Graves of Royal Family Members –  Hw

 

They wore crowns, ruled empires, and shaped the fate of nations. But in the end, they were lowered into the same earth as everyone else. In this video, we visit the graves of royal family members and discover that even in death, the business of monarchy never stops.  Queen Elizabeth II died September 8th, 2022, age 96.

Buried at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, Windsor Castle, England. The longest-reigning British monarch who served for 70 years, her funeral at Westminster Abbey drew an estimated  4 billion television viewers. Laid to rest beside her husband, Prince Philip,   alongside her parents and the ashes of her sister, Princess Margaret.

Prince Philip died April 9th, 2021, age 99. Buried at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, Windsor Castle, England. Duke of Edinburgh, who served as consort for over 73 years, um initially interred in the royal vault beneath St. George’s Chapel, then moved to rest beside the  Queen after her death in 2022. Princess Diana died August 31st,   1997, age 36.

Buried on an island in the Round Oval Lake at Althorp Estate, Northamptonshire, England. Killed when her Mercedes crashed in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris. Her brother, Earl Spencer, chose the island specifically so her grave would be protected from the public and the press. King George VI died February 6th, 1952, [music] age 56.

Buried at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, Windsor Castle, England. The reluctant king who never expected the crown until his brother, Edward VIII, abdicated in 1936. Rallied Britain through World War II despite a debilitating stammer, died in his sleep at Sandringham. [music] Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, died March 30th, 2002, age 101.

All buried at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, Windsor Castle, England. Refused to leave London during the Blitz and spent 50 years as the Queen Mother after her husband’s death. Died 7 weeks after her daughter, Princess Margaret. Princess Margaret died February 9th, 2002, age 71. Cremated, ashes placed in the King George VI Memorial Chapel, Windsor Castle.

The Queen’s younger sister forbidden from marrying divorced Group Captain Peter Townsend in 1953, the first senior royal to be cremated in the modern era. Edward VIII died May 28th, 1972, >> [music] >> age 77. Buried at the Royal Burial Ground, Frogmore, Windsor. Abdicated after less than a year as king to marry American divorcee, Wallis Simpson, in 1936. [music] Lived in exile in France.

His sympathies toward Nazi Germany extensively [music] documented. His wife buried beside him in 1986. Um King George V died [music] January 20th, 1936, age 70. Buried at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, England. Changed the family name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor in 1917 to distance the monarchy from its German [music] roots.

His physician, Lord Dawson, administered a lethal injection to hasten death so it would be announced [music] in the morning edition of The Times. Queen Victoria died January 22nd, 1901, age 81. Buried at the Royal Mausoleum, Frogmore, Windsor. Ruled for 63 years and bore nine children who married into virtually every royal house in Europe.

Wore black for 40 years after Prince Albert’s [music] death. Left instructions for Albert’s dressing gown and a photograph of her servant, John Brown, to be placed in her coffin. Prince Albert died December 14th, 1861, age 42. Buried at the Royal Mausoleum, Frogmore, Windsor. The Prince Consort whose death plunged Victoria into a grief that reshaped her reign [music] and the nation, championed the Great Exhibition of 1851.

Victoria visited his mausoleum regularly until her own death 40 years later. Tsar Nicholas II died July 17th, 1918, age 50. Buried at the Peter and Paul Cathedral, St. Petersburg, Russia. Last emperor of Russia executed alongside his wife, Alexandra, and five children in the basement of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg.

Remains discovered in 1979 [music] and reinterred with state honors in 1998. Two children’s remains found in 2007, still not interred with the family. King Louis XVI died January 21st, [music] 1793, age 38. Buried at the Basilica of Saint-Denis, Saint-Denis, France. [music] Executed by guillotine during the French Revolution, his wife, Marie Antoinette, guillotined 9 months later.

[music] And their remains exhumed from quicklime graves and reinterred at Saint-Denis after the Bourbon Restoration [music] in 1815. Grace Kelly died September 14th, 1982, age 52. [music] Buried at the Cathedral of Our Lady Immaculate, Monte Carlo, Monaco. Hollywood actress who married Prince Rainier III in 1956 and retired from acting at 26.

Suffered a stroke while driving on mountain roads above Monaco. Prince Rainier buried beside her in 2005. King Hussein of Jordan died February 7th, 1999, age 63. Buried at the Royal Cemetery, Raghadan Palace, Amman, Jordan. Ruled Jordan for 46 years, surviving multiple assassination attempts. Flew back from cancer treatment at the Mayo Clinic to change the line of succession to his son, Abdullah.

His funeral attended by four American presidents. King Richard III died August 22nd, 1485, age [music] 32. Buried at Leicester Cathedral, Leicester, England, after being rediscovered in 2012 beneath a parking lot. Last Plantagenet king killed at Bosworth Field. His skeleton found with 11 wounds, including two fatal skull injuries.

DNA confirmed the identification, resolving a 527-year-old mystery. Tutankhamun died approximately 1323 BC, age approximately 19. Buried in the Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt, his tomb remains in place. The only pharaoh still in his original burial site, and uh Howard Carter’s 1922 discovery of the intact tomb was the most famous archaeological find in history.

He has been in the same [music] room for over 3,300 years. Marie Antoinette died October 16th, 1793, age 37. Buried at the Basilicas of Saint-Denis, Saint-Denis, France. Queen of France executed by guillotine 9 months after her husband, Louis XVI. Her remains exhumed from an unmarked grave and reinterred at Saint-Denis alongside him in 1815.

King Henry VIII died January 28th, 1547, age 55. [music] Buried at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, England. The king who broke with Rome, married six wives, and dissolved the monasteries. Buried beside his third wife, Jane Seymour, who died giving birth to his only surviving son, Edward VI.

Anne Boleyn died May 19th, 1536, age approximately 35. Buried at the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, Tower of London, England. Henry VIII’s second wife beheaded on charges of adultery, incest, and treason. Her remains identified during Victorian era renovations and marked with a marble tile in the chapel floor. Catherine of Aragon died January 7th, [music] 1536, age 50.

Buried at Peterborough Cathedral, Peterborough, England. Henry VIII’s first wife whose refusal to annul their marriage triggered the English Reformation, her tomb is draped in fresh flowers by visitors who still honor her as the rightful queen. Mary, Queen of Scots, died February 8th, 1587, age 44. Buried at Westminster Abbey, London, England.

Executed at Fotheringhay Castle after 19 years of imprisonment by her cousin, Elizabeth I. Her son, James VI, later had her remains moved to Westminster Abbey where her tomb sits opposite Elizabeth’s. Alexander the Great died June 10th, 323 BC, age 32. Burial location unknown, originally in Alexandria, Egypt.

[music] Conquered the largest empire the ancient world had seen by age 30. His body was hijacked en route to Macedonia and taken to Alexandria where it was displayed in a glass coffin for centuries before being lost. Open Napoleon Bonaparte died May 5th, 1821, age 51. Buried at Les Invalides, Paris, France.

Exiled to Saint Helena after Waterloo where he died, his remains returned to France in 1840 and placed in a red quartzite sarcophagus beneath the dome of Les Invalides in a ceremony attended by hundreds of thousands. Kaiser Wilhelm II died June 4th, 1941, age 82. Buried at Huis Doorn, Doorn, Netherlands. Last German emperor who abdicated at the end of World War I and lived in exile in the Netherlands for 23 years.

His will requested his body not be returned to Germany until the monarchy was restored. He remains in the Netherlands. Archduke Franz Ferdinand died June 28th, 1914, [music] age 50. Buried at Artstetten Castle, Artstetten, Austria. His assassination in Sarajevo triggered World War I. All buried at his family castle rather than the Imperial crypt in Vienna because his wife Sophie was considered too lowborn for the Habsburg burial tradition.

Empress Elizabeth of Austria died September 10th, 1898 age [music] 60. Buried at the Imperial crypt Kapuzinergruft, Vienna, Austria. Assassinated by an Italian anarchist while walking along Lake Geneva in Switzerland known as Sissi, one of the most photographed and mythologized Royals of the 19th century.

Maximilian the first of Mexico died June 19th, 1867 age 34. Buried at the Imperial crypt Kapuzinergruft, Vienna, Austria. Austrian Archduke installed as emperor of Mexico by Napoleon III, captured and executed by firing squad when French forces withdrew. His body returned to Austria and interred in the Habsburg family crypt.

Haile Selassie died August 27th, 1975 age 83. Buried at Holy Trinity Cathedral, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Last emperor of Ethiopia who was overthrown by the Derg military junta in 1974. Died under house arrest in circumstances widely believed to be murder. His remains discovered [music] beneath a toilet in the Imperial Palace and reinterred in 2000.

Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi died July 27th, [music] 1980 age 60. Buried at the Al-Rifa’i Mosque, Cairo, Egypt. Last Shah of Iran overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution died of cancer in exile. President Sadat provided a state funeral while Iran celebrated his death. King Umberto I of Italy died July 29th, 1900 age 56.

Buried at the Pantheon, Rome, Italy. Assassinated by anarchist Gaetano Bresci in Monza, one of several European monarchs killed by anarchists in the late 19th century. >> [music] >> His tomb in the Pantheon sits alongside that of his father, Victor Emmanuel II. King Carlos I of [music] Portugal died February 1st, 1908 age 44.

Buried at the Royal Pantheon of the House of Braganza, Lisbon, Portugal. Assassinated alongside his eldest son, Prince Luis Filipe in Lisbon’s Terreiro do Paço Square. [music] The double assassination led to the fall of the Portuguese monarchy two years later. Tsarina Alexandra died July 17th, 1918 age 46. [music] Buried at the Peter and Paul Cathedral, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Wife of Tsar Nicholas II executed alongside her husband and children. Her devotion to the mystic Rasputin had fatally undermined public confidence in the dynasty. Reinterred with the Tsar in 1998. King Rama IX died October 13th, 2016 age 88. Cremated at the Grand Palace, Bangkok, Thailand.

Longest reigning Thai monarch who served for 70 years [music] and was deeply revered. His elaborate royal cremation ceremony in 2017 cost an estimated [music] $90 million a year of national mourning preceded the ceremony. Emperor Franz Joseph I died November 21st, [music] 1916 age 86. Buried at the Imperial crypt Kapuzinergruft, Vienna, Austria.

Ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire for 68 years through [music] the assassination of his wife, the suicide of his son, Crown Prince Rudolf at Mayerling, >> [music] >> and the assassination of his nephew, Franz Ferdinand, that triggered the World War he died during. Crown Prince Rudolf died January 30th, 1889 age 30.

And buried at the Imperial crypt Kapuzinergruft, Vienna, Austria. Only son of Franz Joseph who shot his mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera and then himself at the Mayerling hunting lodge. The scandal shook the Habsburg dynasty >> [music] >> and altered the line of succession that ultimately led to Franz Ferdinand’s fateful trip to Sarajevo.

King Farouk of Egypt died March 18th, [music] 1965 age 45. Buried at the Al-Rifa’i Mosque, Cairo, Egypt. Last king of Egypt overthrown in the 1952 [music] military coup that brought Nasser to power. Died in exile in Rome after collapsing at a restaurant table. His body returned to Egypt and buried at the same mosque as the Shah of Iran.

Prince Rainier III of Monaco died April 6th, 2005 age 81. Buried at the Cathedral of Our Lady Immaculate, Monte Carlo, Monaco. Ruled Monaco for 56 years and transformed it from a fading gambling resort into a playground for the global elite. Buried beside his wife Grace Kelly in the Cathedral where they married.

King Edward died May 6th, [music] 1910 age 68. Buried at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, England. Victoria’s eldest son who waited 59 years to become king reigned for only nine years but transformed the monarchy from Victorian austerity into Edwardian glamour. His mistress Alice Keppel was among the last people allowed to see him [music] before he died.

King James I of England died March 27th, 1625 age 58. Buried at Westminster [music] Abbey, London, England. The first king to rule both England and Scotland commissioned the King James Bible. His tomb at Westminster was opened in the 19th century >> [music] >> and found to contain the coffins of multiple other Royals stacked inside. King Charles I died January 30th, 1649 age 48. Buried at St.

George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, England. Executed by beheading outside the banqueting house in Whitehall after losing the English Civil War. Buried without ceremony at Windsor after Parliament refused a state funeral. Queen Anne died August 1st, 1714 age 49. Buried at Westminster Abbey, London, England. Last Stuart monarch who presided over the union of England and Scotland.

Outlived all 17 of her children with none surviving to adulthood. Her coffin was reportedly so large due to her obesity that it was almost square. King William III died March 8th, 1702 age 51. [music] And buried at Westminster Abbey, London, England. Dutch prince who became king of England after the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Died after his horse stumbled on a molehill at Hampton Court. Jacobites toasted the mole as the little gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat for decades. Empress Josephine died May 29th, 1814 age 50. Buried at the Church of Saint Pierre Saint Paul, Rueil-Malmaison, France. Napoleon’s first wife whom he divorced in 1809 because she could not produce an heir.

She kept the title Empress [music] and remained at her estate Malmaison until her death from pneumonia. Victoria, Princess Royal died August 5th, 1901 age [music] 60. Buried at the Friedenskirche, Potsdam, Germany. Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter who married German Emperor Frederick Widowed after just 99 days of his reign. >> [music] >> Then her son, Kaiser Wilhelm II, had a complicated and often hostile relationship with the British side of his family.

King Baudouin of Belgium died July 31st, 1993 age 62. Buried at the Church of Our Lady of Laeken, Brussels, Belgium. Beloved Belgian monarch who temporarily abdicated for 36 hours in 1990 rather than sign a law legalizing abortion. The constitutional workaround was unprecedented in modern European monarchy. Queen Juliana of the Netherlands died March 20th, 2004 age 94.

Buried at the Nieuwe Kerk, Delft, Netherlands. Dutch queen who abdicated in favor of her daughter Beatrix in 1980. Known for her informal style and bicycle riding image that defined Dutch royal approachability. King Olav V of Norway died January 17th, 1991 age 87. Buried at Akershus Castle, Oslo, Norway.

Known as the people’s king who rode public trams during the 1973 oil crisis. >> [music] >> Sailed in the Olympics and maintained a personal connection with ordinary Norwegians that made him the most popular monarch in Scandinavian history. Emperor Puyi died October 17th, 1967 age 61. Buried at the Hua Ling Imperial Cemetery, Yixian, Hebei, China.

The last emperor who ascended the Qing dynasty throne at age two. Deposed in the 1911 Revolution, installed as puppet emperor of Manchukuo by the Japanese. And imprisoned by the Chinese Communists and eventually reformed into an ordinary citizen [music] working as a gardener. Queen Liliuokalani died November 11th, 1917 age 79.

Buried at the Royal Mausoleum of Hawaii, Mauna Ala Nuuanu, Honolulu. Last reigning monarch of Hawaii who was illegally overthrown by American sugar planters backed by US Marines in 1893. [music] Composed Aloha Oe, spent her final decades fighting for Hawaiian sovereignty. Emperor Qin Shi Huang died September 10th, 210 BC age 49. [music] Buried at the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum, Lintong, Xi’an, China.

> [music] >> First emperor of unified China who built the Great Wall and was buried with an army of over 8,000 terracotta soldiers discovered by farmers in 1974. The central tomb chamber has never been excavated.

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.