Developing today, new details about the late Queen’s hatred of Meghan Markle and how palace insiders view the final betrayal by her grandson Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Of course, the woman who has been across this story before anyone else is Lady Colin Campbell. We’re going to be with her on this in just one moment, but first I wanted to take you through some of these astonishing insider revelations.
I mean, The Daily Beast and Tom Sykes, the European editor-at-large, put it this way, “Insiders are just now unloading on Prince Harry’s betrayal of Queen Elizabeth.” This, of course, is as a result of those astonishing beyond-the-grave revelations by Lady Elizabeth Anson, revealed by the royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith on her Substack.
But, I’m delighted now. And actually, before I get to some of these specific really damning quotes from people who are close to the late Queen, Lady C, can we just set this up from a macro point of view? Isn’t it wonderful? Okay, yes, it has taken seven years. But, isn’t it wonderful that allies of the late Queen are finally feeling empowered enough and like the mainstream media has changed enough that they can start talking up the actual horror and disgust at the way that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle treated the late Queen in her dying
months and years. >> Yes, I think it’s wonderful. And I knew Elizabeth Anson slightly. Uh I have to say she wasn’t my favorite person. I didn’t dislike her, but I didn’t like her. And uh one of my former flatmates used to work with her. So uh uh but but there’s no doubt that she was very properly connected.
Uh she was the Queen’s first cousin once removed. She wasn’t the Queen’s first cousin as the media keep on saying. That was her mother uh Anne Bowes-Lyon who became Princess George of Denmark and was known as Princess Anne of Denmark. But but Eliza Anson was was uh a good friend of the Queen’s. More so after Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother died.
Because until really Princess Margaret died uh Princess Margaret filled that role. But but her her brother’s wife who was the Duke of Westminster’s sister was also a lady-in-waiting of Princess Margaret. So it was all very cozy and well-connected. And and she certainly knew what was going on.
And I know some some of the people that that uh Sally Bedell’s with is now quoting. For instance, uh Elsa Bowker whom she calls Lady Elsa Bowker. She wasn’t Lady Elsa Bowker. She was Lady Bowker. Uh she was the wife of a knight. And Elsa who I’d known forever because she was half Egyptian, half Lebanese, and and part Lebanese. So through the Lebanese community we’d known each other for decades.
And also she was a great friend of my stepmother-in-law, Princess uh sorry sorry uh Margaret, Duchess of Argyll. And and Elsa has has said various things as well. Which she said to me, “Also, everything that actually Sally Bedell Smith is saying that Elsa said is absolutely accurate. Uh one or two of them were so hot that I didn’t put them in my book, The Royal Diana.
But but where Eliza is concerned, it was it was uh she would spill the beans to Sally Bedell Smith. Thank God she did because otherwise I was going to a large extent be a lone voice. Now I’m not a lone voice. Uh and when I said certain things, people said, “Oh, no, you know, Lady Colin Campbell has a And everything I always have said that actually always turns out to be true.
But that doesn’t uh stop the mainstream media from from trying to to denigrate what I say. But now that Sally Bedell Smith is saying it’s through another source, who is a cousin of the late Queen and a friend of the late Queen, it’s it’s very viable. And the Queen was absolutely, as I indicated in my book, the Queen was and remember when I wrote the first version of my book, the Queen was still alive.
>> I need you to do something for me right now. It is free. It is easy. It is simple. Just hit that subscribe button on YouTube. That’s because over 50% of you watching this video haven’t done that yet. >> And I made it absolutely clear that the Queen was outraged. I had to clean up certain things to protect the identities of people.
For instance, I mentioned the Queen driving someone at on on the Windsor estate in in the Christmas in the run-up to the Christmas season in the run-up to Megxit. And the Queen was vitriolic about Meghan. She’s she thought that she was and I can’t use the words, but let me put it this way. If you like jam tarts and if you like things about the street or and if you like the Queen was devastatingly or pejorative about Meghan as an individual and as a character.
And I had to clean it up for legal reasons in my book. But the Queen saw through Meghan. The Queen was absolutely furious with Meghan. And the Queen at that Christmas before this was before Meghan had actually had the unmitigated gall to say that the Queen doesn’t own the word royal. And the Queen could not believe that she had given this girl this scrubber with the most appalling reputation that she had given her an opportunity.
And she had believed that because Meghan had a allowed her to believe that she wanted to join the team and work as a royal and do good as a royal. And she felt utterly betrayed that she had been manipulated the way she had by Meghan. And she also felt betrayed that Harry had been manipulated and that Harry had voluntarily jumped on the bandwagon and slit the Queen’s throat.
>> Indeed. Uh Lady C, are you suggesting that the late Queen thought Meghan Markle was a bit of a tart? >> Was a what? >> Bit of a tart. >> Uh I don’t remember how I cleaned it up in the book because I had to clean it up for legal reasons. I I don’t remember the right I’d have to look at because it we had to change the the the wording.
But uh yes, the Queen thought that Meghan was an operator who used her attributes and had used them very successfully where Harry was concerned and uh where other men were concerned as well. I mean, the Queen knew that Meghan had been around the block several times. I mean, do you remember the Queen’s expression during that wedding ceremony? I mean, thunder would have been more lightweight than the Queen’s expression.
Yeah, she thought she she knew what Meghan was and she was privately and I need to skirt around these issues, Jan, to protect you as well because for legal reasons. The Queen The Queen knew exactly what Meghan was and at the time of Megxit she had a large part of her mission and after Megxit she had an even larger part of her mission.
And by the time the Queen died, she knew exactly what she was dealing with. She She was horrified by the Oprah interview, but she was also horrified by the total callousness that both Harry and Meghan showed in saying [snorts] that they believed that the that the royal family was allowing Prince Philip to fake his obvious demise so to keep them from broadcasting that show.
I mean, can you imagine how betrayed she felt? I mean, this was a grandson that she had loved and done all and and by the way, also, one of the things she also objected to, I understand, is that is the lies that Harry and Meghan were broadcasting through their agents that that they had unlimited and perpetual access to her and that they would be phoning her up and zooming her and the children and all the rest.
It’s All of that was absolutely, according to people the Queen told, totally untrue. They were simply abusing their relationship with her and she knew it. Why do you think she absolutely refused to have any photographs of herself with that child Lily or any other photographs of herself with Archie.
There are no photographs of the Queen. And she was also furious about the whole surrogacy business and all of the speculation and all of the antics surrounding that. She thought the whole thing stank to high heaven, but there was not but her hands were tied not only legally but morally. Let’s remember the Queen was the supreme governor of the Church of England.
She was not only a queen, she also had a religious role to fulfill and she was a devout Christian. But she don’t think for one second she didn’t bitterly, and the word is bitterly, resent the way she and her position were being abused by Harry and Meghan. >> Absolutely, very, very, very powerfully put, Lady C.
And I think the fact that there was never a picture of her with her so-called namesake is something that will haunt Prince Harry and Meghan Markle forever because it just proves what these insiders were all telling you. Now, let me go through what these new courtiers and friends have told Tom Sykes in The Daily Beast. He’s the European editor-at-large, very well-connected man.
One source, a former courtier, told The Daily Beast, “Ultimately, the queen felt betrayed by Harry. And when he and Meghan attacked the institution that she spent her whole life serving in the Oprah interview, that betrayal was complete. It was absolutely shocking to those of us that knew him that he would do that, not least because her husband was on his deathbed.
” The former staffer told The Royalist, “The allegations of racism dismayed the queen. To accuse an unidentified person within the family of racism, thereby casting the shadow of suspicion over everyone, was unforgivable in her eyes. That was what ultimately prompted her to issue the recollections may vary statement.
Things were never the same after that. It was a horrific series of betrayals at the end of her life.” Another friend of the royals told The Daily Beast, “You have to remember that the Queen was seriously ill for several years with bone cancer. She knew she was dying. She could hardly see. She could hardly stand. She could hardly move.
And then she was completely let down by her grandson. It was utterly devastating for her.” And a friend of Prince William and Catherine, the Princess of Wales, told the Daily Beast, “The family, of course, all blame Meghan 100%. As Sally Bedell Smith’s column made clear, he ain’t the sharpest tool in the box, and they feel he was completely manipulated, and that Meghan saw him and realized she could become the most famous person in the world.
Then the reality of what their boring royal life would be like sank in, and she decided to ruthlessly milk it for all it was worth. That is their view.” The friend of William and Catherine added, “The family think it is a rerun of what happened with Wallis Simpson, and the only solution is to follow the same playbook.
Exile worked before, and it will work again.” So, Lady C, lots of fascinating things to pick up on there, but the first thing I just want to ask you about is this friend of the late Queen. And I think it’s stark the way that they describe exactly how difficult it was for the late Queen in her dying days. Now, of course, we knew how much she was suffering at the time.
We all wanted to respect the fact that she didn’t want the public to know just how bad her cancer was, just how bad her eyesight was, just how bad her walking was. You know, she didn’t want people to see her that way. But the fact that friends of the Royals are now coming out and saying, “That was her reality.” paints a very, very stark picture of just how revolting what Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were putting her through really was.
>> Yes, well done. I’m sure you know that Tom Sykes is a friend of mine. >> Yes, he’s a very very connected guy, isn’t he? >> He’s very well connected. The Sykes’ is all one of the great aristocratic English families and his father used to spend every weekend down here with me after he was widowed.
And he I know how well connected he is and everything and Tom is absolutely reliable and trustworthy. And everything that he is now saying, of course, is a variation of what I’ve been saying all along because I have although I don’t ask him for his sources and he doesn’t ask me for mine, it is possible that if they’re not crossovers, they’re all certainly they’re all from the same world, let’s put it this way.
From from the royal world and the aristocratic world where people have been talking for some considerable length of time. And and the Queen made her her sentiments very clear to very many people. And I am delighted that it’s all coming out now. But it was never going to come out before now because notice the timing. The timing of all of this is following the Hollywood Reporter and Vanity Fair exposes.
Until the until certain people regarded it as safe, they kept they they were perfectly prepared to have have me being a lone wolf in in the wilderness with you and one or two other people saying this, but they were not prepared to back it up until they knew that the tide had turned and that Meghan and Harry were being exposed for the traitors, the treacherous, really rather cruel and nasty people that they have shown themselves to be.
So, so let’s be quite clear about why it’s happening now, but it is happening and I am delighted it’s happening. And it shows that that the the way the poor queen was treated was abominable, absolutely abominable. And indeed, uh I don’t I don’t know if you remember, but I’m the person who actually uh made the announcement of the Queen’s death.
>> Yes. >> it at 4:00 and Buckingham Palace then was they were supposed to do it at 6:00 and they did it at 6:32 if I remember correctly. Back then 6:31. Because of shilly-shallying with Harry. But I was approached and then I had the dilemma and I checked with various, shall we say, people. And it we there was a great concern that that Meghan was going to exploit the situation and come out with some of one of her nonsensical, but very damaging and destructive announcements like I’ve been abandoned and left here alone
because I’m a proud, confident woman of color and star of Suits and they don’t want me because I’m I’ve I’ve I’ve got black blood, and I’m not allowed to be at granny’s bedside. Well, everybody knows that I was granny’s favorite granddaughter and granddaughter-in-law. And to prevent her from doing that, it was recommended to me that I announce it.
So, once I had announced the Queen’s death, Meghan was not going to be able to say, “I >> [laughter] >> I I I I’ve had her.” And And so, we blocked her beautifully. >> [laughter] >> Absolutely [snorts] fascinating, and what history. Now, Lady C >> But, do you know, Daphne, may I may I say >> Please. Please. >> It shows to what extent the poor royal family and the royal establishment have been hemmed in by Meghan Markle’s malice.
>> Yes. >> And her her resourcefulness, and her imaginativeness, and her total lack of scruple, that this woman will do anything to to grab column inches for herself, and has done anything. You know, can you imagine the enormity of encouraging a beloved grandson to to accuse his dying grandfather of faking an illness [clears throat] uh resulting in his death, so that Meghan wasn’t able to lie and say that the royal family was racist, and they were depriving Archie of a title because he had some black blood in him, when indeed
his title was was once he was declared legitimate, he had a title from the word go, which was Earl of Dumbarton. And, you know, if you if you actually stop and think about the things Meghan Markle has said, and the lies she has told, and the lies she has got away with, and how the mainstream media just swallowed it whole because they thought, “Oh, well, you know, uh we’re going to run with this whether we accept it as fact or not.
” I mean, the whole thing has been a scandal, not only in terms of Meghan Markle’s uh destructive behavior, but in terms of the remiss and and negligent behavior until recently of the mainstream media. >> 100%. >> Lady Colin Campbell has long been one of the most outspoken royal commentators. In her latest remarks, she suggested that Queen Elizabeth had become increasingly frustrated with the Sussexes following their departure from royal duties.
Lady C claims the Queen initially welcomed Meghan into the family and hoped she would become an active and successful working royal. According to her account, the Queen believed Meghan wanted to contribute positively to the institution. However, Lady C alleges that over time, the Queen’s opinion changed dramatically as tensions increased behind the scenes.
These are significant claims because they paint a very different picture from the public image often presented during the early years of Harry and Meghan’s royal journey. One of the biggest themes emerging from these reports is trust. Several commentators have argued that the Oprah interview, the Netflix series, and Prince Harry’s memoir created a deep sense of mistrust within royal circles.
According to these accounts, Queen Elizabeth was reportedly troubled by the public airing of private family matters. Critics of the Sussexes argue that these projects caused lasting damage to relationships inside the monarchy. Supporters, however, maintain that Harry and Meghan were simply telling their side of the story after feeling unsupported by the institution.
Regardless of which perspective viewers agree with, there is little doubt that trust became one of the defining issues of the royal family conflict. A question many viewers are asking is simple. Why are these stories emerging now? Some commentators believe that people who remained silent while Queen Elizabeth was alive feel more comfortable speaking openly today.
Others argue that renewed public interest in Harry and Meghan continues to create demand for insider revelations. Whatever the reason, it is clear that the battle over public perception has not ended. Years after Megxit, new claims, counterclaims, and royal revelations continue to dominate headlines around the world. So, what can we take away from all of this? Lady Colin Campbell has made some of her strongest claims yet regarding Queen Elizabeth’s alleged feelings toward Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.
According to her account, the late Queen felt disappointed, frustrated, and increasingly concerned by the controversies surrounding the Sussexes. However, many of these claims remain based on insider reports, personal recollections, and commentary rather than official confirmation. As always, viewers will have to decide for themselves which accounts they find most convincing.
What do you think? Do you believe these latest revelations accurately reflect the late Queen’s private views, or are they simply part of the ongoing debate surrounding Harry and Meghan? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. And if you enjoyed this analysis, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and turn on notifications so you never miss our latest royal news and commentary updates.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next video.
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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