Mexico is experiencing a wave of MASSIVE protests against the government. Why are they protesting? Because they don’t want their country to become a narco-state: “I’m from Monterrey and I want to tell Claudia and her lousy government that they are a narco-state and we all know it.
I speak for the young people whose faces were exposed during the morning press conference, but of course, when it comes to criminals, they cover their faces.” Azteca News November 18, 2025 But why are they protesting right NOW? Many of you who are watching already know this. In fact, thousands of people have asked me to talk about this topic. And a few weeks ago, a tragedy occurred: “And now let’s talk about the murder that shocked the country.
The murder of the mayor of Uruapan, Carlos Manso, occurred in the main square during a public ceremony and in front of dozens of people.” Image News November 8, 2025 And I already know what many of you are going to say at this moment… Well… murder in Mexico… Water is wet. And yes, you’re right. Unfortunately, news like this is the norm in this country.
Mexico has a homicide rate of 25 per 100,000 inhabitants and in 71% of cases a firearm has been used. To give you some context, the homicide rate in Latin America was 15 per 100,000 inhabitants. And in a country like Spain, it is at 0.68 per 100,000. That is to say, there are 36 times more murders in Mexico than in Spain. We are talking about one of the most violent countries in the world. But it’s not just that.
Mexican drug cartels have such power that, in some areas, citizens trust them more than the police. We can say that Mexico is a failed state. So, why was Carlos Manzo special? Well, because of things like this: “So, if there shouldn’t be hugs against criminals, what should there be? There should be the application of the law, the application of the rule of law, which popularly translates to, a beating for those who don’t respect the law and don’t respect the citizens.
” Aristegui Noticias November 3, 2025 Min 7:02 Carlos Manzo was the mayor of URUAPAN. Or, as they call it in Mexico, the Municipal President. URUAPAN is a city of 300,000 inhabitants. In other words, he was an important politician. Furthermore, he had been a member of the party that governs Mexico: MORENA. However, he left the party in 2024.
Why? Well, precisely because of differences in how to confront drug traffickers. As you know, Claudia Sheinbaum’s party defends “hugs, not bullets” against crime. But Carlos Manzo advocated a hardline approach. I can’t say, as happens in other municipalities: ” Oh, they killed a policeman! Add him to the statistics!” Oh, they killed one of our cabinet colleagues! Add that to the statistics! Ah, they killed the mayor! Add it to the statistics! The one with the hat, right? That’s how I’m known in Europe. How many mayors have been killed because they oppose
these pacts with organized crime? Interestingly, this interview was the last one he gave before he was killed. As you can see, he himself was aware that he was in the crosshairs of the drug traffickers. This is because he received threats from the cartels. “I received a call in the first few minutes of September 1st, 2024, when we were taking over the Secretariat of Public Security.
They called to threaten me, saying they were going to attack me, that they were going to come for my son, for my baby, for Plutarco.” Aristegui Noticias November 3, 2025 Min 3:51 After receiving these threats, the President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, sent her a support team. However, as you can see, it hasn’t done any good.
“That’s where he approaches, fires the weapon at least seven times according to ballistic tests. He runs and then, seconds later, he is subdued and the aggressor is also killed at the scene.” EL PAÍS November 3, 2025 Min: 1:26 And here is one thing that is important to highlight. Carlos Manzo was NOT killed by a sniper.
There was no hitman who had prepared a master plan in the style of the movie “The Jackal”. No. He was killed by a man with a gun who passed through all the security checks like he owned the place. And now think of it this way: we’re talking about the mayor of a big city. In Spain, it would be something like the mayor of Valladolid. And, furthermore, the police knew he was being threatened.
However , it only took one man with a gun to kill him. Clearly, SOMETHING has gone wrong. And we still don’t know if it was simple negligence or if there was some kind of complicity. And what was the president’s reaction? Of course, Claudia Sheinbaum has condemned the murder. It was only a matter of time! But he has also condemned this.
The political use that some want to make of this regrettable and condemnable situation. The problem is that Mexicans are tired of this situation. The murder of Carlos Manzo is proof that Mexico has a problem. And the authorities cannot or will not respond as needed.
Again, we are talking about a violent country, even by Latin American standards. Come on, there are plenty of reasons to go out and protest. It’s not the right wing, it’s people who are fed up with everything that’s happening in Mexico. If a mayor says, “We need help!” And what happens, happens; it’s not just the right wing, it’s the whole country.
So the questions I ask myself in today’s video are: Can we say that Mexico is failing in its fight against drug trafficking? What is the government doing to combat them? Can we say that Morena is a party allied with drug traffickers? Today we’re going to answer these questions, but first… SPONSOR And now let’s look at a little history, I’m Fonseca. Welcome to OnlyFons.
INTRO ONLYFONS Mexico is one of the world’s drug trafficking centers. Why? Because it has a direct border with one of the world’s main customers , the United States. Mexico already attempted to confront the cartels under the mandate of Felipe Calderón: “Murders, arbitrary detentions, human rights violations, fabrication of crimes, disappearances and more violence are the result of the so-called war on drugs that was formalized by the government of Felipe Calderón.
” LA OCTAVA December 11, 2022 min 0:15 Yes, Mexicans do not remember with much affection the government of the Conservative Felipe Calderón and his war against the drug cartels. Between 2006 and 2012, Mexico tried the iron fist approach… and failed. Calderón’s administration left behind thousands of dead and ENORMOUS public disorder.
In this respect, we can say that the right wing failed. It should also be noted that , however much force they applied, the drug traffickers were already infiltrated in the police. For example, do you remember “El Chapo” Guzmán? Well, in 2001 he escaped from the Jalisco Prison.
But then , 14 years later, in 2015, he escaped again from the Altiplano Federal Prison. And yes, this is the famous escape of El Chapo. Technically, the prison where he was was the most secure in the country. But that did not prevent him from digging a one-and-a-half-kilometer tunnel to his cell. And let’s be clear: someone escaping from prison once is bad luck. When it happens twice, it means someone has helped him.
To give you an idea, El Chapo is now serving his sentence in the United States. It is the only place where they can be sure that he will not escape. And keep in mind that we’re talking about the leader of a cartel that has killed between 5,000 and 8,000 people. In other words, he is not simply a drug trafficker.
In any case, given that the iron fist approach wasn’t working, the Mexicans tried another strategy. And that is when, in 2018, AMLO came to power with a radically different proposal. “Andrés Manuel López Obrador acknowledged the violence crisis in the state and warned that, although his opponents may not like it, the security policy will continue to be one of hugs, not bullets.
” El UNIVERSAL February 10, 2024 Min 0:06 “Hugs, not bullets” became AMLO’s most iconic phrase. Trying to respond to drug traffickers with hugs, lollipops, and rainbows. At this point, we don’t know for sure if there are people from Morena who have been bought off by drug traffickers. But of course, if they were, they would be doing many of the things they are doing now.
Does this mean that the previous presidents were good? No. It is clear that Felipe Calderón did not know how to deal with them either. But, of course, what we have now is even worse. “In the four years of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration, Mexico has lost almost half of its intelligence capacity to investigate and dismantle the country’s vast criminal networks , leaving criminals unpunished, according to The New York Times.
” Infobae, August 31, 2022. So, has this “hugs, not bullets” strategy really failed? Is Sheinbaum following the same path? Well, we’re going to see it right now. HUGS AND MORE HUGS. CLAUDIA SHEIMBAUM assumed the presidency of Mexico in October 2024. The following happened one month before she came to power.
The Izaguirre ranch, located in Teuchitlán, Jalisco, was secured by the National Guard on September 20, 2024, after an operation in which two people were rescued and 10 alleged kidnappers were arrested. We already have an in-depth video on the subject, but I’ll summarize it for you: the rescued people told the agents that the ranch was the Mexican version of Hostel.
It was a school for organized crime. And what did they teach? How to torture and kill people. It was worse than a Saw movie. However, the officers paid him no attention. It wasn’t until March 5th of this year that a group of mothers searching for their missing children found human remains.
And yes, we’re not talking about the police, but about a mothers’ association. People have to organize themselves to do the work that the police should be doing. It’s not right that they make fun of us like this. We did n’t come here as tourists; we came to see evidence, to see if there were any clothes. Right now, there’s nothing left.
They’re bringing us here like little kindergarteners, holding our hands, and the prosecutors, who are cordoned off, are practically telling us, “Walk, walk, don’t get stuck,” and we don’t see what we wanted to see. And it’s because, as soon as the groups of mothers searching for their missing loved ones started releasing videos showing human remains, the authorities arrived faster than Pedro Sánchez to lunch.
They were quickly kicked out of the place and told that they would take care of it. And this is where the controversy arises. Some vehicles that were found at the scene disappeared; Search groups accused authorities of cleaning up the site, and the government said it was not an extermination camp.
On March 5, a group searching for missing persons described Rancho Izaguirre as a drug trafficking killing field; However, the Secretary of Public Security stated that, according to the evidence found up to that point, the place was more of a training center for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Of course ! A training ground! I’m not going to show you the images because I don’t want to offend anyone .
But if you look, you’ll find pictures of mountains of clothes thrown on the floor. It’s clothing from people who were killed. However, for Sheinbaum, this is a “training center”. Not only that: the Government is boasting because, according to them, the homicide rate has fallen. We entered on October 1st, and by October 31st, 2025, we had a 28% reduction in intentional homicides.
(Parenthesis: Why do Mexican presidents speak so SLOWLY? I mean, AMLO made me sick when he spoke. But Sheinbaum takes 3 minutes to say what I would say in 10 seconds. I don’t know if it’s because Spaniards speak very fast or if Mexican presidents have valerian for breakfast.
End of parenthesis) Well, the President of Mexico boasts of a reduction in homicides. And that’s only partly true . Homicides have decreased while the number of missing persons has increased. That is, people whose bodies are never even found. So the reality is even worse than before. Why? Here we need to understand the difference between a tragedy and a problem. It’s a tragedy to be told that your child has died.
Clearly, it’s a terrible thing. But… that’s it: there’s nothing more you can do. You bury him and try to get through the grieving process as best you can. However, when you are told that your child has disappeared, what you have is a PROBLEM. Because then, there are a lot of things you can do.
Obviously, you’re going to want to LOOK FOR IT. But where do you start? What if he’s already dead? What if they’re torturing him? What can you do to find it? You will NEVER get through the grieving process here. Because there will always be something more you can do.
And the worst part of all… The oldest and strongest emotion of humankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. H.P. Lovecraft That: You’re going to feel real fear. That’s why something as macabre as finding your relative dead is considered a blessing in Mexico. Finding them is incredibly painful, but at the same time it brings a relative peace because you will no longer be uncertain about where they are, whether they are alive, whether they are dead, whether they are suffering, whether they are cold.
In other words, Sheinbaum has nothing to boast about. And that is why the families of the disappeared are willing to confront anyone in order to find their loved ones. In whatever state, what did Claudia Sheinbaum say? The same thing happened to my screenwriters when I sent them work over the weekend: (((gesture of pushing forward))) They’ll look into it. But that wasn’t the worst part.
Sheinbaum argued that the media attention on the ranch, which the searching mothers and forensic experts call an “extermination center”, is a political maneuver to tarnish the image of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. EL PAÍS March 23, 2025 And he is partly right. Because? Because unfortunately, the tragedy at the Izaguirre ranch was not a surprise.
It’s not just that the authorities had already entered before and said they hadn’t seen anything… it’s that other places where the same thing was happening had already been found and they weren’t even reported in the news. 75% of the country has missing persons and m
ore than 5,600 clandestine graves have been found throughout its territory (…) There are similar examples since 2010, when graves with hundreds of bodies were found in Durango or those of San Fernando, in Tamaulipas. EL PAÍS March 30, 2025 To which Claudia Sheinbaum responded as Morena always does. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mxk0jxAtSvo Good info, my king, but I didn’t ask. The President had other more important things to do.
For example? Continue with the fourth transformation of his predecessor. As? Reforming the judicial system. And I know what you’re probably wondering: What was the objective of this reform? To end corruption and impunity for drug traffickers? No, even better. Look, teacher, this pork rind looks like you. Because? Because it’s tasty. Oh no, because it’s prepared.
I am more prepared than a pork rind to be a minister of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation. In case anyone missed it, this isn’t a meme… IT’S A CAMPAIGN BY A SUPREME COURT CANDIDATE. Sheinbaum’s reform consists of judges being elected by vote. Regardless of their background. In other words, he has turned justice into a reality show.
Min: 0:00 It’s a perfect plan, flawless. Come on, just what the country needs. I don’t understand why they don’t do the same for doctors. Choosing a doctor. This way, voters will be able to choose successful professionals like this one. This guy deserves to be the director of a hospital! Or he could even be a judge in Mexico! Given what I’ve seen, I’m sure I’d do it better than many others.
Ultimately, obtaining a degree in this country is not very complicated. Behold. How to get a degree without writing a thesis in Mexico with this agreement. All professionals can obtain their higher education degree without writing a thesis thanks to Agreement 286 of the SEP, which implies the approval of an evaluation process of the interested person. Infobae, March 24, 2024.
In any case, this is a topic for another video. The important thing is that while the government wanted to make Mexicans believe that there were no problems, someone appeared willing to confront them. Aristegui Noticias November 3, 2025 Min: 8:04 When a government is linked to organized crime, when a government makes deals, receives funding, what they cause is insecurity, it is violence, they generate chaos that will certainly have repercussions in the future. Carlos Manzo didn’t leave Morena to find
culprits, he left Morena to find solutions. I am not seeking to confront the president, quite the opposite. He didn’t hesitate to ask for her help. And he did something uncommon in Mexico: he kept his promise. And that cost him his life. To which the president responded with her classic: (SLOWLY) … already…. It will be investigated. we are…. working… on… this… topic….
Come on, he even said that his ” hugs, not bullets” strategy was working. President Claudia Sheinbaum stated that during the first 13 months of her administration, intentional homicides decreased by 37%, dropping from a daily average of 86.9 cases in September 2024, the last month of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration, to 54.
5 cases in October 2025, meaning 32 fewer murders per day. So, is Morena’s strategy really working? Well, I hope so, I’m the first one who would wish that were the case. The problem? The number of homicides does not include the number of missing persons. But hey, if his strategy works, he’ll have fallen too.
The problem? Under the current administration, the number of missing persons has increased by 74 percent. In the first 13 months of López Obrador’s government, there were 9,114 cases of missing persons, and in the same period under Claudia Sheinbaum, there were 15,855 cases. El Financiero November 4, 2025 We are talking about 17 more missing persons per day.
And remember, a death is a tragedy, a missing person is a problem. In other words, it’s not just that the protection he gave to Carlos Manzo was insufficient. What’s more, the government is trying to force Mexicans to swallow a load of nonsense. And this was the last straw. I speak for the young people whose faces were exposed during the morning press conference, but of course, when it comes to criminals, they cover their faces.
So they put us citizens on display and they protect the drug traffickers. How is this possible? Out with Morena. Out with Morena. More than 17,000 people attended the protests. And this is only in the capital. There have been demonstrations all over the country.
And be warned, because these weren’t just any protests, these were the protests of Generation Z in Mexico. They were carrying Luffy’s flag and a straw hat, but not the rubber man’s, it was Carlos Manzo’s! Watch out! They were not only protesting his death. They are also protesting the shortage of medicines, corruption, Noroña, education cuts, and all the other problems that Morena wants to hide.
The problem? When they arrived at the government headquarters, they saw that Claudia Sheinbaum wanted to play AGE OF EMPIRES. Min: from 0:00 to 0:07 That day there were 120 injured, of which 100 were police officers. And look, I’m not going to be the one to defend violent protests.
However, the president sent Carlos Manzo 14 National Guard agents as escorts to protect him from the drug traffickers. Protection that a run-of-the-mill hitman could bypass with a simple pistol. However, when they arrived at the National Palace, the protesters saw that it had been walled off with fences more than 3 meters high. Furthermore, behind that wall were 800 security agents.
Furthermore, they were prepared to disperse the crowd with tear gas ! Good heavens! This is where security really is! Apparently, in Mexico they are more concerned about right-wing protests than about drug traffickers. Even so, that was the only day there were altercations. The rest of the marches were peaceful. And what did the president with an A say? Well, this.
November 17, 2025 Min: 1:39 Here it was shown how in reality there was an impulse of about 90 million pesos promoting this mobilization from the opposition on one side and also with the support of a businessman. SHEINBAUM said that the marches were obviously paid for. Please, what other reason would Mexicans have gone out to protest? Everything is going swimmingly in the country! There is no reason to protest.
However, the protests seem to have had relative success because they have miraculously arrested the mastermind behind Manzo’s murder. One of the alleged masterminds behind the murder of Carlos Manzo, mayor of Uruapan, has been arrested. Omar García Harfuch, Secretary of Federal Security, reported that the man in question is Jorge Armando N.
, “El Licenciado”, a member of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, who had given the order to shoot Manzo regardless of who he was with. With this, the government has managed to calm the waters. Even so, the biggest tragedy of this whole story is that no matter how bad things get, there is no alternative to Morena.
In the last elections, Sheinbaum won with almost 60% of the votes. Her rival, Mrs. Gálvez, only obtained 30%. And be aware, because this was the candidate of the coalition of the PAN, the PRI and the PRD together. These were the biggest parties before the arrival of Morena. Moreover, the PRI governed Mexico for 70 consecutive years. That is to say, in the 2024 presidential elections, Sheinbaum swept the other candidate who brought together ALL the other political parties. And you might ask, ” Why?” Do Mexicans really love Sheinbaum that much? She is certainly
a very popular woman. That is undeniable. But now, look at the campaign run by his… electoral OPPONENT. Yes, literally, Senator Gálvez dressed up as a Mexican wrestler and went into a ring to throw punches… this was her way of getting votes. For some reason, his campaign advisors thought, “Yes, yes! With this we’re going to sweep the board!” But this is just ONE more of the many gems that this woman left for Mexican political history.
Another of her great publicity stunts was this… In Mexico, a senator staged a protest that did not go unnoticed in the Senate plenary: Senator Gálvez, of the National Action Party , dressed up as a dinosaur and carried a sign that read “Jurassic”. Um… yes, they presented a candidate who dressed as a DINOSAUR to enter Congress. This was his way of campaigning.
So, gentlemen of the Mexican opposition, the next time you’re looking for a candidate to defeat Morena, I recommend this one… Yes, it’s true he’s not Mexican: he’s Spanish. But believe me, I guarantee that he is MUCH MORE QUALIFIED for the position. And for those who didn’t get the reference… read the comments on this video.
So, as long as Mexico doesn’t have better candidates, Sheinbaum will be around for a while. So, having reached this point, now it’s your turn. Do you think Morena will change its ” hugs, not bullets” strategy? Will Mexico be able to solve its problem with organized crime? Have these protests served any purpose? You can leave your answer in the comments.
As always, don’t forget that here at Solo Fonseca, we release new videos
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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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