Only three people in the world were allowed to call Queen Elizabeth Liette until the day Margaret Thatcher said it naturally. And the Queen’s response revealed their secret friendship that no one knew existed. If you’re fascinated by the hidden relationships between history’s most powerful women, make sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell for more incredible true stories about the bonds that shaped our world.
It was September 1989 at Balmoral Castle in the Scottish Highlands. And for the first time in 11 years of weekly Tuesday meetings, Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were walking together without a single aid, secretary, or protocol officer in sight. What happened during that private stroll would reveal a friendship so genuine, so unexpected that it would change how both women saw their roles as leaders forever.
The Iron Lady was nearing the end of her premiership, though neither woman knew it yet. The cracks in Thatcher’s political armor were beginning to show, but here in the heathercovered hills of Scotland, surrounded by nothing but ancient oak trees and the gentle sound of the river D. Margaret Thatcher looked more relaxed than she had in years.
“I’ll miss these walks, Margaret,” Queen Elizabeth said softly, her voice carrying a warmth that was rarely heard outside the royal family’s most private moments. The simple statement hung in the crisp autumn air between them. For 11 years, they had maintained the careful dance of constitutional propriety, the weekly audiences, the formal briefings, the measured conversations about affairs of state.
But something had been shifting in recent months, a gradual melting of the barriers that protocol demanded they maintain. “Will you really, Libet?” Margaret Thatcher replied, the childhood nickname slipping out as naturally as breathing. The moment the word left her lips, both women stopped walking. The queen turned slowly to face her prime minister, her expression unreadable.
Margaret Thatcher’s eyes widened in horror as she realized what she had just said. “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” Thatcher stammered, her usual commanding presence crumbling into something vulnerable and uncertain. “I didn’t mean to. I overstepped terribly. Please forgive me, your majesty.” But Queen Elizabeth wasn’t angry.
Instead, something extraordinary was happening on her face. A smile was breaking through. Not the careful, practiced royal smile the public knew, but something genuine and surprised and deeply touched. “Philip calls me that,” the queen said quietly. “My sister called me that when we were children. The weight of what had just happened settled between them.
” Margaret Thatcher, the woman who had negotiated with world leaders, who had stared down the Soviet Union, who had never shown weakness in any public forum, looked like she might actually cry. “I overstepped,” she whispered. “I’ve broken protocol in the most fundamental way.” But Queen Elizabeth stepped closer, closing the distance that 11 years of constitutional propriety had maintained between them.
No, Margaret,” she said, and her voice was soft with something that sounded remarkably like affection. It felt nice to be just Lilet for a moment. The Iron Lady stared at her monarch, trying to process what she was hearing. “Then that’s what you are to me,” Thatcher said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“When it’s just us, just some Liet and Margaret.” What neither woman could have predicted was how that single moment, the use of a childhood nickname in a Scottish meadow, would unlock years of carefully guarded emotions and create a friendship that transcended politics, protocol, and everything the world thought it knew about both of them.
But this moment didn’t happen in isolation. It was the culmination of something that had been building for years. Something neither woman had been willing to acknowledge until that September afternoon when the barriers finally came down. The friendship between Queen Elizabeth and Margaret Thatcher had always seemed impossible to outside observers.
They were, by all accounts, dramatically different women. The Queen, born to duty, raised in privilege, trained from birth to serve her country through inherited position. Margaret Thatcher, the grosser’s daughter from Grandanthm, who had fought for every achievement, who had clawed her way to power through sheer force of will and intellect.
Their early meetings had been formal affairs marked by mutual respect but little warmth. The Queen, bound by constitutional neutrality, could never express political opinions. Margaret Thatcher, ambitious and driven, initially saw the weekly audiences as a necessary duty rather than an opportunity for genuine connection.
But gradually something had begun to shift. Perhaps it was the shared experience of being the only women in rooms full of powerful men. Perhaps it was the unique burden they both carried of having their every word, every gesture, every decision scrutinized by an unforgiving public eye.
The turning point had come in 1984 after the Brighton bombing nearly killed Margaret Thatcher. The Queen had made an unprecedented personal phone call that night, not through official channels, but directly to Thatcher’s personal line. “Margaret,” the queen had said when Thatcher answered, her voice shaking. Are you all right? There had been a long pause on the other end of the line, and for a moment the queen wondered if she had overstepped.
Then she heard Margaret Thatcher crying. Not the controlled emotion of a politician, but the raw shaken tears of a woman who had just faced her own mortality. Ma’am, I Thatcher’s voice broke. I thought I was going to die tonight. I thought about Dennis, about my children, and I realized that for the first time in years, I was just Margaret, not the prime minister, just a woman who was terrified.
“You don’t have to be strong right now,” the queen had said softly. “Not with me, not tonight.” “I keep thinking about the people who did die. They were there because of me, because of who I am politically. How do I live with that?” The queen understood that weight intimately, the burden of knowing that your position, your very existence could put others at risk.
By honoring their sacrifice, she had replied, by continuing to serve the country they believed in enough to die for. That conversation had lasted 47 minutes, far longer than any constitutional duty required. It wasn’t the call of a monarch to her prime minister. It was the call of one woman to another, recognizing that they both understood what it meant to carry the weight of a nation while remaining fundamentally human underneath it all.
From that night forward, their Tuesday meetings had taken on a different quality. The formal briefings remained, but they began to run longer, filled with conversations that strayed from affairs of state into more personal territory. There was the Tuesday when Margaret Thatcher arrived looking unusually tired and instead of jumping into the political agenda, the queen had simply asked, “How are you sleeping?” The question had surprised Thatcher so much that she’d answered honestly, “Not well, ma’am.
I keep having the same dream about the bomb.” They’d spent 20 minutes talking about trauma and recovery with the queen sharing how she’d dealt with her own fears during the blitz. There was the afternoon when the queen had mentioned her frustration with a particularly difficult diplomatic situation and Margaret had said, “Would you like me to speak with them?” Off the record, of course, it was a small offer, but it represented something unprecedented.
The prime minister offering personal support to her sovereign, not just political advice. And there was the memorable Tuesday when they both started laughing at the same time about a pompous male politician’s behavior in parliament and suddenly realized they shared the same sense of humor about the absurdities of political life.
He really thinks he’s cleverer than both of us combined, Thatcher had observed, and the queen had replied, “Well, he’s certainly loud enough for two people. They talked about their children, how difficult it was to raise a family in the public eye, how to protect them from the harsh glare of publicity while preparing them for the responsibilities that would inevitably be theirs.
Queen Elizabeth shared her concerns about Prince Charles’s rocky marriage. While Margaret Thatcher worried about her son Mark’s business ventures and her daughter Carol’s struggle to find her own identity outside of politics, they discussed the loneliness of leadership, how isolating it could be to make decisions that affected millions while having precious few people who truly understood the weight of that responsibility.
Do you ever wonder, Margaret Thatcher had asked during one of these conversations, what it would have been like if we could have chosen ordinary lives? Every mother wonders that,” the queen had replied. “But we didn’t choose ordinary, did we? We chose duty.” “You were born to duty,” Thatcher had corrected gently.
“I chose it, and sometimes I wonder if I chose correctly.” “What would ordinary Margaret Roberts have been doing today?” The Queen had asked with genuine curiosity. “Perhaps I’d be a chemistry teacher,” Margaret had mused. “I loved research, loved the precision of science. Maybe I’d have had more children, spent more time with them.
Maybe I’d be baking cakes for a church bazaar instead of negotiating with world leaders. The queen had smiled at that image. An ordinary liibet Windsor. I think she would have married a country gentleman, Elizabeth had said thoughtfully. Someone kind and steady. We’d have lived in a comfortable house with dogs and horses, and I’d have spent my days reading and gardening and raising children who could choose their own careers.
Do you regret it? Margaret had asked quietly. The life you didn’t get to live. Some days, the queen had admitted, when I see mothers walking their children to school, or when I watch couples holding hands without worrying about photographers. But then I think about the good we’ve been able to do, the stability we’ve provided, the changes we’ve helped bring about, and I think perhaps our sacrifice has meaning.
Perhaps, Margaret had agreed, but the loneliness remains. It was the kind of conversation that would have been unthinkable in their early years, but by the late 1980s, it had become natural, even necessary. They had become each other’s confidants in a way that surprised them both. Now, walking through the Scottish countryside on what would prove to be one of their last private moments together, that friendship had reached its most profound expression in a single word, liabet.
You know, Queen Elizabeth said as they continued their walk, the formal barriers now completely dissolved. When I was a child, I thought everyone had these sorts of names. I thought all families had their own private languages. What do you mean? Margaret asked. And there was something wonderful about the casualness of the question, the way she could simply ask the Queen of England to explain something without worrying about protocol or propriety.
Philip calls me Libet, but he also calls me darling and sweetheart. And sometimes when he’s being particularly cheeky, you’re m with a little bow. The queen smiled at the memory. Margaret, my sister, used to call me Liil when we were very small. Papa called me Liet until the day he died. What a gift, Margaret said softly.
To have people who know you well enough to call you by something other than your title. Yes, the queen agreed. It reminds you that underneath everything else, you’re just you. They walked in comfortable silence for a moment, both women lost in their own thoughts. Margaret Thatcher was thinking about how rare it was for anyone to see her as anything other than the iron lady, the political force, the prime minister.
Even her own family seemed to struggle with the Margaret who existed outside of politics. Queen Elizabeth was thinking about how isolating the crown could be, how it created a barrier between her and almost everyone she encountered. Even her own children called her mommy in private but your majesty in public. And sometimes the line between the two seemed to blur even for them.
Margaret, the queen said suddenly. May I ask you something personal? Of course, Libbert, Thatcher replied, and this time the name came naturally without hesitation or apology. Do you ever miss being just Margaret Roberts? The question struck deeper than Thatcher had expected. Margaret Roberts, the young woman who had dreamed of changing the world, who had fallen in love with Dennis, who had held her twins as babies and wondered what kind of mother she would be.
Sometimes, she admitted, especially when I’m with the grandchildren, they don’t care about politics or policies or any of it. To them, I’m just Granny Margaret who brings presents and tells stories. Yes, the queen said with deep understanding. With my grandchildren, I’m just granny. I can sit on the floor and play games and be completely silly, and none of them care about the crown or the speeches or any of it.
Do you think we’ve lost ourselves in our roles? Margaret asked, the question coming from a place of vulnerability she rarely allowed herself to access. The queen considered this carefully. No, she said finally. I think we found ourselves through our roles, but we’ve also paid a price for it. What price? The price of intimacy. Real intimacy.
The kind where someone can call you by a silly childhood name without it being a security risk or a breach of protocol. Margaret Thatcher laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. Do you know how long it’s been since someone called me anything other than Prime Minister or Mrs. Thatcher? Even Dennis calls me love in that careful way, like he’s not quite sure if I’m his wife or his prime minister at any given moment.
That’s why this matters so much, the queen said, gesturing to the space between them. This conversation, this friendship, the fact that you called me Liet and I didn’t have you arrested for treason. They both laughed at that and the sound echoed across the Scottish hills. Two of the most powerful women in the world sharing a moment of pure unguarded joy.
But there was something bittersweet about it, too, because they both sensed that moments like this were precious and rare and probably temporary. Margaret Thatcher’s political position was becoming increasingly precarious, and they both knew that their weekly meetings might not continue much longer. “Lietet,” Margaret said, testing the name again, savoring it.
“I need to tell you something. What is it? These 11 years, our Tuesday meetings, this friendship, it’s meant more to me than you know. Being able to talk to someone who understands the weight of it all, who knows what it’s like to have your every decision scrutinized, to have the future of the country resting on your shoulders. It’s been a lifeline.
The queen stopped walking again and turned to face Margaret directly. For me as well, she said simply, “More than you know. I may not be prime minister much longer,” Margaret continued, her voice steady, but her eyes betraying her uncertainty. “The party is restless. There are whispers about leadership challenges.
My time may be coming to an end.” “Then we must make the most of the time we have,” the queen replied, as Liet and Margaret, not as queen and prime minister. They had reached a small stone bridge that crossed a stream, and they leaned against the ancient stonework, looking out over the landscape that had belonged to the royal family for generations.
The afternoon light was beginning to fade, casting golden shadows across the heather. And somewhere in the distance, they could hear the haunting call of a curlu. This is where I come when I need to think, the queen said quietly. Philip and I used to bring the children here when they were small. They’d throw sticks into the stream and race them to see whose would emerge first on the other side.
It’s peaceful, Margaret observed. I can see why you love it here. It feels timeless, as if the worries of the world can’t quite reach this place. That’s exactly it, the queen agreed. When I stand here, I remember that the monarchy has survived for over a thousand years. That perspective helps when the daily pressures feel overwhelming.
Kings and queens before me have stood in this very spot, facing their own impossible decisions. “What will you do?” the queen asked quietly. “If your time as prime minister ends.” “I honestly don’t know,” Margaret admitted. “Politics has been my life for so long. I’m not sure I remember how to be anything else.” “You’ll remember,” the queen said with quiet confidence.
“You’ll remember how to be Margaret Roberts, how to be Dennis’s wife, how to be a mother and grandmother. Those parts of you haven’t disappeared. They’ve just been temporarily overshadowed. And you, Margaret asked, “What happens when I’m gone? Will you miss our Tuesday meetings?” “Terribly,” the queen admitted.
“My next prime minister, whoever that might be, won’t understand the way you do. They won’t know what it’s like to be a woman in a position of power, dealing with men who think they know better, trying to balance strength with compassion, authority with humanity.” No, Margaret agreed. They won’t, but you’ll manage. You always do.
We both will, the queen said. But I’ll always treasure this friendship, these conversations, the fact that you were brave enough to call me Liet. And I was brave enough to let you. They stood in silence for a moment, both women understanding that this conversation would likely be their last as equals as friends rather than constitutional partners.
The protocol and formality would return as it must, but something precious had been created and acknowledged in these stolen moments in the Scottish countryside. Lilet, Margaret said one final time. Thank you for seeing me as more than just the Iron Lady, for letting me be human with you. Thank you, Margaret, the queen replied, for showing me that friendship is possible even within the constraints of duty.
for proving that two women can support each other even when the world expects them to be rivals. As they walked back toward Balmoral Castle, both women felt the weight of their roles settling back onto their shoulders. By the time they reached the castle doors, they would once again be her majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the Right Honorable Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister. The protocols would resume.
The careful distance would be maintained. But something fundamental had changed between them. In calling the queen by her childhood name, Margaret Thatcher had acknowledged the woman beneath the crown. In accepting and welcoming that intimacy, Queen Elizabeth had revealed her own hunger for genuine human connection.
It would be months before they saw each other again. And by then, Margaret Thatcher would no longer be prime minister. Their weekly meetings would end, replaced by the occasional formal encounter at state functions. But the friendship they had discovered and acknowledged that September day would endure.
Years later, when Margaret Thatcher’s health began to fail and her memory started to fade, Queen Elizabeth would make it a point to invite her to Windsor Castle for tea. Not as former prime minister and sovereign, but as Margaret and Liet, two old friends sharing memories and finding comfort in each other’s company. And sometimes in those quiet moments, Margaret would still call her Liet.
And the queen would smile and remember a September day in Scotland when two powerful women discovered that underneath all the titles and responsibilities and weight of history, they were simply friends who cared about each other. That is the power of a name freely given and gratefully received. It reminds us that no matter how high we rise, how much responsibility we carry, how far we travel from our origins, we remain fundamentally human in need of connection, understanding, and the simple gift of being known and accepted for who we really are. The day Margaret
Thatcher called Queen Elizabeth wasn’t just about breaking protocol. It was about two remarkable women finding each other across the vast distances that duty and tradition had placed between them and choosing friendship over formality, humanity over hierarchy, connection over convention. In a world where power often isolates and position often alienates, their friendship stands as a testament to the possibility of genuine human connection even in the most unlikely circumstances.
Sometimes the most revolutionary act isn’t changing laws or policies or governments. Sometimes it’s simply calling someone by the name their family gave them and meaning it with
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.
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