Investigate a possible scheme to finance the Socialist Party. Zapatero has asked for more time due to the length of a summary that once again puts him at the top of the alleged plot. This situation certainly makes it very difficult for Sánchez to complete his term, but I cannot call elections for partisan interests.
I have to call elections for the general interest of the citizens. Spaniards. It’s happening. Things are happening. The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party government is finding it increasingly difficult to get its way. Yesterday, the anti-corruption police, the famous UCO, paid them a visit. Breaking news, let’s remember it, is also related to Spain, with the UCO which is searching, remember, Ferraz, eh, to investigate a possible financing scheme of the Socialist Party.
I quote verbatim the tweet from the Judiciary. I open quotation marks. The National Court requests documentation from the Socialist Party as part of an investigation into an alleged plot to destabilize legal proceedings against the party. I close quotation marks. That same morning, the UCO entered the headquarters of the Socialist Party, that is, the PSOE, to investigate and find evidence of irregular financing.
And all this comes after the bombshell from former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. So if the current Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, survives all this, then it means he is already prepared to survive a nuclear apocalypse. I’m fine. What do I say to a nuclear apocalypse? Are you prepared to survive an alien invasion, or both at the same time, while a meteorite falls on Moncloa Palace and zombies attack you? Is it possible that all of this will survive? Well, I’d say no to anyone else.
But don’t forget that we’re not talking about just any politician, we’re talking about Pedro Sánchez, the king of Spain. In any case, what is happening to the Prime Minister is a level of scandal that is surprising even in Latin America. A level of scandal that is unprecedented in Spanish democracy. The judge in the Zapatero case has agreed to the former president’s request to postpone his testimony and has scheduled it for June 17 and 18 instead of June 2.
As originally planned , Zapatero has asked for more time to prepare his testimony due to the length of the investigation, which once again places him at the center of the alleged conspiracy. But his mentor, his own personal obiobi, former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has been found with a lot of jewels in the safe in his office, and his front man, get this, kept €286,000 in cash.
This is already more suspicious than an Argentinian with German surnames, but if you had to store €286,000 in cash, how would you do it? Well, I don’t know , in a briefcase, in a safe, well, no. This good gentleman had them scattered among a golf bag, a radiator, a box of glasses, and in the bathroom.
I mean, he was like an alcoholic hiding bottles of whiskey. And among everything they found were also envelopes with characters written in Chinese. In Chinese. I have no idea why they were written in Chinese. They said 10,000. The number 10,000 written in Chinese. And what did these envelopes contain? So pay attention to what one of Spain’s most famous journalists has to say.
I am referring to one of these independent journalists in our beloved country who in no way act as government propagandists. This is what is said and what can be inferred from a message that says 10K done. It is assumed that 10K is not a 10 km race, there is no other possibility than that 10,000 has been paid.
But the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, the most beloved minister of our government, ironically, is also being found in the Plus Ultra scheme for contracts awarded to the Chinese company Huawei, and the Civil Guard has just found more than suspicious contracts with Deloitte for Pedro Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez.
You know, one of the Big Fs. The UDEF has identified Zapatero in chats related to the plot, in which he is referred to as fox, Z, or ZZzz. They could have also called him René ZZ. That would have been funny. I don’t know if this is an alias, a Matapella, I don’t know, but a former minister of Zapatero was surprised that his former boss set him up like this, and not for the reasons you think.
I thought he was a person absolutely incapable of having clear ideas about anything beyond three or four things, and even less so about economic matters. I just love that everyone, even his friends, assume Zapatero is stupid. And all this comes to the PSOE just when things were looking worse than bad, because the socialists have lost again in Andalusia, which was their historical stronghold.
They have no budgets, they have no stable majority, and now we have a list of 36 defendants, convicted or sentenced, linked to Pedro Sánchez’s circle. 36. The man who came to power promising to end corruption is surrounded by more people under investigation than a drug trafficking case. The situation is so dire that even the Socialist Party mayors are asking him to call early elections.
And you might say, “Why? Do they want Pedro Sánchez to lose them?” Because otherwise, next year national and municipal elections would have to be held at the same time, both of them. Given the current situation, the PSOE is going to suffer a historic debacle. Therefore, the socialist mayors do not want to be too affected because they will suffer some consequences, but they do not want to be 100% affected by the bad image that Spain has of its prime minister.
That is why they are asking him to call elections as soon as possible. In this way, voters can punish Pedro Sánchez this year and then be more lenient with the party the following year. As you know, in municipal elections you normally vote for the person, not the party. In other words, they want the president to be sacrificed to prevent the entire political party from disappearing , which is more than likely.
And what do you think Pedro Sánchez’s response was ? Well, pay attention, because this is something to frame. You’ll excuse the joke. There isn’t a colleague who is clearly asking me to bring forward the elections because he is aware that I will have a larger parliamentary majority in the government and in Congress, allowing me to govern much more calmly.
And I thank him for it. But I cannot call elections for partisan interests; I have to call elections for the general interest of the citizens. The [ __ ] boss. He’s the [ __ ] boss. Of course, if he brings forward the elections he will have an absolute majority, we all know that. And he doesn’t do it because he doesn’t want to humiliate the opposition.
He’s capable of going up to Donald Trump one day and saying, “Look, Donald, are you going to give us back California and Florida?” Because this has always been Spain. You’re welcome, okay? Oh, and by the way, tell Melania to bring the pink thong next time, it looks great on her. What surprises me most about all this is that so far nothing has come out that is directly related to Pedro Sánchez.
It seems everyone has dirty hands except him, but the storm that is breaking out has very few precedents. Therefore, the questions I ask myself in today’s video are, one, can Sanchez survive the perfect storm? Second, are your partners determined to let go and start talking? Third, is this the beginning of the end for socialism and the left in Spain? Today we’re going to answer these questions.
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Welcome to Only Fons. Let’s start with the most important thing, the summary of the Plus Ultra case. As you may recall, Plus Ultra is an airline that had, I believe, one or two flights a week from Spain to Venezuela, and the Spanish government considered it a strategic company and therefore bailed it out with 52 million euros before, sorry, after the COVID pandemic.
Well, this Monday the secret was lifted and the parties were able to navigate through dozens of pages that detailed how the alleged corruption scheme of former president Zapatero worked. And each piece of data is worse than the last. First, the aliases. The judge, who initiated the investigation, identified Zapatero in a WhatsApp chat between two suspects in which they referred to him as fox z and zzz.
And then we also find, Chicote in the summary, notes referring once again to Zapatero, not his own, but referring to him as Zorro ZZz, eh, which makes you wonder who he is. I would investigate a little more because I wonder who the heck this Z is. Maybe they’re referring to the YouTuber René ZZ. In short, these conversations reveal, according to the judge, and I say this literally, concrete acts that suggest the commission of crimes of bribery, influence peddling and corruption in business by a hierarchical organization.
Alleged efforts by the former president of the government to secure the distribution of lubricants in Venezuela for a Venezuelan businessman are mentioned. You know that in the Spanish Socialist Party they know a lot about lubricants, wink, wink. Repsol has categorically denied it, but the chat exists.
Second, we have the money, and that is because the anti-corruption police, in this case the UDE, have analyzed Zapatero’s transfers between 2020 and 2025. There are 174 transactions from various companies that total 2.6 million euros. The judge has already blocked €490,780 from his account, which is exactly what his friend Julio Martínez’s consulting firm, called Relevant Analysis, paid him.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, or well, as Ávalos would say, the very tip, just the very tip. Why does it turn out that the plot wasn’t just about collecting commissions from the Plus Ultra bailout? According to the summary, he also acted as an intermediary in the purchase and sale of Venezuelan oil and gold with the intervention of a company very close to the Chinese Communist Party and a Swiss agent.
The magistrate did authorize entry into his office. There they found 17 diaries, 18 folders of documentation, USB drives, hard drives, three mobile phones and a safe with 103 pieces of jewelry. 103 pieces of jewelry. Necklaces, bracelets, earrings, rings, bangles, watches. Come on, Zapatero seems to be a fan of Mr. T.
Those of you watching this video from Spain will already know this story because it’s been the meme of the week: being a socialist usually means having very little and being willing to give a lot. And the best part is that the secretary said they were his wife’s inheritance and travel gifts. Apparently, Zapatero’s wife must come from a family of rappers with so much money.
Or maybe Zapatero’s father-in-law was Mr. T. Those close to Zapatero value the jewelry at between €30,000 and €50,000. Anyway. Anyway, I find it strange that a former president of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party has a safe with jewelry in his office, jewelry that the party pays for. It’s already an image that I can’t erase even with bleach.
But then there’s the matter of his friend Julio Martínez. The anti-corruption police, the UDEF, searched his house on Diego de León street in Madrid and found €286,000 in cash hidden throughout the house. Again, hiding €286,000 in cash already smells fishy. But this good man had them all divided up. In a golf bag, there was €10,000.
Then in the radiator, another €50,000. In a chest of drawers, €30,000. In a box of glasses, 25,000. In the bathroom, 75,000. In a Christmas bag, €50,000 more. Dude, I can kind of understand you keeping cash in there, but hiding it in the bathroom, I ca n’t find any explanation for that, except for what you’re all thinking.
Clear. Then he also had five more envelopes with Chinese characters that had the word €10,000 on each of the envelopes. Martinez says the money comes from the sale of an apartment. Ah, well, that’s normal. Who hasn’t sold an apartment and hidden the money in the bathroom? It’s quite common, you haven’t done it yourselves.
Come on, this is the equivalent of my dog eating the homework of a criminal organization. Investigators suspect that the money originated from the collection of illegal commissions for the scheme’s mediation with the Sánchez government and other foreign executives to favor companies they trusted with contracts, aid, and other privileges.
And now comes our beloved Minister of Transport. The ” dearest” part is ironic, because in Julio Martínez’s agenda, the UDEF found handwritten notes that say Tuesday 8, FRAP data, Huawei 100 end of month and 400 contract. And it turns out that these notes coincide with a tender from ADIF, which reports to the Ministry of Óscar Puente, for equipment from Huawei worth €400,000.
The contract was awarded on March 10, 2026, and Huawei, don’t forget, is a Chinese company banned by the European Union and the United States for its connections with Beijing’s intelligence services. Zapatero allegedly secured Spanish public contracts for the Chinese giant by circumventing all these prohibitions. Does it surprise you? Well, I shouldn’t, because Zapatero’s ties to China are very well documented, and in fact I’m going to talk about them in more depth in an upcoming video.
You know, if you don’t want to miss it, subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already. But the most shocking thing is that the company of Zapatero’s Daughters, that communications consultancy that nobody had heard of before, a company called What the Fap, charged €74,000 from Huawei between 2020 and 2022 for marketing. I repeat, marketing, in quotes.
An external advisor to Huawei, the Chinese businessman Fangu, contributed €15,000 for the creation of Zapatero’s Chinese Pro think tank , Gate Center. Furthermore, the UDF discovered that he paid another €104,000 directly into Zapatero’s bank account through a consulting firm. And to complete the picture, this same week the latest reports from the UCO on Begoña Gómez, Pedro Sánchez’s wife, have also been released.
The Civil Guard concludes that the awards given to Adeloite for the software for its chair at the Complutense University were not only premeditated, but also rigged. But why do they say that? Because Deloitte was already working before they were awarded the contract. The deadline for submitting bids was 24 hours and the smaller contract was signed for €14,999 and you might say, “€14,999 But what kind of figure is that?” Well, that ‘s €1 below the legal limit.
Coincidence? I don’t think so. But what’s more, the Civil Guard’s anti-corruption unit, that is, the UCO, contradicts Begoña Gómez when she says that the software was never finished because it was. Moreover, it already had 103 registered users and was promoted in workshops throughout Spain. But that’s not all; the logo was paid for from an account he shares with Pedro Sánchez.
The requirements and conditions demanded for both contracts were adapted to the conditions predefined by Deloit and the chair, including the price. Were bids solicited in a simulated manner or under conditions that limited competition to the benefit of Deloitte? It seems that this could be the final blow that will end Pedro Sánchez’s government .
And the question is, is he really going to do it? Well, we’re going to see it right now. Sánchez the pariah. Before we continue, if you’re new to this channel, let me remind you that we release new videos every week. The news reports tell you the news, I tell you the story. If you’re interested in international politics, geopolitics, a bit of economics, and all of it seasoned with a good dose of dark humor and sarcasm, this is the place for you.
So, you know what to do: subscribe and hit the bell so you don’t miss any of our updates. And now, let’s continue with today’s story. The question all of Spain is asking right now is, can anyone survive all this? Because something that even the government is very clear about, although they don’t say it publicly, is that this could be their downfall.
Because? Because the Zapatero case is much more dangerous for Moncloa than the Ávalos or Cerdán cases. You know, the two trusted men of Sánchez who are now in jail. And I know what many of you, especially those outside of Spain, are wondering, but how is it possible that this, which ultimately affects a former president, is more serious than the scandals affecting two of Sánchez’s friends and direct collaborators, one of whom even became a minister? Well, look, it is because the whole idea is a collective decision of the
Council of Ministers. The 53 million euros used for the Plus Ultra bailout were approved at a meeting attended by Pedro Sánchez. So if Judge Calama decides to investigate the extent of Zapatero’s pressure, the inevitable question is, who in the Council of Ministers was aware of it? Who did those calls reach? In Sumar, which you know is the far- left party, which is a partner in the government, a coalition partner, they are already saying privately that the PSOE is terrified, but it does n’t stop there. To
understand why this moment is different from all the previous ones, we have to look at the partners, because until now, every time a scandal hit him , Pedro Sánchez would bring out the Donald Trump card, Palestine, far-right hoaxes, and the government partners would swallow their pride. However, this time one thing has changed.
We will be following this matter very closely, as well as other cases the SOE is facing in court. This situation certainly makes it very difficult for Sánchez to complete his term. Rather, I would say that it would be irresponsible to continue beyond 2026, without direction, without budgets, without a stable majority and with an uncontrolled and judicialized agenda.
And be warned, because this government cannot survive without the support of the Basque nationalists. For those of you watching this video from outside Spain, the Basque Nationalist Party, also known as PNV, yes, it is called the PNV, I have always loved its name, is a right-wing Christian democratic party, which represents a very specific region of Spain, the Basque Country.
But even though they are right-wing, they support Pedro Sánchez’s left-wing government. Because? Well, because this party has usually always acted as a kingmaker, I mean, they’ve supported conservative governments, socialist governments, they’re there, they’re kind of like the Kingsmaker, let’s say. Well, now they have said that they will not support a motion of censure against the president, but that they will not support him in anything else either.
And something similar happens with Catalan separatists. If this is true, if this is true, it’s [ __ ]. It’s [ __ ]. If this is a lie, it’s an even bigger load of crap than we’ve seen many times before. And then there’s the Canary Coalition, which is directly calling for a vote of confidence, that is, an impeachment. Their deputy Cristina Valido speaks of a clean slate in 2027 and Junpel, which is the Catalan Independentist Party, which is also right-wing, does not even feel addressed because its ties with the Socialist Party are already broken.
But in Sumar, which is that far-left party that is a coalition partner of the Socialist Party, things are very interesting because within the minority wing of the government there are two very clear sensibilities. Sources close to him indicate that Sánchez is still assessing the situation, but there is a growing internal recognition that this matter is a major blow and that the lack of ethics and aesthetics is unforgivable for a symbol like José Luis.
Mónica García and Ernés Turtasun are very worried about what might come out when the submarine is fully explored. García is consulting with his inner circle and stalling to avoid getting involved. Urtasun is eyeing Gabriel Rufiá askance, who has become the free spirit who has best capitalized on this whole scandal.
Yolanda Díaz and Pablo Bustinuy prefer not to move, and within Izquierda Unida they are split in half over whether to break with the government now or wait. The most striking thing is what hasn’t happened, because when the Santos Cerdán affair broke a year ago, Moncloa made rounds of calls to all the partners. This time they haven’t called anyone.
The government is paralyzed, trying to figure out how to continue supporting Zapatero amidst the dozens of pieces of evidence against him revealed in the summary. Even within the PSOE, some are telling him he needs to react now. The president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, believes that the central government should submit to a vote of confidence or call elections, and has warned that his party is facing the greatest risk in the history of democracy.
And now think about what Pedro Sánchez has accumulated in this legislature. 36 defendants linked to his circle. His former second-in-command is in jail, his former organizing secretary is being prosecuted. His wife is awaiting trial for five crimes. His brother is being prosecuted, the Attorney General has been convicted, his Obian Kenobi is accused of leading a criminal organization, a minister is implicated in Huawei contracts awarded through the scheme, an advisor from Moncloa is under investigation, and the former president of
the EPI has been arrested. Now, there is an investigation with ramifications in Venezuela, China, and the United Arab Emirates that could last for years. Pay attention. The flames of corruption threaten to destroy Pedro Sánchez’s legacy and reduce to ashes the banner of cleanliness with which he arrived at La Moncloa.
And this is the man who arrived at Moncloa promising political regeneration, the one who said that the corruption of the Popular Party was unbearable and that he would bring transparency. Well, Rajoy’s PP had Bárcenas in the slush fund. Sánchez has his mentor, his crony, with a safe full of jewels, and his front man with €286,000 in a golf bag.
his wife with rigged contracts, his brother with a tailor-made job, and 36 people under investigation. 36 people under investigation distributed across ministries, provincial councils and public bodies. Meanwhile, Pedro Sánchez remains stuck to the resistance playbook. Will you excuse the joke, isn’t there some colleague, uh, who is obviously asking me to bring forward the elections, uh, because he is aware that I will have a larger, uh, parliamentary majority in the government and in Congress to be able to govern in a
much more peaceful way? And I appreciate it, but I cannot call elections for partisan interests; I have to call elections for the general interest of the citizens. What surprises me most is that nothing has yet come out directly related to the president. Anyone with even a modicum of integrity would have resigned months or years ago, but at this point, it does n’t surprise me that we have nothing that directly involves him.
I mean, they ‘re all very close cases, but nothing related to Pedro Sánchez personally. It is possibly the only thing he can cling to in order to hold onto power now. Well, that and his political superpowers. Remember, it’s Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s boyfriend. So now that we’ve reached this point, it’s your turn.
Do you think Pedro Sánchez will call early elections or will he cling to power until he is forced out? Does the PSOE have the capacity to reinvent itself with someone other than Pedro Sánchez? And to what extent will the government partners continue to support a government that is rotten from top to bottom? You can leave your answer in the comments.
And as always, don’t forget that here at Solo Fonseca we release new videos every week. So, you know what to do: subscribe to this channel and hit the bell icon so you don’t miss any of our updates. If you liked this video, give it a like and we’ll see you in the next one. Thank you for being there and see you soon.
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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Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
