They were seen to be pivotal, vital, fundamental members of the royal family. I think the Queen would have been devastated at Harry and Meghan effectively abandoning the firm. I like to think I’m probably quite useful. There was never a role for the second son, and a role would have to be created by his grandmother.
We’ve just focused on who ] we are as a couple. With marrying a prince of the United Kingdom with a bit of money, the world is open. She had to be decisive, ruthless, and cutting him out because you cannot monetize the name of the monarchy so openly. The allegations of racism leveled at the royal family, which were hugely damaging.
We’re very much not racist at all. They had real high hopes for this couple. You know, they embraced them. And yet for Harry and Meghan, it was never enough. They signed this deal with the Queen. She walked away happy, Harry and Meghan walked away happy, and now they’re coming back, and they’re trying to change it. And I don’t think that’s fair.
>> >> The Queen both adored William and Harry. William because one day he would succeed his father in the fullness of time. Harry because he was the second son. There was never a role for the second son, and a role would have to be created. He created it for himself at the beginning in the military.
But then it had to be created for him, also by his his grandmother. Harry had a good 10 years in in the military. Uh his biggest mistake probably was leaving the military because he was he was an army animal. He was sort of person that suited to military life. There was a couple of us that got pushed forward to the front seat instead of the back seat.
The joy joy for me because I’m one of those people that love playing PlayStation and Xbox. So with my thumbs, I like to think that I’m probably quite useful. He done his two tours of duty in Afghanistan. He done a tour of duty as an Apache helicopter pilot. But my guess is that he opted out because you don’t do that all the time.
You’re given other jobs. And Harry is not the sort of person who would like to do other jobs like driving a desk. That’s not him. He’s very much a doer rather than a sort of sitting behind a desk giving the orders for other people to do. >> [applause] >> The Queen adored Harry because he made >> >> her laugh. And you know, he was naughty.
He was a very good rider. He was funny. He was naughty. And I think she just loved his company. I think the Queen she had a lot of affection for Harry. And everything she gave to Harry, every time she forgave him for this time after time after time, Harry would be causing problems for the royal family.
He made certain comments. He was found drunk. He He was naked playing billiards in Las Vegas. Time after time, he did heap scandal and problem on the royal family. She forgave him time after time. She gave him so many chances. >> [cheering] >> And at this time, the Queen, Charles, William had all got quite worried that Harry hadn’t seemed to find his person.
He hadn’t been able to settle down and you know, time was ticking along. So clearly, the Queen as a grandmother wanted the best for all of her grandchildren. And she’s very close to Harry and William. William had married Catherine and was blissfully happy, and she wanted the same for Harry. And when the news came that, you know, he was dating this beautiful, gorgeous, successful um American actress, and they were clearly in love, yeah, the Queen was thrilled.
And then the announcement that they were engaged happened, yeah, but they’re clearly, you know, delighted, enthralled with each other. Certainly, my understanding was that initially she was absolutely over the moon that Harry had met this um someone who he’d fallen clearly head over heels in love with. So, I think there was a great sense of relief and excitement about meeting her and then, of course, welcoming her into the family.
I think Harry took Meghan to have have tea, and the two women, according to Harry, got along very well, and I think they did because um A, Meghan likes dogs, and, you know, sort of stroked the corgis and the corgis liked her, which was a big plus. And B, the Queen had these great aspirations for Meghan.
The Queen saw Meghan and Harry as really spearheading the young Commonwealth, and the Commonwealth was the Queen’s baby. There was an element of joy at the beginning, the fact that he was getting married, he was getting a partner, and they were going to be a double act in getting things done on behalf of the monarchy, working with the monarchy, with the monarch, and with other members of the royal family.
And also, I think it was really great for the monarchy. Here we are, you know, an institution that’s centuries old, you know, embracing a biracial, divorcee American into the family. And there was almost like a great hope now. This was the future of the monarchy. The The monarchy’s being secured. >> [laughter] >> She had appointed them as president and vice president of the Commonwealth Youth Trust, a big, big job amongst the 56 nations that make up the membership of the Commonwealth.
And they had real high hopes for this couple. You know, they embraced them. Uh they were really looking forward to having her join the firm and supporting the firm and enhancing the firms. She was very warm to Meghan. I remember they did an engagement >> >> up in Cheshire. And they they, you know, it looked like the start of a of a very good friendship.
The Queen went really above and beyond. I mean, she took Meghan out on engagements. She made her own team of staff accessible to Meghan so that this newcomer into the royal family had a support system in place. Don’t forget, lessons had been learned from the past. They had been learned from where things had gone so wrong with Diana.
And of course, it had been a great success with Kate Middleton marrying into the royal family. So, I think, you know, there was such a thing as happily ever after. And it was certainly the Queen’s hope that that would be the case for Meghan and Harry. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out like that. I think feelings changed, certainly in the run-up to the wedding.
I think the Queen was aware that Meghan could be quite difficult, that Harry could be very difficult. I mean, look at the furore over what tiara Meghan was going to wear for her wedding day. You know, the diva in all of that, in fact, was Harry more than it was Meghan, but it certainly, I think, was a red flag to the Queen that things might not be as plain sailing as they were last time round with William and Catherine.
I mean, for somebody with intelligence to say, um, “Need to spray St. George’s Chapel because it smells musty.” >> >> Um, that’s interfering with history. Well, if the Queen ever heard about that, I think she would have found it very amusing. I think she would have thought, “Well, what on earth is the girl going on about?” The thing that worried the Queen was that Meghan was estranged from her father.
Um, although she was close to her mother, and I think that that it was a bit of a messy situation in Meghan’s family, and that’s what worried the Queen. To totally throw out her father with the dirty bathwater because he just so happened mistakenly cooperated with the paparazzi. She turned her back on him completely, and that’s it.
But, she had high hopes uh, for both of them. They had successful tours of Australia, had successful tour of South Africa. There are allegations that she said, >> >> um, during one tour, uh, after a walkabout, “I should be paid for this.” >> >> Now, Harry either didn’t give her the nuts bolts about what monarchy is all about and what is expected, or she he did, and she wasn’t interested.
I don’t know if the Queen had time to do more to help Meghan adjust as >> >> I think she tried to put people around Meghan that could help her, but it really Meghan had to be prepared to listen. Uh, because she was an actress, she she made her the patron of the National Theatre. She she did go out of her way to try and place the right things for Meghan >> >> and she knew that Meghan’s voice, you know, as a a feminist and as a woman would would be something that would be very useful.
So, she The Queen was very aware of what Meghan’s strengths were. I just don’t think she realized what Meghan’s weaknesses were. Then, of course, once they were married, there was a sense of Harry and Meghan wanting to break free, wanting to have their own charitable foundation, have their own estate independently of William and Kate at Kensington Palace.
Meghan didn’t seem to be very interested in learning what it’s like to be married to a member of the family. Meghan had very preconceived ideas. She wanted to be a princess. She wanted to live in a castle and she wanted to have the life of Riley. That is not really what being a member of the royal family is like and I think the Queen saw that.
I don’t believe for a moment when Meghan married Harry that she had any intention of staying in the UK, of becoming a royal. She was written out from Suits. Suits was coming to an end, a series that she had done for quite a long time. Hollywood wasn’t beating a path to her front door.
So, there were no parts in the offing. She was of an age where she had been married. There are even suggestions she’d been married twice before, but that’s never been substantiated. But, she was looking for a husband. And she got married to him and she enjoyed the sense of occasion. She manipulated it to what she wanted. She had an idea of what she wanted to do.
It wasn’t necessarily acting. >> >> So, you’ve got to create another career for yourself. Well, with a handle like duchess in front of you, with a marrying a prince of the United Kingdom, with a bit of money, the world is open. So, I think she was mindful that Harry and Meghan wanted a different route, and she did as much as she could to accommodate it.
I think she exercised a lot of patience, a lot of leniency. >> >> She gave them far greater scope and latitude than previous royals have had, and yet for Harry and Meghan it was never enough. What makes it was chopping in the front of the queen. I think that initially um a lot of things were being deferred to Prince Charles at that stage.
Initially, she would have thought, “Well, I don’t want this on my desk. Charles, deal with your son.” Until it went public, until he basically threatened the authority of the monarch by producing that Instagram post and said, “This is what we intend to do.” None of which had been cleared. They virtually threw it in her face.
When Harry and Meghan decided that they do not want to be living in the United Kingdom and full-time working royals, but they sort of wanted a a hybrid existence, so they could do their own life and make their own money overseas, either in Canada or in America, but still do the sort of the odd royal engagement here and have police protection.
The queen was clearly very anxious about that, because she’d seen it happen before. The queen was very adamant that they couldn’t be half in and half out. She had seen it fail countless times before that whether that was with Sarah Ferguson embarking on commercial deals, The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh as they are now, so Sophie and and Edward both had their careers.
He is the head of Ardent Productions. She had her own PR company, but they were still doing royal duties. And it all crashed and burned. There was allegations that they were using their royal titles to make money. So, they gave up their businesses to become full-time working royals. It just didn’t work. There’s no middle way.
You’re either in or you’re out. You can’t have one foot in in both camps. So, however much Harry and Meghan had tried to come up with a new model, it wasn’t something the Queen was going to entertain. And I think that showed well, certainly the Queen’s experience and and her lack of willingness to compromise because she knew that if she compromised, it could potentially be at the cost of the monarchy and she wasn’t willing to do that.
Her judgement was second to none. It was absolutely extraordinary. And I remember joining the royal household as a a a new person, very enthusiastic. I thought, “Gosh, you know, I’m going to change the world here.” And I put a memo up to the Queen about an issue and I said, “This is your majesty. This is what I think we should do.
This is a great way forward.” And a note came back very quickly saying, “Elsa, we did that in 1973. It didn’t work then. It’s not going to work now.” And I thought, “Yes, absolutely. You you know, don’t reinvent the wheel because this is a person who has seen so much throughout her lifetime, throughout her reign, and she will know instinctively what is going to work and what isn’t going to work.
” So, that was a good lesson for me. >> I think at that moment she realized that she had to act on behalf of the whole monarchy. She had to be decisive, ruthless really, in cutting him out because you cannot monetize >> [snorts] >> the name of the monarchy so openly and then serve as a working member of the royal family. It doesn’t work like that.
Otherwise, it looks like you can buy the monarchy. No, she had to be decisive over that and she was. Even by changing the name of their charity wing, their website, Sussex Royal, you know, they had to change. That’s the basic obvious That was the most obvious one. It was quite clear that um yeah, the Queen’s very capable of being ruthless when it felt that the monarchy as an institution had a brand was being threatened.
And that was the clear message. And I don’t think the public would have accepted it either. The public don’t want members of the royal family making money out of their position and their wealth. >> >> You know, I think the Queen’s opinion of Meghan at the start of Meghan’s relationship with Harry and around the time of them leaving Britain changed markedly.
You know, Megxit was the absolute >> >> last straw for the Queen. She would have been very, very, very disappointed. There were big plans for Harry and Meghan. They were seen to be pivotal, vital, fundamental members of the royal family. The idea that they would be stepping down was almost unthinkable for the Queen.
It was a huge thing for her. She was rather blindsided by it. She never expected it to come >> >> to that. And of course it it came at a time in her personal life when she was going through grave difficulties. The The Duke of Edinburgh’s health was really ailing. Um she was in her twilight years.
This was the point in her reign when she probably just wanted to be able to leave it to >> >> the next generation and know that everything was in good order for when her demise eventually came. And and yet it was in chaos. I think the Queen would have been devastated at Harry >> >> and Meghan effectively abandoning the firm.
I think she she may have understood many of his concerns. I think she probably listened to Meghan when she says that, you know, the life being a royal just wasn’t for her. But I think she’d be devastated after everything that she gave them both. She gave them so many chances. And then what happens? They didn’t give it long enough and they decide to walk away.
So I think I’m just on pure family relationship side, she would have been so sad to lose the pair of them. But I think she’d have been devastated that she didn’t have them working for her in the firm and the UK. I think the Queen had never imagined that she wouldn’t be seeing her great grandchildren at family get-togethers.
So she had no idea how it very cut off they were going to become. They wanted to be independent. Uh which is why they left the royal family and went off to Canada first and then from Canada just before COVID lockdown, they went to America and California and settled in where they have been ever since. They did an Oprah interview.
They had a captive audience with Oprah in which they rubbished the royal family, she particularly rather than him. You know, the Oprah interview was I in my view pretty brutal, you know, talking about all sorts of things including, >> >> you know, the question mark about the baby’s skin color when it was born. Concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born.
What? One thing that really upset the Queen was when Harry and Meghan gave their interview to Oprah Winfrey and they criticized the royal family and they accused the royal family of being racist. The whole thing had been rehearsed. I mean, you look at Meghan here’s the actress coming out in the way she portrayed herself, the way she sat the look on her face, the way she allowed her eyes to well up and and her tear ducts to open.
It was ultimately a huge race row for the royal family in which they found themselves unwittingly at the center of something deeply unpleasant. I think if the Queen had been 10 years younger she’d have been more forthright at that moment. Again, it was seen as a little bit of a cop-out. I think they didn’t push back strongly against these claims.
They were in shock, I think. The allegations of racism leveled at the royal family which were hugely damaging both here and overseas and which forced William to address television cameras to reassure people Sir, have you broke Have you spoken to your brother since the interview? I haven’t spoken to him yet, but I will do.
And and can you just let me know is that the The family a racist family, sir? We’re very much not a racist family. It was only William who said we’re very much not a racist family and went on the record. They actually pushed back. Um and I think that shows his understanding of a modern world, modern media world, rather than Queen and even Charles because by not saying something you almost said you were accepting what has been said.
So, William was astute there. We don’t know how the Queen felt about the Oprah interview. We can imagine, but we can certainly read quite a lot into that very brief statement which was issued eventually by the palace. They waited one or two or three days before they put something out so it was thoughtful.
Even though they’re under a lot of pressure to say something, they wanted to say something, but they wanted to say the right something. So, they waited, they crafted it, and they put out this very brief but incredibly powerful statement. We always remember that that phrase is deliciously delivered. Masterful. I’d love to have taken credit of that myself. It was absolutely masterful.
Recollections may vary. That’s the Queen basically saying, “We don’t believe everything that you’ve said.” But she says it in such a lovely, polite, and damaging way. Which was very clearly the Queen’s characteristically diplomatic way of saying, “We remember things rather differently to how Harry and Meghan remembered them.
” Those three words coming out of Buckingham Palace did ring true to a lot of people. And it’s funny, you hear it quoted all over the place now. So, it really it really resonated with people. I think that was a a reckoning that she she realized that you know, she’d probably lost Harry and Meghan by then. However, if you look at that statement, there are other elements in it.
There is an olive branch there. You know, she said she talks about “We were unaware of the depth of concerns and the depth of issues that you had working in the royal family.” It wasn’t only that line. She She did in that statement leave open the chance of reconciliation. So, I think Prince Harry and Meghan may have won the initial battle, but I think the Queen won the war.
I think for me an important aspect in the in the relationship between Harry, Meghan, and the Queen was when the Sussexes decided to call their daughter Lilibet. The Queen was upset. You know, she she liked the name Lilibet. It was a pet name as a child. It was what her parents called her.
You know, it Philip would call her Lilibet. It was her name. No one else has called Lilibet. She’s called Lilibet. And I think, relatively, what she was upset about >> >> was that they didn’t really ask her. If they’d just come to her and said, “We want to call our daughter Lilibet.” I think she would have, you know, thought about it.
Thought, “Well, actually, what a lovely tribute to me.” But, um it was announced without her being told, without the rest of the royal family being informed. It It was an important name to her. And yeah, I think, you know, like 80 years, she maybe didn’t deserve that. >> >> I think the the impact globally on the Queen’s death was absolutely phenomenal.
I think we had never seen anything like it at all in our lifetime. This was the most famous woman in the world. I think there was profound amount of shock and huge sadness from the people who knew her, from her family, from her friends, but also from people who she had served. The Queen had been on the throne for 70 years.
She was enormously important to so many people in the UK and around the world. She was one of the most popular royals ever. Everybody loved her, and it’s remarkable that she maintained that that the fact that everybody put her at the top of the list of their most popular royals, despite things crumbling around her, despite scandals within her family, she always remained the most loved royal.
I think that Harry and Meghan’s behavior after the Queen died was really appalling. >> >> There was 6 hours of Netflix, which again they rubbish the royal family, and then there was Harry’s >> >> um very thick book Spare, which probably is remaindered by now. Again, rubbish in the royal family, not admitting for a moment at any time that they might have been wrong, that they might have got things wrong.
It was one of the best-selling books of all time, and of course it was riveting, but it it it it dissed his own family, which was unforgivable and actually unnecessary. You know, there have been so many moments over the course of my career covering the royals where, you know, you you have these jaw-dropping moments, you know, the publication of spare, just jaw-dropping astonishment.
Harry has got me. But the biggest problem with the heart is that this was for the first time in many, many years, since really since the abdication crisis, when when Edward the VIII and Simpson Windsor wrote a tell-all memoir, this was the first time there’d been a memoir of this magnitude damaging the royal family.
But the reality of all of this is is that that was a powerful statement at that time. And everyone knew it was all about them. And [clears throat] I think >> >> that they probably Harry’s father just thought, “Thank goodness that my mother or Harry’s grandmother isn’t alive to see this.” And I think then the royal family closed ranks on them because every time that that they saw Harry, he then reported it.
So, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. >> >> The issue we have with Harry and Meghan right now is that they agreed the terms with the late Queen. They agreed Megxit terms at the Sandringham summit. It was drawn up by the Queen and all her aides and Charles and William and presented to Harry and Meghan and they agreed to it.
So, in many ways, when we talk about legacy about the late Queen, >> >> the Megxit deal was one of her main, not necessarily achievements, but it it was one of the signposts that she achieved in the last couple of years of her reign. It was something she could walk away from and say, “Well, we struck a deal with Harry and Meghan for them to go off to California.
” But that they’re trying to rewrite this deal. They’re trying to get armed security. Harry’s trying to come back more and more. There’s all rumors about them still wanting this half-in-half-out, and I don’t think that’s fair. They were never short of money. Uh they were never short in terms of their their security.
But quite rightly, question was asked, if they’re living abroad, why should the taxpayer pay for their security? The answer is they shouldn’t. Harry and Meghan leaving the royal family has had an put an enormous strain on King Charles’ reign because there were so few working members of the royal family.
And I think, you know, it’s Charles’ son. Harry is Charles’ son, so I feel he’s very sad. And he did try. >> >> He did try with Meghan. I think also, like his mother, he had high hopes for Meghan. He’s probably a little more cautious than than the Queen was, but I think it’s it’s put a huge strain on on his reign, not least because the press are absolutely fascinated by everything Harry and Meghan do.
Um and then, of course, with the King’s cancer, um it’s made it even more difficult. So, he has actually had an extremely difficult reign so far. Uh the issue of his son and reconciliation, that’s not going to happen anytime soon, so don’t hold your breath on that. Uh until Harry can display an element of trust, there’s not going to be an open door to him to return to the UK.
And if he wanted to return to the UK, I doubt whether his wife would return with him because that is not in her game plan. Her game plan was always to be in the US where she knows and they know her and where she’s trying to make a name for herself. Will she succeed? Well, only time will tell.
QQ4 Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The friendship began on a live television program in November of 1986 in the 11 seconds after Bob Dylan called Keith Richards music derivative on camera. Keith Richard’s response to that assessment, one sentence said without anger, without performance, with the specific directness of a man who has nothing to prove and knows it made Bob Dylan laugh.
Then made Bob Dylan go quiet. then made Bob Dylan say two words that people who know Bob Dylan say he almost never said to anyone. This is the story of those 11 seconds and the 40 years that followed them. The program was a live music interview special broadcast on an American network on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The format was simple.
Two musicians, a host, an hour of conversation about music and the state of it. The producers had assembled the pairing of Bob Dylan and Keith Richards with the specific calculation of television producers who understand that two people with equally strong and potentially incompatible views about what music is and what it should do will produce better television than two people who agree about everything.
The calculation was correct, though not in the way the producers had anticipated. Bob Dylan was 45 years old in November of 1986. Bob Dylan had released Empire Burlesque the previous year and had been on the road for most of the intervening period as part of the True Confessions tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Bob Dylan was in November of 1986 in one of the most prolific and restless phases of a career that had consisted almost entirely of prolific and restless phases. A career that had moved through folk, rock, country, gospel, and back again, that had been declared finished at least six times by the music press, and at each time continued with the serene indifference of a river to the opinions of people standing on its banks.
Bob Dylan had been redefining what music could be. Since 1962, Bob Dylan had invented and reinvented himself so many times that reinvention had become his defining characteristic, not in the superficial sense of a performer changing costumes, but in the deeper sense of a musician who had never allowed his work to settle into a form that could be anticipated or categorized from the outside.
Bob Dylan understood influence and originality and the relationship between them better than almost anyone alive in 1986. Bob Dylan had spent 24 years thinking carefully and specifically about where music came from and where music was going and what it meant that those two things were always in constant conversation with each other.
Keith Richards was 42 years old in November of 1986. Keith Richards had been playing guitar professionally since 1962. Keith Richards had built a career on a foundation of American blues and rhythm and blues. A foundation that Keith Richards had studied with the systematic devotion of someone who understood that the tradition he was building on was not incidental to the music he was making, but essential to it.
that you could not understand what Keith Richards did without understanding where Keith Richards had come from and what Keith Richards had been listening to since he was a teenager in Dartford with American Import Records and a secondhand guitar and no teacher except the recordings themselves. Keith Richards had never pretended otherwise. Keith Richards had in fact spent considerable energy across his career making the lineage explicit, naming the artists, citing the recordings, insisting on the acknowledgement of influence that the mainstream music
industry had a long history of suppressing or ignoring or crediting to the wrong people. If anything, Keith Richards was more transparent about his sources than most musicians of his generation. Keith Richards had always said openly that the Rolling Stones came directly from the blues, that Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson and the specific tradition of the Mississippi Delta were not background influences, but foundational ones.
The music Keith Richards made was in direct and sustained conversation with that tradition, something Keith Richards considered not a limitation, but a responsibility and a form of respect. The interview had been running for 8 minutes when the host asked Bob Dylan about the current state of rock and roll.
Bob Dylan answered with the density and the indirection that characterized Bob Dylan’s responses to direct questions, turning the question over, approaching it from an unexpected angle, finding his way to what he actually thought through a series of observations that moved like a river rather than a road. Bob Dylan was not a straightforward interview subject.
Bob Dylan had been asked about rock and roll in hundreds of interviews across 24 years and had developed the habit of treating the question as an invitation to think out loud rather than a request for a prepared position. The producer Gerald Sherman said afterward that in the first 8 minutes of the interview, he had been slightly anxious, not because anything was going wrong, but because nothing was going anywhere in particular yet.
The interview had the feeling of two conversations happening simultaneously. Bob Dylan’s internal one and the external one visible to the cameras. And Gerald Sherman was not certain in those first eight minutes that the two conversations would converge into something. Bob Dylan talked about influence. Bob Dylan talked about originality.
Bob Dylan talked about the difference between music that absorbed a tradition and transformed it and music that absorbed a tradition and reproduced it. And then Bob Dylan made his assessment. And then Bob Dylan said with the precision of a man making a musical assessment rather than a personal judgment that the Rolling Stones work, and Bob Dylan was specific, naming Keith Richards as the guitarist whose approach he was discussing was derivative in a way that Bob Dylan found limiting.
Bob Dylan said it without hostility. Bob Dylan said it as a technical observation about the relationship between source material and the work that came from it. Bob Dylan said that Keith Richards played the blues the way the blues had already been played, rather than using the blues as a starting point for something that had not yet been played.
Keith Richards had been listening to this with the specific attention Keith Richards gave to things being said about music by people who knew music. Keith Richards did not interrupt. Keith Richards did not shift in his chair or display any of the visible signals of a person preparing a defensive response. Keith Richards listened to Bob Dylan’s complete observation all the way to its conclusion without interrupting and without displaying any visible signal of preparing a response.
Then Keith Richards said one sentence. The sentence was not a rebuttal. The sentence did not defend Keith Richards music or argue for its originality or challenge Bob Dylan’s characterization of what the blues meant in the context of rock and roll. The sentence was something else entirely, something that required a specific kind of confidence to say.
The confidence of a person who has spent long enough thinking about the same things as the person they are talking to that they can locate the exact point where their thinking diverges and say something useful about that point rather than simply defending their own position. The sentence acknowledged everything Bob Dylan had said, the assessment, the distinction Bob Dylan was drawing, the specific musical concern underlying the observation, and then turned it 90°.
Keith Richards took Bob Dylan’s own framework, the one Bob Dylan had used to analyze Keith Richards relationship to the blues tradition, and applied it back to Bob Dylan’s work with the same precision Bob Dylan had used to apply it to Keith Richards. Spare aimed. The sentence asked Bob Dylan something about Bob Dylan’s own music, about the relationship between Bob Dylan’s sources and Bob Dylan’s output that Bob Dylan had not been asked on television before.
The sentence did not attack. The sentence illuminated. Bob Dylan laughed. The laugh was not the polite laugh of someone responding to a joke. The laugh was the involuntary laugh of someone who has been genuinely surprised. The specific kind of surprise that a person of exceptional intelligence experiences when someone else’s intelligence exceeds their expectations.
Bob Dylan laughed for 4 seconds. Then Bob Dylan stopped laughing. Then Bob Dylan was quiet for 3 seconds in the way that Bob Dylan was quiet when Bob Dylan was thinking rather than performing thought. Then Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” The producer in the booth, a man named Gerald Sherman, who had been working in television for 14 years, said afterward that in 14 years of live television production, he had never heard Bob Dylan say those two words in a public forum.
Gerald Sherman said he had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions and had observed Bob Dylan in numerous other contexts and that you’re right was not a phrase that Bob Dylan deployed easily or often because Bob Dylan had spent 24 years being right about music in ways that other people eventually caught up with. And the experience of being right ahead of everyone else does not generally produce a man who says you’re right readily when someone else makes a point.
The host of the program, a journalist named Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said afterward that the 11 seconds between Bob Dylan’s assessment and Bob Dylan saying, “You’re right,” were the most extraordinary 11 seconds of television she had been present for. Patricia Wells said that what she witnessed in those 11 seconds was not a debate or a confrontation or a celebrity exchange of competing opinions.
Patricia Wells said what she witnessed was one musician recognizing another musician as an equal, which was in the specific context of Bob Dylan in 1986, not something that happened in public very often. The interview continued for another 42 minutes after those 11 seconds. The conversation between Bob Dylan and Keith Richards in the remaining 42 minutes was described by everyone who watched it as fundamentally different from the first 8 minutes.
The host, Patricia Wells, who had been conducting music interviews for 12 years and understood the difference between the performance of conversation and actual conversation, said that at approximately the 9-minute mark, something shifted in the studio. That the formal interview, architecture dissolved, and what replaced it was something less structured and more genuine.
Bob Dylan and Keith Richards talked about influence and originality and the blues and what it meant to build on a tradition without being consumed by it. They talked about specific recordings and specific musicians with the specificity of two people who had spent their entire adult lives thinking about these things and rarely found another person who had thought about them with equivalent care.
They talked about where music came from and where music was going and whether those two questions were actually one question or two. Patricia Wells said afterward that she had asked approximately four questions in the remaining 42 minutes because Bob Dylan and Keith Richards did not require questions. They required only a room and a camera and the shared understanding that what they were saying together was worth recording carefully.
She said it was the best interview she had ever conducted and that she had conducted the smallest part of it. After the program, Bob Dylan and Keith Richards were in the corridor outside the studio when the host Patricia Wells passed them. Patricia Wells said she did not stop because she did not want to interrupt.
She observed them for approximately 30 seconds from a distance. She said they were talking with the ease of people who had known each other for years rather than people who had met for the first time 2 hours earlier. She said that something had shifted between them during the broadcast that the broadcast had made permanent rather than temporary.
She continued down the corridor and did not look back. She said in her account of that evening that she had decided in that moment not to interrupt the conversation because some conversations are more valuable than any question a journalist might ask and that the conversation she had observed for 30 seconds in the corridor outside the studio was one of them.
She had been a music journalist for 12 years. She recognized the difference. Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have maintained their friendship across four decades. They have appeared together at various events, most significantly at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, where people who were present described them as inseparable for most of the evening, occupying the same corner of the backstage area and talking with the concentrated attention of people who only have a limited amount of time together and intend to use it
well. Bob Dylan has spoken about Keith Richards in interviews with the specific thoughtful care that Bob Dylan reserves for musicians whose work Bob Dylan considers genuinely important rather than merely culturally prominent. Keith Richards has spoken about Bob Dylan in similar terms with the specific respect of someone who recognizes in another person a commitment to music that goes deeper than career.
Neither Bob Dylan nor Keith Richards has made a public statement specifically about how the friendship began or about the November 1986 interview. Bob Dylan has not mentioned the 11 seconds. Keith Richards has not mentioned the sentence. The interview exists in the archive. The 11 seconds are there. The laugh is there. The two words are there.
What is also there for anyone who watches the interview from its beginning and pays attention to the shift that happens at the 9-minute mark is the specific moment when two people who thought they were appearing on a television program discovered they were actually talking to each other. What Keith Richards said in that one sentence has never been officially reported.
The people who were in the studio that evening, Gerald Sherman, Patricia Wells, the floor crew, the two camera operators, the makeup artist who was watching from the side of the set, have described the sentence in consistent terms. They have described its effect. They have described Bob Dylan’s laugh and Bob Dylan’s silence and Bob Dylan’s two words.
They have not repeated the sentence itself in the specific understanding that the sentence was said between two musicians on a television program and that its power resided in the specific context of that exchange and would not survive removal from it intact. What can be said is this. Keith Richards said something to Bob Dylan about Bob Dylan’s music that used Bob Dylan’s own observation about Keith Richards as its starting point and arrived somewhere that Bob Dylan had not anticipated.
Keith Richards turned Bob Dylan’s assessment 90° and showed Bob Dylan something about the music they had both spent their lives making that Bob Dylan recognized immediately as true. And Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” Two words said by Bob Dylan in public on live television in 1986 to Keith Richards in response to a single sentence Keith Richards had said about music.
Two words that Gerald Sherman, who had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions, said he had never heard Bob Dylan say in a public forum. Two words that Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said were the most significant two words she had heard in those 12 years. Not because of their content, but because of who said them and what it cost to say them and what it meant that Keith Richards had produced them in 11 seconds from a conversation that began with Bob Dylan calling Keith Richards’s music derivative. And Keith Richards and
Bob Dylan have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The sentence did its work in 11 seconds on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The work has been ongoing ever since. If this story moved you, subscribe and leave a comment below. Have you ever said something to someone that turned a potential disagreement into an unexpected and lasting connection? Tell us about it in the comments below.
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Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
