about the November 1986 interview. Bob Dylan has not mentioned the 11 seconds. Keith Richards has not mentioned the sentence. The interview exists in the archive. The 11 seconds are there. The laugh is there. The two words are there.
What is also there for anyone who watches the interview from its beginning and pays attention to the shift that happens at the 9-minute mark is the specific moment when two people who thought they were appearing on a television program discovered they were actually talking to each other. What Keith Richards said in that one sentence has never been officially reported.
The people who were in the studio that evening, Gerald Sherman, Patricia Wells, the floor crew, the two camera operators, the makeup artist who was watching from the side of the set, have described the sentence in consistent terms. They have described its effect. They have described Bob Dylan’s laugh and Bob Dylan’s silence and Bob Dylan’s two words.
They have not repeated the sentence itself in the specific understanding that the sentence was said between two musicians on a television program and that its power resided in the specific context of that exchange and would not survive removal from it intact. What can be said is this. Keith Richards said something to Bob Dylan about Bob Dylan’s music that used Bob Dylan’s own observation about Keith Richards as its starting point and arrived somewhere that Bob Dylan had not anticipated.
Keith Richards turned Bob Dylan’s assessment 90° and showed Bob Dylan something about the music they had both spent their lives making that Bob Dylan recognized immediately as true. And Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” Two words said by Bob Dylan in public on live television in 1986 to Keith Richards in response to a single sentence Keith Richards had said about music.
Two words that Gerald Sherman, who had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions, said he had never heard Bob Dylan say in a public forum. Two words that Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said were the most significant two words she had heard in those 12 years. Not because of their content, but because of who said them and what it cost to say them and what it meant that Keith Richards had produced them in 11 seconds from a conversation that began with Bob Dylan calling Keith Richards’s music derivative. And Keith Richards and
Bob Dylan have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The sentence did its work in 11 seconds on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The work has been ongoing ever since. If this story moved you, subscribe and leave a comment below. Have you ever said something to someone that turned a potential disagreement into an unexpected and lasting connection? Tell us about it in the comments below.
Share this with someone who needs to be reminded that the right sentence said at the right moment can completely change the entire direction of a relationship. Ring the notification bell for more untold stories about the extraordinary human beings behind music’s greatest legends.
Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
