Queen Elizabeth II, 1926-2022 –  Hw

queen elizabeth ii of the uk and commonwealth realms has died after a reign of 70 years 214 days her majesty passed away at her balmoral estate in scotland on the afternoon of september 8 2022 she was 96 years old because of her deterioration of health her family had been called to her bedside and she was surrounded by them when she died her son charles is now king and his wife camilla has officially been called queen consort by the palace they will remain at balmoral tonight and return to london in the morning where the ascension council

will declare him king and announce what his regal name will be elizabeth was the longest reigning monarch in british history and lived near the center of many significant events in the last century her life has spanned a world war the end of the british empire 14 british prime ministers countless social political and technological changes and royal family upheavals four out of five britons were not alive before elizabeth was queen let’s take a look at her remarkable life elizabeth was born on april 21st 1926 at

the london home of her maternal grandparents her father prince albert duke of york known as birdie was the second son of king george v and her mother elizabeth bose lyon was the daughter of a minor scottish aristocrat after a difficult pregnancy baby elizabeth had to be delivered by emergency cesarean section a procedure which was far less common than it is today bertie wrote to a cousin about his newborn daughter she is too delicious and is such a great joy to us both elizabeth is progressing wonderfully well and the baby is flourishing the

baby princess was baptized at buckingham palace and named elizabeth after her mother alexandra after king george v mother who had died six months earlier and mary after her paternal grandmother who was queen consort at the time she lived a quiet happy life with her parents who preferred to raise her in a flat in london rather than at a royal palace as a toddler she had trouble pronouncing her own name so called herself lilibit which remained a pet name within the family she was especially adored by her grandfather king george v whom she

affectionately called grandpa england at four lillibit was joined by a younger sister margaret she also arrived via cesarean section and after both difficult deliveries the duke and duchess decided that their family was complete with their two cherished daughters there wasn’t much pressure on them to produce a male heir as at the time everyone assumed that birdie’s older brother prince edward would marry and someday pass the throne to his own sons though king george may have had an inkling of what was to come he remarked

i pray to god that my eldest son will never marry and have children and that nothing will come between birdie and lillibit on the throne elizabeth and margaret were educated at home by their mother and governess at the time aristocratic girls were not sent to school the duchess’s own education had ended when she was 13.

but despite this limitation she was a bright and curious woman who read voraciously she tutored her daughters in history language literature and music both girls were doted on by their parents who presented them with a pembroke welsh corgi named dookie the first of many pet dogs elizabeth would adore margaret inherited her mother’s devotion-winning charm and spontaneity and became quite a mischief maker while elizabeth took after her more reserved shy and formal royal side winston churchill said of the two-year-old

princess she has an air of authority and reflectiveness astonishing in an infant her cousin described her as a jolly little girl but fundamentally sensible and well behaved elizabeth particularly resembled her paternal grandmother in both appearance and temperament queen mary was always more devoted to her royal duties than her children but she was a far better grandmother than mother in january 1936 when elizabeth was nine years old her grandfather king george v died and her uncle became king edward viii from the start the new monarch

obstinately refused to take his role seriously he often left secret government documents lying around his country house for party guests to peruse edward was obsessed with an american wallace simpson who because she was divorced would not be accepted as his wife and queen by the government church or the british people within a year of his ascension edward used wallace as a romantic excuse to give up the job he had always dreaded he abdicated the throne left the country and married wallace he never considered or even consulted

his younger brother bertie about dumping the crown on his head when bertie told his mother of the abdication he broke down and sobbed like a child he was a desperately shy man and suffered a severe stutter he was worried that he was unequal to the task but unlike his brother he had a strong sense of morality and duty and took up the heavy mantle of monarchy becoming king george vi he was crowned in westminster abbey on may 12 1937 the date which had been planned for his brother’s coronation young elizabeth thus became the heir

presumptive according to the succession laws of the time if her parents did have a son then he would overtake elizabeth’s place in the line to the throne so with that slim possibility she was never officially heir apparent for this same reason she was never made princess of wales the traditional title of the heir apparent and she was never made princess royal because her aunt princess mary was holding that title but within the family it was now clear that ten-year-old elizabeth would someday be queen in 1939 the now royal family of four

toured the royal naval college at dartmouth a dashing 18 year old cadet prince philip of greece and denmark was assigned to escort 13 year old princess elizabeth and her younger sister during the tour he was their third cousin through queen victoria and second cousin through king christian ix of denmark elizabeth was smitten and she and philip began exchanging letters as the young naval officer was shipped off to fight in world war ii despite their hesitations george vi and elizabeth were an exceptional king and

queen and became exceedingly popular during the war they toured the country extensively visiting bombed neighborhoods and munitions factories to boost morale queen elizabeth was so revered that hitler called her the most dangerous woman in europe the couple remained in london even after buckingham palace was bombed and they narrowly escaped with their lives after a nazi plot to kidnap princesses elizabeth and margaret was uncovered the prime minister recommended that the girls be evacuated to canada but their

mother refused stating the children won’t go without me i won’t leave without the king and the king will never leave they did decide to send the girls to the safer location of windsor castle 25 miles outside of london and close enough for them to visit their daughters on weekends elizabeth and margaret remained at windsor for five years the wartime castle was dark and depressing as was most of the nation but the princesses did their best to keep up morale they staged christmas pantomimes for the local children and raised money for the

queen’s wool fund which made warm winter garments for soldiers at 14 elizabeth made her first radio broadcast during bbc’s children’s hour she addressed and encouraged other children to be brave during terrifying air raids and evacuations from their homes at 19 elizabeth became a driver and mechanic for the women’s auxiliary territorial service the women’s branch of the british military on may 8 1945 the nazis were defeated and the bloodiest war in human history finally came to an end teenage elizabeth and margaret were

granted permission by their parents to go out on the streets of london incognito and celebrate with the people elizabeth recalled later lines of unknown people linking arms and walking down whitehall all of us just swept along on the tide of happiness and relief all this time elizabeth had been corresponding with philip who was now a lieutenant and a decorated war hero once back in the uk he reconnected with elizabeth and their childhood friendship blossomed into a romance her parents were not enthusiastic about

the match philip was a prince without a country he was a descendant of the greek royal family who had been exiled when he was a baby though philip had been raised primarily in the uk by his british grandmother his four sisters had been raised in germany and two of his brothers-in-law were nazis in the summer of 1947 philip asked the king for his daughter’s hand in marriage george agreed but requested that the announcement be delayed until elizabeth’s 21st birthday the following april in the meantime philip renounced

his greek and danish royal titles converted to anglicanism and officially took the surname mountbatten from his british relatives to distract their daughter the king and queen brought her with them on a state visit to south africa there they attempted it to promote unity amidst growing tensions between black and white people during the tour princess elizabeth took the opportunity to give a speech swearing her loyalty to the service of her people the tour was grueling and the goal of unity was a failure a year later the

africana nationalist party took over the country and established apartheid around the world the once vast british empire was changing with many former colonies declaring independence king george accepted with grace the disillusion relinquishing his various foreign titles of emperor and king and taking up the new title of head of the commonwealth with pride elizabeth and philip were married in westminster abbey on the morning of november 20th 1947.

as britain was still enduring poverty and rationing after the war the government advised a low-key wedding elizabeth bought the silk for her dress with war ration coupons but the people were thrilled to have something to celebrate after the many years of hardship the happy couple spent their honeymoon at balmoral castle in scotland they brought elizabeth’s corgi susan with them they then took up residence at clarence house the traditional london home of the heir to the throne since king william iv six days before their first anniversary

elizabeth gave birth to their first child charles king george issued letters patent allowing elizabeth’s children to use the style and title of royal prince or princess as female line descendants they were not automatically entitled to this rite philip was still a naval officer and was posted several times to the british colony of malta the couple left charles with his grandparents and enjoyed some of the most carefree times of their marriage on the mediterranean island elizabeth was free from the pressure of

the royal family and able to live a simpler life as the wife of a naval officer attending beach parties and dances in 1950 they welcomed their second child anne king george was diagnosed with lung cancer after years of smoking and stress as his health began to decline elizabeth as his heir took up more royal duties these many duties kept elizabeth away from her children and young charles once didn’t recognize his mother she had a nursery train car outfitted so that charles and ann could travel with her at least while she was in britain

in 1952 it was decided that the king was too ill to undertake an extensive tour of the commonwealth so elizabeth and philip were sent in his place george waived his daughter farewell at the airport went to the sandringham estate with his wife and daughter margaret and died a few days later in kenya elizabeth and philip had just returned from a camping trip when word of the king’s death reached them philip broke the news gently to his wife who was heartbroken as the heir automatically ascends the throne upon the death of the monarch she had already

been queen for several hours without knowing it when asked what her regal name would be she replied elizabeth of course and so she became elizabeth ii following the 16th century queen of the same name both were 25 when their reigns began many scots were unhappy with the title of their new queen as scotland had not been united with england until the reign of james the first and sixth after the death of elizabeth the first so the new queen was actually the first queen elizabeth of scotland she returned immediately to the uk to

attend her father’s funeral and to take up her new role as sovereign on the 2nd of june 1953 elizabeth walked into westminster abbey decked in the centuries-old crown jewels and regalia and took the solemn coronation oath hers was the first coronation to be televised and spurred thousands to buy their first tvs philip now officially at prince consort organized much of the ceremony in the uk the husbands of queens regnend or queens in their own right are barred from taking the title king but queen victoria had taken her

husband’s last name of soxy koberg and gotha philip’s uncle louis mountbatten made toast to the new mountbatten dynasty but prime minister winston churchill advised elizabeth to keep the royal name windsor philip privately complained that he was the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his own children they had a conventional 1950s marriage and philip was uncomfortable playing a subordinate role to his wife in public in compensation elizabeth let phillip call the shots when it came to their

children and he was often harsh on charles he insisted that his son attend his own alma mater gordenstein a spartan boarding school in northern scotland charles was miserable and bullied there queen elizabeth was soon inundated with the many royal duties demanding her attention as a constitutional monarch the government is formed in her name but she is barred from expressing political opinion publicly she is still very much involved in the background she receives daily red boxes filled with reports on the goings-on of the nation and she

meets weekly with the prime minister during which she may advise and warn when necessary twice in 1957 and 1963 elizabeth was required to appoint a prime minister as the conservative party had no formal mechanism for electing a leader of its own both times she was criticized for her choice and the party has since amended their practices to keep the queen above politics following the coronation elizabeth and philip embarked on a seven-month tour of the commonwealth elizabeth became the face of the commonwealth around the

world and not just on stamps with the jet age she has been able to go into dozens of countries in person on state visits she is the head of state of the 16 nations in the commonwealth realms the realms are part of the commonwealth of nations a political affiliation of 53 nations former british colonies who do not recognize the queen as head of state the queen was discouraged from visiting ghana in 1961 as her host president kwame nkrumah was a target of assassination elizabeth dismissed fears for her own safety and went on the trip

anyway winning over ghana and preventing unkuma from allying with the soviet union and giving them a foothold in africa the queen continued to have a close but complex relationship with her sister margaret she wished to marry peter townsend a divorcee 16 years her senior elizabeth was head of the church of england which did not permit divorcees to remarry so she continuously put off granting her sister permission to marry until margaret had no choice but to give townsend up margaret later married a more acceptable match photographer

anthony armstrong jones whom the queen created earl of snowden the couple had a tumultuous relationship and elizabeth was often a surrogate mother and steadying force to her nephew david and niece sarah elizabeth and philip had their own rough patch in the late 1950s in 1956 philip went on a tour without his wife aboard the royal yacht britannia during which he opened the 1956 summer olympic games in australia rumors of infidelity followed the prince but by 1960 a decade after the birth of princess anne the couple had patched things up and added

to their family with the birth of prince andrew prince edward followed in 1964. in 1966 a mining disaster in the welsh village of aberfan cost the lives of 144 people most of them children prince philip visited the village the next day but the queen hesitated for a week she feared that her visit would distract from recovery efforts but her lack of response was considered callous and is now one of the biggest regrets of her reign in 1969 the queen’s eldest child charles was invested as prince of wales in a fanciful ceremony at carnarvon castle

the 1970s and 80s were difficult decades for the monarchy for a thousand years the institution had for the most part been treated with great respect but as the nation experienced a devastating recession more and more britons were questioning the place of the archaic monarchy in the modern world punk band the sex pistols released the song god save the queen a searing criticism of her majesty in 1977 during her silver jubilee celebration despite being banned on bbc radio the song became a huge hit and reached number two on the uk singles chart in

1981 while riding her horse during her birthday trooping of the colors elizabeth was shot at six times at close range she was shot at again in new zealand a few months later in 1982 the queen woke up to find a strange man in her bedroom at buckingham palace after a short chat with the man she called for security throughout the 70s prince charles had an affair with a vivacious young woman named camilla but it became clear that the royal family would not accept a marriage between them camilla wasn’t from the right sort of family royals

pressured her to marry her old boyfriend andrew parker-bowles but she and the prince continued an on off relationship even as charles married the woman hand-picked for him diana spencer she was demure and beautiful a fairy tale princess but the public didn’t see the unhappiness in her marriage until later on her honeymoon charles was more interested in reading than in his new bride he tried to stay away from camilla at first but they rekindled their affair the queen had very little sympathy for her lonely daughter-in-law as she had

been born into royalty she couldn’t relate to how difficult it was for diana to transition from a private life to constant royal duties and media scrutiny diana became incredibly popular with the people both for her glamour and for her charity work so as the unhappiness of their marriage was exposed charles and camilla got the blame that same year in 1992 two of the queen’s other children split up with their partners princess anne’s husband mark phillips was discovered to have fathered a child by another woman and anne’s love letters

to another man were published prince andrew’s marriage to sarah ferguson also hit the rocks sarah was unhappy being left alone for months at a time while andrew served as a naval pilot again the queen couldn’t sympathize as her time as a naval wife had been the happiest of her life sarah was photographed sunbathing topless while her financial manager sucked her toes and the marriage ended soon after the queen called 1992 her honest horribilists or horrible year because on top of all the drama with her children

her favorite home and namesake windsor castle caught fire and was partially destroyed when it was announced that taxpayers would foot the repair bills the public was outraged the queen was already exempt from paying tax on her massive fortune on top of receiving millions of pounds a year from the government the queen finally conceded that she would pay income tax and pay allowances to minor royals from her own pocket the amount of taxpayer funds the british royals receive how much private wealth they actually have and what

political influence they may have used to protect it remain controversial in 1997 diana was killed in a car crash in paris while being chased by paparazzi at the time elizabeth was on holiday at balmoral castle with her grandsons william and harry the outpouring of grief around the world was enormous but was met with silence from the queen who remained hidden for over a week she was more concerned with supporting her grandsons who had just lost their mother but her lack of public response was seen as cold-hearted and out of touch

in 2002 elizabeth celebrated her golden jubilee marking 50 years on the throne later that year she lost both her mother at 101 and her sister margaret at 71. in 2005 charles was finally able to marry the woman he had loved all along camilla charles’s eldest son prince william married university friend and commoner catherine middleton their glamorous wedding and popularity have gone a long way to win back the hearts of the public just before the birth of their first child a new succession to the crown act was passed changing from male preference

primogeniture to absolute primogeniture which gives daughters equal importance to sons in the line of succession prince andrew came under fire for his friendship with sex trafficker jeffrey epstein and was accused of having sex with an underage girl he has since been asked to step out of the public eye and has given up all of his charity patronages charles’s second son prince harry announced that he and his wife american actress meghan markle would be stepping down as senior members of the royal family their explosive interview with

oprah winfrey carefully praised the queen but accusations of racism and ignoring megan’s distressed mental health were levied against unnamed members of the royal family on april 9 2021 prince philip the queen’s husband and companion of 73 years died just two months shy of his 100th birthday he was laid to rest at windsor castle despite the many scandals among the british royal family the 96 year old queen remained popular though she had a reputation for formality and a stiff upper lip she was renowned for her

personal touch and her good sense of humor she was also noted for her brightly colored outfits and matching hats this was a fashion she adopted from her mother who felt that she should be easy to spot in a crowd in 2022 elizabeth celebrated her 70-year platinum jubilee queen elizabeth died peacefully on the afternoon of september 8 2022 surrounded by her family the united kingdom and commonwealth realms now has a new king if you enjoyed this video please like subscribe comment your thoughts and check out my other royal history videos

if you really want to help please consider supporting me on patreon a link is in the description thank you for watching

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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