Who is Buried in the Royal Vault? –  Hw

 

foreign who is buried in the Royal vaults at St George’s Chapel Windsor Castle [Music] on September 19 2022 millions of people worldwide watched as the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II was lowered into the Royal vault at St George’s Chapel Windsor Castle the Monarch who had reigned for 70 years thus became part of history and she is now in astonishing historic company she joined 11 monarchs eight consorts and over 30 other members of the royal family dating back as far as the 1400s who are also interred below St George’s

Chapel in the Royal Vault and in other Crypts around the ancient building let’s explore the numerous Burial Vaults of Windsor dig up the past and find out who else is spending eternity with the queen Windsor Castle is the longest occupied Palace in Europe and has been home to the English royal family for nearly a thousand years it was one of several defensive wooden castles erected by William the Conqueror around London in the decade after his 1066 Invasion subsequent Generations replaced wood with stone and built Windsor into a

luxurious Royal residence which remained Queen Elizabeth’s favorite home even in the 20th century King Edward III built the chapel in the mid-1300s and dedicated it to Saint George the patron saint of England he established the Cheval recorder of the Garter and new knighthoods are still bestowed in Saint George’s Chapel to this day the chapel has played host to dozens of royal family baptisms and weddings including the recent nuptials of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in the Middle Ages the coffins of the wealthy were nearly always placed in

vaults below Church floors this was Far preferable to the cold dirt and damp of being buried in a churchyard like a commoner English kings were often buried in Westminster Abbey in London but during the wars of the Roses in the 1400s Windsor received its first Royal remains the earliest bodies were laid to rest in a series of small vaults under the floor of the choir the section of the church containing the altar where members of the royal family clergy and the choir of singers sit during Services the oldest

body in the chapel belongs to King Henry VI he suffered mental illness and his inability to rule opened the door for his cousin Edward IV to capture him and Seize the Throne Henry was locked up in the Tower of London and it wasn’t long before the new king carried out the corpse of the old the official story was that Henry died of melancholy but there were rampant rumors that he had been slain while kneeling to pray he was originally buried at churchy Abbey but soon Miracles began being attributed to his remains and the royal family exhumed

and reinterred him at St George’s Chapel Windsor Henry’s corpse was exhumed in 1910 when the South choir Isle was renovated for the tomb of Edward VII blood was discovered in his hair confirming that he had indeed died of violent death though his body is the oldest in the chapel it was not the first to be buried there that honor goes to King Edward IV’s third son George Duke of Bedford who died of Bubonic plague in 1479 at the age of two the second burial was the King’s Daughter Mary who would have wed Frederick the

first and become queen of Denmark had she not died of illness at 14. both were placed under the north choir aisle a walkway just behind the wooden seating in 1483 King Edward IV died of an unknown illness at the age of 40. Windsor had been his favorite castle and he spent lavishly on Renovations so it was fitting that he was laid to rest there with his two children the king’s sudden death left his 12-year-old son now King Edward vulnerable on the throne his mother Queen Elizabeth Woodville tried to protect him but his father’s

loyal Knight Sir William Hastings had never liked her and urged the king’s uncle Richard to hasten to London and claim the Regency Hastings trust was Gravely misplaced when Richard arrived he kidnapped the king and his younger brother locked them up in the Tower of London and had himself proclaimed King Richard III he ordered Sir William Hastings be headed on false charges of treason and he was buried near his old friend Edward IV the princes and the tower were never seen again they were most likely murdered on Richard’s orders the

whereabouts of their remains have long been a mystery in 1674 workmen in the Tower of London discovered the skeletons of two children buried under a stairwell the bones were placed in an urn in Westminster Abbey and inscribed as Edward V and Richard of York however in 1789 workmen carrying out repairs at St George’s Chapel accidentally broke into the Vault of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville there they discovered the coffins of two unidentified children could these be the remains of the Lost princes buried with their parents for

all of these years the royal family has yet to approve DNA investigation of any of the bones in question so the mystery remains King Edward IV’s older sister Anne and her husband Thomas were buried under the Rutland Chantry in 1491. their daughter Anne and son-in-law George were later interred there in a grand Alabaster tomb the next Crypt was added for Henry VIII’s wife Jane Seymour the only one of his six spouses who managed to give him a son she died of childbed fever days after the delivery and was buried in

1537. Henry intended this to be a temporary resting place he planned to have her moved to lie beside him in his own Grand tomb Henry had an artist create elaborate plans which Incorporated a life-sized marble sculpture of himself on Horseback surrounded by gilded angels and Saints but Henry was superstitious about his own immortality and was afraid to have Craftsmen Begin work on his tomb while he was alive when death finally caught up with him in 1547 age 55 he was temporarily placed in the vault next to Jane he left instructions in his will

that his son Edward VI should would pay for the grand Monument the fitting his greatness but Edward was a fervent Protestant and frowned on his father’s ostentatious popish tomb design he put off construction when he died at 15 he passed the project off to his sisters Mary the first and Elizabeth the first but they too neglected to spend gobs of money on Henry’s massive tomb perhaps because of how horrendously he had treated their mothers Mary and Elizabeth were buried in an extravagant Tomb at Westminster Abbey

but their father remained forgotten under the floor of the choir at St George’s Chapel in the mid 1600s King Charles the first was embroiled in civil war with Parliament the king lost the war and his head in 1649 his enemies conducted his body to Saint George’s Chapel in a simple coffin draped in black he was placed in an available space in the Vault of Henry VII without Fanfare one other small coffin was placed in the vault in 1698 before it was sealed off that of a stillborn son of Queen Anne she had 17 pregnancies and lost all of

her children to miscarriage stillbirth or child mortality most of her babies were buried in the steward vault in Westminster Abbey where she herself would eventually be laid to rest but this tiny coffin of her 16th Lost Child was placed at St George’s in 1805 a vault was built in the choir near The Sovereign stall for the remains of King George III’s younger brother Prince William Duke of Gloucester the Gloucester Vault also holds the remains of his wife princess Maria their daughter Princess Sofia and their son

Prince William Duke of Gloucester and his wife Princess Mary who was also the 11th and last surviving child of King George III the steward and early Georgian monarchs were buried in small cramped vaults under Westminster Abbey but by 1810 they were full King George III and his wife Queen Charlotte needed a new resting place for themselves and for their large family so they ordered the construction of the royal Vault Workman excavated 20 feet below the Altar and a structure behind the chapel then known as the tomb

chamber in this space was built a cavernous Crypt 70 feet long and 28 feet wide with arched Gothic ceilings on either side are rows of stone shelves with space for 64 Coffins on the far end a raised plinth for five coffins and in the center low plinths for 12 more coffins there was plenty of space for George Charlotte and generations of Royals to come it has never been filled however there are currently 23 Royals resting there they are princess Amelia George III’s youngest daughter who died of tuberculosis in 1810 at the age of

27. Princess Augusta George III’s sister she was married to the Duke of Brunswick and lived in Prussia her daughter Caroline married her nephew the Future King George IV when her husband was killed in the Napoleonic Wars Augusta fled back to her Homeland she died there in 1813 age 75. princess Charlotte daughter of the future George IV she was the only child the Prince of Wales had from his disastrous marriage Charlotte was expected to someday be Queen and was beloved by the people but at the age of 21 she died in childbirth the nation

mourned deeply for the Lost Princess she and her stillborn son were laid to rest together in 1817 a monument to princess Charlotte was placed in the earthwick Chantry Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg strelitz wife of George III after giving birth to 15 children and enduring her husband’s years of mental illness the queen died in 1818 age 74.

a stillborn daughter of George III’s fifth son Prince Ernst Augustus was laid to rest in 1818 Prince Edward Duke of Kent was George III’s fourth son and the father of Queen Victoria when she was just eight months old Edward died of pneumonia at 52. King George III was Monarch during the American and French revolutions after Decades of debilitating mental illness he died in 1820 age 81 at the time his 59-year Reign held the record for the longest in British history when the King was laid to rest in the vault the bodies of two of his sons who had died decades

earlier of smallpox were removed from Westminster Abbey and placed with him Prince Alfred Age Two and Prince Octavius age four princess Elizabeth of Clarence was the daughter of the Future King William IV and queen Adelaide she was born six weeks prematurely and died at just two months old she was the third of four children the couple lost had Elizabeth lived she would have been Monarch instead of Queen Victoria Prince Frederick Duke of York was King George III’s second son he was a decorated veteran of the Napoleonic Wars and died

at 63 during the reign of his older brother George IV King George IV served as Prince Regent during his father’s bouts of madness he was unpopular owing to his extravagant spending on his own lavish lifestyle and his cruel treatment of his wife Carolina Brunswick in 1813 workers tasked with expanding the Royal vaults anti-chamber accidentally broke into the neighboring Vault containing the lead coffins of Henry VII Jane Seymour and Charles the first the prince Regent oversaw the opening of the coffins Charles the first body was found

to be partially mummified Henry and Jane were both skeletal though Henry’s beard was visible this incident was one of many used to mock the unpopular Prince Regent this cartoon shows him admiring the corpse of Henry VIII for being able to get rid of so many wives while George couldn’t get rid of one when he finally inherited the throne and his wife Caroline showed up to be crowned he had the doors of Westminster Abbey slammed in her face she died of cancer a few weeks later and he had her body shipped back to Germany so that

they wouldn’t have to spend eternity together George IV continued to overindulge in food and drink he died in 1830 of gastrointestinal bleeding at the age of 67. at his funeral the crowd outside the chapel was so jolly and Rowdy that the service had to be rushed through King William IV inherited the throne from his brother he ordered a marble slab to be placed over the tombs of Henry VIII Queen Jane and Charles the first William IV reigned for seven years before dying of heart disease at 71 and passing the throne to his niece Queen

Victoria princess Augusta Sophia was George III third’s second daughter she was a beauty and received several marriage proposals but the king and queen avoided allowing their daughters to leave the nest Augusta Sophia may have been secretly married to an Irish army officer she died in 1840 age 71. Queen Adelaide was the wife of William IV the German princess was chosen as a bride when she was 26 and he 53.

he left his mistress and 10 illegitimate children for her Adelaide lost four children to miscarriage in stillbirth she was close to her niece Louise of sax vimar Louise suffered paralysis from a young age and her aunt invited her to England in the hopes that the Sea Air at Brighton might revive her health but she contracted chicken pox and died at just 16.

the bereaved Queen had her laid to rest in a special vault in the north choir aisle Queen Adelaide lived well into the reign of another niece Queen Victoria and was friendly with her she died in 1849 age 57. Prince Frederick of schleswig Holstein was the son of Queen Victoria’s third daughter princess Helena he died just eight days after his birth in 1876.

King George V of Hanover was the son of George III’s fifth son Aaron St Augustus since George the first the kings of Britain were also Kings of Hanover but as a woman Queen Victoria was barred from inheriting the Hanoverian Throne it went instead to her uncle Ernst Augustus and then to his son George V in 1866 Prussia annexed Hanover and George was deposed he died in Paris at 59 and his body was taken back to his father’s Homeland for burial his daughter princess Frederica settled down in England as a philanthropic Aristocrat

she died in 1926 age 78 and was also buried in the Royal vault Princess Mary Adelaide was the daughter of George III’s Seventh Son Prince Adolphus her own daughter Mary wed the Future King George V Mary Adelaide died in 1897 age 63 after an emergency operation her husband Prince Francis the Duke of TAC in Germany was buried next to her in 1900.

her parents Prince Adolphus Duke of Cambridge and Princess Augusta were originally buried elsewhere however in 1930 during the tenure of their granddaughter Queen Mary both of their coffins were moved to the more prestigious Royal vault at St George’s Chapel the Royal vault is strictly off limits to the public and is only glimpsed in a handful of images in this engraving from 1821 we can see on the far plinth the coffins of George III Queen Charlotte and their three youngest children during this period many Royal coffins were covered in Crimson velvet and silver

fittings in this illustration from the 1850s we see in the center plinth the coffins of George IV William IV and queen Adelaide they were topped with funerary crowns of gilded copper the Vault can be accessed in two ways via a spiral staircase for those entering on foot or by a shaft through which coffins travel down the black and white tiles in front of the altar can be removed to allow access to a mechanical catafalk or coffin elevator we saw the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II being lowered on this during her funeral the lift takes the

coffin 20 feet down to a small anti-chamber which is connected via a passage to the Royal Vault we can see it in this 1897 illustration of Princess Mary Adelaide’s coffin lying in the vault in this 1910 photograph taken after the funeral of Edward VII we see that the far Center plinth has been replaced with an altar this was done by Queen Victoria in the 1860s she had the coffins of her grandparents aunts and uncles moved into the wall niches iron grates were installed over the niches with the engraved names of their

occupants when Victoria lost her beloved husband Prince Albert in 1861 at the age of 42. she was devastated she became obsessed with mourning and had the structure behind George’s Chapel converted into the Albert Memorial Chapel her consort rested there until the Frogmore Royal Mausoleum was completed Victoria herself would be laid to rest there next to Albert in 1901.

three other family members remain in the Albert Memorial Chapel baroness Victoria the only child of Princess Frederica of Hanover she died at 20 days old in 1881. Prince Leopold Duke of Albany was Queen Victoria’s youngest son he suffered from hemophilia and died in 1884 at the age of 30 after falling down a flight of stairs Prince Albert Victor Duke of Clarence was the future Edward VII’s eldest son and was expected to someday be king he died of influenza in 1892 age 28 allowing for the eventual succession

of his younger brother George V a handful of other people who enjoyed the special favor of the royal family have been laid to rest in Saint George’s Chapel including Henry VII’s brother-in-law Sir Charles Brandon Lieutenant General Sir John E Lee who distinguished himself in the Battle of Waterloo and Prince al-mayu the son of Emperor tuodros II of Ethiopia when he was seven his father was defeated by the British and he died by Suicide his mother soon died as well the orphaned Prince was kidnapped by a British

officer and taken back to England to be educated almeihu was unhappy so far from his family he died of a lung infection at just 18. Queen Victoria arranged his burial and a plaque which reads I was a stranger and he took me in but al-meihu’s body was actually buried and evolved just outside the chapel though no remains have been permanently consigned to the Royal Vault since 1930.

a number of late Royals have taken the dramatic trip down the catafalk to lie in the Royal Vault temporarily until their own tombs could be built in this photograph from 1910 we see the coffin of king Edward VII resting in the center plinth he was eventually moved to a grand tomb in the South choir aisle his consort Queen Alexandra was buried with him when she died in 1925 age 80.

their son George V shares a similar tomb with his wife Queen Mary in the north Nave Isle George died in 1936 age 70 and remained in the Royal Vault until the completion of his tomb in 1939. Queen Mary lived to 85 and was laid next to him in 1953. their son King George VI who brought Britain through World War II died in 1952 after a battle with lung cancer he was initially interred in the Royal Vault but his daughter Queen Elizabeth II commissioned a new Chantry Chapel to be added to the side of the chapel the addition was designed to fit the

medieval Gothic style of the rest of the structure George’s Widow the Queen mom didn’t care for the elaborate marble Effigies of her in-laws and requested a simple Belgian Marble Slab on the floor the queen personally paid at the construction bill of 25 000 pounds about 437 thousand pounds in today’s money underneath the George VI Memorial Chapel is a vault with room for three monarchs and their consorts George VI was re-buried there in 1969.

in 2002 his daughter Princess Margaret died at 71 after a stroke she had wanted to be buried with her beloved father but there wasn’t room for an extra coffin in the vault so Margaret came up with a compromise she is the only senior member of the royal family to have been cremated the urn containing her ashes was able to be placed in the George VI Memorial Vault her mother Queen Elizabeth the queen mother died just seven weeks after her at the age of 101.

her coffin was placed in the vault at the same time Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh died in 2021 age 99. he was initially interred in the Royal Vault there he waited just over a year until the death of his wife Queen Elizabeth II in 2022 the world saw her body being lowered down the catafalk into the Royal Vault but once the cameras were turned off and the crowds laughed the royal family returned for a private service during which her body and that of her husband were brought back up and moved to the burial Vault

underneath the King George VI Memorial Chapel the black marble slab has since been embellished with the star of the chivalric order of the Garter and inscribed Elizabeth II 1926-2022 fill up 1921-2021 no images of the inside of the king George VI burial vault have ever been made public however we know from the original designs that there is room for two more coffins it remains to be seen if King Charles III will wish to spend eternity with his parents in their vault at St George’s Chapel Windsor want even more tea on History check out

the history Tea Time Podcast available on Spotify Apple podcasts and Google podcasts a special thank you goes to my patrons Laura Jane and Roderick Walker if you enjoyed this video please like subscribe comment your thoughts and check out my other Royal history videos if you really want to help please consider supporting me on patreon a link is in the description thank you for watching

QQ4 Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The friendship began on a live television program in November of 1986 in the 11 seconds after Bob Dylan called Keith Richards music derivative on camera. Keith Richard’s response to that assessment, one sentence said without anger, without performance, with the specific directness of a man who has nothing to prove and knows it made Bob Dylan laugh.

Then made Bob Dylan go quiet. then made Bob Dylan say two words that people who know Bob Dylan say he almost never said to anyone. This is the story of those 11 seconds and the 40 years that followed them. The program was a live music interview special broadcast on an American network on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The format was simple.

Two musicians, a host, an hour of conversation about music and the state of it. The producers had assembled the pairing of Bob Dylan and Keith Richards with the specific calculation of television producers who understand that two people with equally strong and potentially incompatible views about what music is and what it should do will produce better television than two people who agree about everything.

The calculation was correct, though not in the way the producers had anticipated. Bob Dylan was 45 years old in November of 1986. Bob Dylan had released Empire Burlesque the previous year and had been on the road for most of the intervening period as part of the True Confessions tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Bob Dylan was in November of 1986 in one of the most prolific and restless phases of a career that had consisted almost entirely of prolific and restless phases. A career that had moved through folk, rock, country, gospel, and back again, that had been declared finished at least six times by the music press, and at each time continued with the serene indifference of a river to the opinions of people standing on its banks.

Bob Dylan had been redefining what music could be. Since 1962, Bob Dylan had invented and reinvented himself so many times that reinvention had become his defining characteristic, not in the superficial sense of a performer changing costumes, but in the deeper sense of a musician who had never allowed his work to settle into a form that could be anticipated or categorized from the outside.

Bob Dylan understood influence and originality and the relationship between them better than almost anyone alive in 1986. Bob Dylan had spent 24 years thinking carefully and specifically about where music came from and where music was going and what it meant that those two things were always in constant conversation with each other.

Keith Richards was 42 years old in November of 1986. Keith Richards had been playing guitar professionally since 1962. Keith Richards had built a career on a foundation of American blues and rhythm and blues. A foundation that Keith Richards had studied with the systematic devotion of someone who understood that the tradition he was building on was not incidental to the music he was making, but essential to it.

that you could not understand what Keith Richards did without understanding where Keith Richards had come from and what Keith Richards had been listening to since he was a teenager in Dartford with American Import Records and a secondhand guitar and no teacher except the recordings themselves. Keith Richards had never pretended otherwise. Keith Richards had in fact spent considerable energy across his career making the lineage explicit, naming the artists, citing the recordings, insisting on the acknowledgement of influence that the mainstream music

industry had a long history of suppressing or ignoring or crediting to the wrong people. If anything, Keith Richards was more transparent about his sources than most musicians of his generation. Keith Richards had always said openly that the Rolling Stones came directly from the blues, that Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson and the specific tradition of the Mississippi Delta were not background influences, but foundational ones.

The music Keith Richards made was in direct and sustained conversation with that tradition, something Keith Richards considered not a limitation, but a responsibility and a form of respect. The interview had been running for 8 minutes when the host asked Bob Dylan about the current state of rock and roll.

Bob Dylan answered with the density and the indirection that characterized Bob Dylan’s responses to direct questions, turning the question over, approaching it from an unexpected angle, finding his way to what he actually thought through a series of observations that moved like a river rather than a road. Bob Dylan was not a straightforward interview subject.

Bob Dylan had been asked about rock and roll in hundreds of interviews across 24 years and had developed the habit of treating the question as an invitation to think out loud rather than a request for a prepared position. The producer Gerald Sherman said afterward that in the first 8 minutes of the interview, he had been slightly anxious, not because anything was going wrong, but because nothing was going anywhere in particular yet.

The interview had the feeling of two conversations happening simultaneously. Bob Dylan’s internal one and the external one visible to the cameras. And Gerald Sherman was not certain in those first eight minutes that the two conversations would converge into something. Bob Dylan talked about influence. Bob Dylan talked about originality.

Bob Dylan talked about the difference between music that absorbed a tradition and transformed it and music that absorbed a tradition and reproduced it. And then Bob Dylan made his assessment. And then Bob Dylan said with the precision of a man making a musical assessment rather than a personal judgment that the Rolling Stones work, and Bob Dylan was specific, naming Keith Richards as the guitarist whose approach he was discussing was derivative in a way that Bob Dylan found limiting.

Bob Dylan said it without hostility. Bob Dylan said it as a technical observation about the relationship between source material and the work that came from it. Bob Dylan said that Keith Richards played the blues the way the blues had already been played, rather than using the blues as a starting point for something that had not yet been played.

Keith Richards had been listening to this with the specific attention Keith Richards gave to things being said about music by people who knew music. Keith Richards did not interrupt. Keith Richards did not shift in his chair or display any of the visible signals of a person preparing a defensive response. Keith Richards listened to Bob Dylan’s complete observation all the way to its conclusion without interrupting and without displaying any visible signal of preparing a response.

Then Keith Richards said one sentence. The sentence was not a rebuttal. The sentence did not defend Keith Richards music or argue for its originality or challenge Bob Dylan’s characterization of what the blues meant in the context of rock and roll. The sentence was something else entirely, something that required a specific kind of confidence to say.

The confidence of a person who has spent long enough thinking about the same things as the person they are talking to that they can locate the exact point where their thinking diverges and say something useful about that point rather than simply defending their own position. The sentence acknowledged everything Bob Dylan had said, the assessment, the distinction Bob Dylan was drawing, the specific musical concern underlying the observation, and then turned it 90°.

Keith Richards took Bob Dylan’s own framework, the one Bob Dylan had used to analyze Keith Richards relationship to the blues tradition, and applied it back to Bob Dylan’s work with the same precision Bob Dylan had used to apply it to Keith Richards. Spare aimed. The sentence asked Bob Dylan something about Bob Dylan’s own music, about the relationship between Bob Dylan’s sources and Bob Dylan’s output that Bob Dylan had not been asked on television before.

The sentence did not attack. The sentence illuminated. Bob Dylan laughed. The laugh was not the polite laugh of someone responding to a joke. The laugh was the involuntary laugh of someone who has been genuinely surprised. The specific kind of surprise that a person of exceptional intelligence experiences when someone else’s intelligence exceeds their expectations.

Bob Dylan laughed for 4 seconds. Then Bob Dylan stopped laughing. Then Bob Dylan was quiet for 3 seconds in the way that Bob Dylan was quiet when Bob Dylan was thinking rather than performing thought. Then Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” The producer in the booth, a man named Gerald Sherman, who had been working in television for 14 years, said afterward that in 14 years of live television production, he had never heard Bob Dylan say those two words in a public forum.

Gerald Sherman said he had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions and had observed Bob Dylan in numerous other contexts and that you’re right was not a phrase that Bob Dylan deployed easily or often because Bob Dylan had spent 24 years being right about music in ways that other people eventually caught up with. And the experience of being right ahead of everyone else does not generally produce a man who says you’re right readily when someone else makes a point.

The host of the program, a journalist named Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said afterward that the 11 seconds between Bob Dylan’s assessment and Bob Dylan saying, “You’re right,” were the most extraordinary 11 seconds of television she had been present for. Patricia Wells said that what she witnessed in those 11 seconds was not a debate or a confrontation or a celebrity exchange of competing opinions.

Patricia Wells said what she witnessed was one musician recognizing another musician as an equal, which was in the specific context of Bob Dylan in 1986, not something that happened in public very often. The interview continued for another 42 minutes after those 11 seconds. The conversation between Bob Dylan and Keith Richards in the remaining 42 minutes was described by everyone who watched it as fundamentally different from the first 8 minutes.

The host, Patricia Wells, who had been conducting music interviews for 12 years and understood the difference between the performance of conversation and actual conversation, said that at approximately the 9-minute mark, something shifted in the studio. That the formal interview, architecture dissolved, and what replaced it was something less structured and more genuine.

Bob Dylan and Keith Richards talked about influence and originality and the blues and what it meant to build on a tradition without being consumed by it. They talked about specific recordings and specific musicians with the specificity of two people who had spent their entire adult lives thinking about these things and rarely found another person who had thought about them with equivalent care.

They talked about where music came from and where music was going and whether those two questions were actually one question or two. Patricia Wells said afterward that she had asked approximately four questions in the remaining 42 minutes because Bob Dylan and Keith Richards did not require questions. They required only a room and a camera and the shared understanding that what they were saying together was worth recording carefully.

She said it was the best interview she had ever conducted and that she had conducted the smallest part of it. After the program, Bob Dylan and Keith Richards were in the corridor outside the studio when the host Patricia Wells passed them. Patricia Wells said she did not stop because she did not want to interrupt.

She observed them for approximately 30 seconds from a distance. She said they were talking with the ease of people who had known each other for years rather than people who had met for the first time 2 hours earlier. She said that something had shifted between them during the broadcast that the broadcast had made permanent rather than temporary.

She continued down the corridor and did not look back. She said in her account of that evening that she had decided in that moment not to interrupt the conversation because some conversations are more valuable than any question a journalist might ask and that the conversation she had observed for 30 seconds in the corridor outside the studio was one of them.

She had been a music journalist for 12 years. She recognized the difference. Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have maintained their friendship across four decades. They have appeared together at various events, most significantly at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, where people who were present described them as inseparable for most of the evening, occupying the same corner of the backstage area and talking with the concentrated attention of people who only have a limited amount of time together and intend to use it

well. Bob Dylan has spoken about Keith Richards in interviews with the specific thoughtful care that Bob Dylan reserves for musicians whose work Bob Dylan considers genuinely important rather than merely culturally prominent. Keith Richards has spoken about Bob Dylan in similar terms with the specific respect of someone who recognizes in another person a commitment to music that goes deeper than career.

Neither Bob Dylan nor Keith Richards has made a public statement specifically about how the friendship began or about the November 1986 interview. Bob Dylan has not mentioned the 11 seconds. Keith Richards has not mentioned the sentence. The interview exists in the archive. The 11 seconds are there. The laugh is there. The two words are there.

What is also there for anyone who watches the interview from its beginning and pays attention to the shift that happens at the 9-minute mark is the specific moment when two people who thought they were appearing on a television program discovered they were actually talking to each other. What Keith Richards said in that one sentence has never been officially reported.

The people who were in the studio that evening, Gerald Sherman, Patricia Wells, the floor crew, the two camera operators, the makeup artist who was watching from the side of the set, have described the sentence in consistent terms. They have described its effect. They have described Bob Dylan’s laugh and Bob Dylan’s silence and Bob Dylan’s two words.

They have not repeated the sentence itself in the specific understanding that the sentence was said between two musicians on a television program and that its power resided in the specific context of that exchange and would not survive removal from it intact. What can be said is this. Keith Richards said something to Bob Dylan about Bob Dylan’s music that used Bob Dylan’s own observation about Keith Richards as its starting point and arrived somewhere that Bob Dylan had not anticipated.

Keith Richards turned Bob Dylan’s assessment 90° and showed Bob Dylan something about the music they had both spent their lives making that Bob Dylan recognized immediately as true. And Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” Two words said by Bob Dylan in public on live television in 1986 to Keith Richards in response to a single sentence Keith Richards had said about music.

Two words that Gerald Sherman, who had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions, said he had never heard Bob Dylan say in a public forum. Two words that Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said were the most significant two words she had heard in those 12 years. Not because of their content, but because of who said them and what it cost to say them and what it meant that Keith Richards had produced them in 11 seconds from a conversation that began with Bob Dylan calling Keith Richards’s music derivative. And Keith Richards and

Bob Dylan have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The sentence did its work in 11 seconds on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The work has been ongoing ever since. If this story moved you, subscribe and leave a comment below. Have you ever said something to someone that turned a potential disagreement into an unexpected and lasting connection? Tell us about it in the comments below.

Share this with someone who needs to be reminded that the right sentence said at the right moment can completely change the entire direction of a relationship. Ring the notification bell for more untold stories about the extraordinary human beings behind music’s greatest legends.