May 19th, 1945, 11 days after Victory in Europe Day, a convoy of six prototype tanks rolled off transport ships at Antwerp Harbor. British engineers had rushed these machines across the channel for what was supposed to be the ultimate test against German armor. They were too late. The war was over.
The prototypes had missed their moment. Every military analyst who saw the Centurion in those first weeks assumed it would be remembered as a footnote, an expensive failure of timing that would gather dust in storage depots. They were catastrophically wrong. That tank, the one that arrived too late to fire a single shot in World War II, would become one of the most influential armored vehicle designs of the 20th century.
Its main gun would become the dominant NATO standard for three decades. Its design philosophy would define what a tank should be for 50 years. Nations that had never bought British equipment before would queue up to purchase it. And variants of that supposedly obsolete prototype would still be an active military service 80 years later.
This is the story of how arriving late turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to British tank design. The Centurion emerged from humiliation. In North Africa and Normandy, British tank crews had died in machines that could neither penetrate German armor nor survive German guns. The Croml and Churchill were adequate against older panzas.
But when Tiger and Panther tanks appeared, British losses became punishing, often one-sided in first contact before Firefly 17 pounders could respond. Something had to change. In September 1943, the War Office issued specifications for a revolutionary new project designated A41. The requirement seemed contradictory.
The tank must withstand direct hits from the feared German 88mm gun while maintaining the mobility of a cruiser tank. Previous British doctrine had separated these roles with slow infantry tanks carrying heavy armor and fast cruiser tanks sacrificing protection for speed. The A41 would be one of the first tanks designed from the start to replace both cruiser and infantry roles.
What we now call the main battle tank concept. Sir Claude Gibb led the department of tank design at Wulitch and his team made a crucial early decision. They would not compromise on protection to meet an arbitrary weight limit. The original specification called for 40 tons. Gibbs engineers requested 45. The War Office having witnessed too many underarm tanks burning in France agreed.
That decision to prioritize crew survival over logistics convenience would prove visionary. AEC Limited completed the design mockup by May 1944. Automotive trials began in September of that year. The first prototype emerged from Wulitch Arsenal in April 1945. Six prototypes shipped to Europe aboard transport vessels embarking from Southampton on May 15th.
They arrived too late to fight, but Operation Sentry, the European Trials Program, would cover 2,300 m of varied terrain. According to the DRA Advisory Committee report, the trials were a resounding success with only minor mechanical problems encountered. The War Office ordered 800 tanks for production starting in November 1945.
The specifications that emerged from those trials set standards other nations would chase for decades. Early Centurions carried heavy cast turret armor in the 150 mm class and increasingly improved hull protection across successive marks. The Rolls-Royce Meteor engine powered the Centurion, a dun derivative of the legendary Merlin that had won the Battle of Britain.
This 27 L 12 produced 650 horsepower giving a top road speed of 35 kmh. Critics noted this was slower than Soviet tanks which could reach 55 kmh. British designers had made a deliberate choice. They sacrificed speed for protection and reliability. Gambling that surviving enemy fire mattered more than racing across open ground.
The armament told the story of continuous improvement built into the original design. Early Marks mounted the 17 pounder, an excellent anti-tank gun that had destroyed Tigers in Normandy. Later variants introduced the 20 pounder, an 84mm weapon with superior performance. But the real revolution came at the end of the 1950s with the L7 105mm rifled gun.
The shock came in 1956 when a Soviet T-54A tank was examined in Budapest during the Hungarian Revolution and British planners realized the next war had changed the maths. The existing 20 pounder could not reliably penetrate T-54 frontal armor at combat ranges. The armament research and development establishment at Fort Hstead accelerated work on a larger gun.
The genius of the L7 lay in a single design constraint. Engineers at Fort Hstead ensured it would fit into existing 20 pounder turret mountings with minimal modification. Recoil stayed under 290 mm to work within Centurion’s current systems. This meant any Centurion already in service could be upgraded to the new gun without designing new turrets or rebuilding the hull.
The result was a fleetwide modernization capability that no other nation could match. The L7 gave NATO a decisive jump in real world kill probability against contemporary Soviet armor. Soviet intelligence reports declassified after the Cold War described it as a weapon of extraordinary quality capable of destroying Russian tanks with ease.
The gun’s effectiveness would be proven repeatedly across multiple continents. Now, before we see how this performed in combat, if you are finding this deep dive into British engineering useful, hit subscribe. It takes a second, costs nothing, and helps the channel continue producing this kind of detailed technical content.
The Centurion’s first combat test came in Korea, where conventional military wisdom said tanks could not operate. The terrain was mountainous, the valleys narrow, the roads primitive. In winter, temperatures dropped to -40° C. In summer, rice patties turned to impossible mud. Every manual said this was infantry country. 64 Centurion Mark IIIs of the eighth king’s royal Irish Hous landed at Busan on November 14th, 1950.
Within months, they had rewritten the manual. The Battle of the Imjin River in April 1951 became the defining British engagement of the war. C Squadron provided covering fire for the withdrawal of the 29th Independent Infantry Brigade against approximately 30,000 Chinese troops of the People’s Volunteer Army, 63rd Army. Captain Peter Mrod developed what he called the firm bases tactic, positioning centurions to deliver suppressive fire while infantry withdrew through their positions.
According to regimental war diaries, Major Henry Huth and Lieutenant Lindseay fought what historians describe as a brilliant and courageous rear guard action lasting nearly an hour. Contemporary accounts record centurions advancing into Chinese positions with infantry unable to stop the armored advance. The regimental history states bluntly that without the centurions, it is unlikely the 29th Brigade units or the attached Belgian battalion could have been saved at all.
American General John O. Daniel, commanding first corps, observed the British tanks in action. His assessment reached Washington. In their centurions, the eighth Housed a new type of tank warfare. They taught us that anywhere a tank can go is tank country, even the tops of mountains. And then Korea proved a tank could climb mountains.
But 1965 would prove something even stranger. The Indopakistani war of 1965 provided the next validation. At the battle of Asalutar in September, Indian forces including 42 Centurion Mark 7s of Third Cavalry faced approximately 168 Pakistani M47 and M48 patterns. The American designed patterns were newer, faster, and equipped with superior fire control systems.
On paper, they should have won. Brigadier Thomas Kogarage ordered the sugarcane fields flooded overnight by breaching the Madapur Canal. Pakistani patterns advanced into the trap the next morning, becoming stuck in mud while surrounded by Indian fire from three sides. According to Indian army records, the engagement destroyed or captured over 97 tanks, including more than 40 patterns captured intact. Indian losses totaled 10 tanks.
Military historian Steven Zaloga documented that Pakistan admitted losing 165 tanks during the entire 1965 war with more than half knocked out during what Pakistani sources themselves called the debacle of Asalutar. The battlefield was renamed Patton nagger meaning Patn city with captured American tanks displayed as war trophies.
Australian centurions arrived in Vietnam in February 1968 deployed to Fuokto province. Critics predicted the 53-tonon tanks would become static pill boxes in jungle terrain. The reality shocked everyone. At the Battle of Coral Balmoral in May 1968, Centurions defended Australian fire support bases against the 141st and 165th North Vietnamese Army regiments.
after action reports recorded that multiple RPG2 grenade hits registered on the Centurions but could not penetrate the armor. Final casualty figures showed 267 enemy killed. Infantry commanders who had doubted tank usefulness reported they did not like working without them afterward. The Battle of Binbar in June 1969 saw fierce house-to-house fighting.
Within 1 hour, three of four tanks were disabled by damage and crew casualties, yet all continued fighting. Final casualties showed one Australian killed and 10 wounded versus 99 enemy dead. The afteraction assessment described centurions as a battlewinning factor. Of 58 Centurions that served in Vietnam, 42 suffered battle damage, but only six were total losses.
Just two crewmen were killed in action throughout the deployment. The most extreme test came in October 1973 during the Yumkipper war on the Golden Heights. Israel had acquired Centurions from December 1958, eventually operating over 1100 tanks designated, meaning whip in Hebrew. Under General Israel Tal’s reforms, the IDF upgraded them with the L7 gun and Continental diesel engines, replacing the original Meteor.
Across the entire Golan offensive, Syria attacked with approximately 1,400 tanks, 400 T-62s, and 1,000 T-54 and T-55 variants, supported by over 1,000 artillery pieces. Defending the Goolan were 177 Israeli tanks total. In the Valley of Tears sector, specifically, fewer than 100 Centurions of the Seventh Armored Brigade faced approximately 500 Syrian tanks in that killing ground alone.
The fighting was desperate. Syrian tanks had infrared night scopes that Israeli tanks lacked. Night engagements occurred at 27 to 55 m, point blank range where armor thickness meant everything. Lieutenant Colonel Avagdor Kahalani commanded the 77th Battalion O77 and destroyed dozens of Syrian tanks during the battle, earning Israel’s Medal of Valor.
Lieutenant Ziv Greenold fought continuously from the first Syrian attack, going through multiple tanks as each was destroyed beneath him. He later claimed around 20 kills, though other accounts run higher, and the exact number remains debated. What is not disputed is that his delaying action at Nak headquarters helped prevent a Syrian breakthrough that could have changed the war’s outcome.
By October 9th, the seventh brigade had been in continuous combat for over 50 hours. They were reduced from over 100 tanks to just a handful of operational centurions. Yet, they held. The Syrians left over 200 wrecked tanks on the battlefield of the Valley of Tears. The technical factors explaining Israeli success were decisive.
The L7’s superior accuracy at range allowed engagements before Syrian guns could respond effectively. The Centurion’s minus 10° of gun depression versus the T-55’s -4° enabled hull down fighting from ridge positions where only the turret was exposed. Israeli crews achieved faster rates of fire than their opponents.
When firepower, protection, and crew training combined, the result was devastating. The Centurion’s global influence operated through direct sales, the L7 guns adoption, and the universal tank concept itself. Over 20 nations purchased Centurions directly. Sweden bought 350, designating them as Strive 101 through 104.
Switzerland acquired over 300. The Netherlands operated several hundred. Denmark fielded 216. Australia deployed 143. The L7 family became the dominant NATO 105mm standard, spreading even further than the tank itself. The United States licensed it as the M68, mounting it on M485 M60 and early M1 Abrams tanks. Germany equipped all Leopard 1 tanks with the remetal L73 variant. Japan armed the Type 74.
Switzerland installed it in the Panza 61 and 68. Israel mounted it on everything from captured Soviet tanks to the Macava Mark 1 and 2. South Africa demonstrated the ultimate expression of upgrade potential. Having acquired over 200 Centurions in 1952 and 53, South African engineers developed increasingly radical modifications through the 1970s to 2000s.
By the time the elephant mark I emerged, Major General Roland dece noted that almost nothing, roughly 30% of the old Centurions remained except the characteristic hulls, turret shells, and track skirts. These derivatives incorporated 140 horsepower Continental diesel engines, digital fire control systems, and optional 120 mm smooth boore guns.
South Africa still operates olant tanks today, making the Centurion derivative the last of its lineage in active military service. One Centurion story sounds too remarkable to be true, yet stands up to verification. On October 15th, 1953 at Emu Field in South Australia, Centurion number 169041 was positioned several hundred meters from ground zero of a 9.
1 kiloton nuclear test called Operation Totem. The tank was left running with a full ammunition load. The blast pushed it back approximately 5 ft and skewed it slightly left. Sides skirt armor plates blew off and landed up to 200 yd away. Antennas were stripped and optics sand blasted. When crews reached the tank 3 days later, they discovered the engine had only stopped because it ran out of fuel.
They drove it back to Woomer, still slightly radioactive. After decontamination and repair, that tank served 23 more years, including combat deployment in Vietnam, where it was hit by an RPG and remained battleworthy. The atomic tank is now preserved by the Australian Army. The only tank known to survive a nuclear test and subsequently serve in combat.
The Centurion had genuine limitations that frustrated crews. Early marks had operational ranges of just 100 km before requiring refueling, though later variants with additional fuel capacity extended this significantly. The gasoline meteor engine posed fire risks that diesel engines avoided. By the 1970s, vulnerability to modern anti-tank weapons became critical.
At the Yam Kapore Wars opening, Centurions proved vulnerable to RPG7s and SAGA anti-tank guided missiles with significant losses in the first two days. Yet these limitations do not diminish the achievement. The Centurion helped define what a tank should be. Before it, armies built separate infantry and cruiser tanks.
After it, every major military adopted the universal tank concept that Centurion exemplified. The L7 family became NATO’s standard tank cannon, enabling interoperability that gave Western forces decisive logistics advantages. The upgrade philosophy, where a 1945 hull could accept 1980s weapons and sensors, influenced all subsequent armored vehicle development.
Stuart Wheeler of the UK Tank Museum summarized the design’s legacy. It was its ability to be updated with changing technology which really kept the Centurion as a gun tank in service for so long. Israeli tank commander Hatsor offered the crew perspective. The Centurion was a great tank to fight in. We did not feel that we were underperforming compared to the Russian tanks.
Total production reached 4,423 tanks built between 1945 and 1962 at Royal Ordinance Factory Leads Vicas at Elwick and Leeland Motors. For that investment, Britain created a weapon system that would see active service from December 1946 with fifth Royal Tank Regiment through to operations decades later. One of the longest operational lifespans of any tank design in history.
The tank that was too late for World War II fought in Korea, Vietnam, three Arab-Israeli wars, two Indo-Pakistani wars, and the South African border war. Its gun became the Western Standard. Its concept helped end the infantry and cruiser division forever. Its upgrade philosophy created a template that influenced subsequent main battle tank development worldwide.
Being late, it turns out, was the best thing that ever happened to British tank design. Freed from the urgent pressure to field anything that worked, British engineers could incorporate every lesson from 6 years of armored warfare into a deliberate upgradeable masterpiece. They built a tank that would outlast not just that war’s veterans, but their children and grandchildren as well.
The Centurion did not miss its moment. It defined half a century of moments to
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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