I knew in 2018 that Queen Elizabeth II hated Meghan Markle. Now, that’s a strong word to use. I appreciate. But you will remember I was the first in the world, the first in the world to report the fact that the now late queen was horrified by the way the fake duchess was acting in the run-up to her wedding.
At that point, the royal wrote were completely on side with Harry and Megan. At that point, there was no sense that they were going to report how the queen really felt in that moment at Windsor Castle. But I felt the world had a right to know. So that’s why I hope you trust me when I say that these new reports coming out about exactly how the queen felt, even though it’s 8 years after the fact, mean something.
They are part of history because what it shows you is that the late Queen Elizabeth II had worked out the truth about Ms. Markle before any of the mainstream media were on to this and trust me it was nothing to do with racism. Britney from the Royal News Network joins me now. Britney, we’re going to do a deep dive today into exactly how the Queen felt about Meghan Markle.
And when I say she hated her, I know some people will think that is a strong word, Britney, but I just want to explain what I mean. Because she certainly didn’t hate Meghan Markle when she first met her. In fact, she welcomed her with open arms. She tried to give Megan access to her main advisers, some of the closest people in her world.
But by the time of the wedding, by the time that she had figured out that this was a woman who was marrying into the royal family, not for love, Britney, not for love, but to further her own career, and when she saw, and this I think is the key point for me, when she saw the way that this woman had changed her grandson forever, had destroyed the relationship between brothers, had destroyed the relationship between sister-in-law and brother, That’s when she had had enough.
So again, I know it’s a strong word, Britney, but what is your take on this emergence of, I would say, really key evidence, not just from Lady Elizabeth Anom, uh, the late Queen’s Kenm, but also other people that we’ll get into in just a moment through this new piece and reporting from Richard Kay and the Daily Mail.
But to me, it is starting to now back up the sort of contemporaneous reporting that I was doing at the time in 2018. 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. Well, it’s I think so great to have these stories coming out yet again because it’s important to go over sort of how Megan responded to the royal family and how many divisions and conflicts that she was causing because Megan has really really tried to paint
herself as the victim in the scenario when in fact she has been the villain in this whole royal family saga. And so I I really like that these stories are coming out and reiterating some of the reporting that you had done and that kind of grew over time and shows that in many ways despite Megan Markle’s claims to the contrary, there were aspects of the press that were trying to protect her.
But unfortunately, her behavior was so abhorent that it just would not last forever. And Megan is seeing the results of that all the time. and she’s trying still desperately, desperately to rehab her image. And because if you look at everything that happened and her interactions with the queen and Charles and William and Catherine and everyone really Megan, despite all the money she’s throwing at PR, will never resolve anything without, I think, reconciling with the royal family.
Unfortunately, she cannot reconcile with Queen Elizabeth. But I think Queen, her majesty, just saw Megan and just knew that and felt after a while that Megan was just marrying into the royal family for all the wrong reasons. >> And Richard K, who is the editor at large of the Daily Mail, a longtime royal reporter, he was of course a confidant of Princess Diana.
And I guess I would describe him as an establishment royal reporter. So he will tend to write about things when the royal family are ready for him to do so. And this new piece, Britney, I think it’s quite fascinating. We can go through it and analyze as we go, but it’s headlined, when Queen uh heard it was Harry on the phone, there was stony silence.
Peerless royal expert Richard Case sensationally tells for the first time exactly how Prince and Megan blew relationship with his grandmother. And what’s so interesting, Britney, is that headline has actually come via the telefanist at Buckingham Palace. And I love this. I love this because so often, Britney, it is those what do people call them? You know, they’re not they’re the backroom staff.
Do you know what I mean? I hate the term servants that in the back in the day, Britney, they would have been called the servants, but you know, they are the backroom staff who very much know how the royal family tick. They are uber loyal. But it was this quite small detail, Britney, that the telefanist picked up which just showed how much the late queen didn’t want to speak to me and I found it fascinating.
But let’s go through it, Britney, and just interrupt uh when you’ve got things to add. So, Richard Kay writes, “Just the other day, a former Buckingham Palace switchboard operator was reminiscing about working for the late Queen Elizabeth. One afternoon, a call had come through from Prince Harry in the US, and he wanted to speak to his grandmother.
The procedure was to ring the queen’s private number and let her know who was on the line. She would always thank you and then you would connect the call and leave them to the conversation. The operator recalled. But on this occasion, she did not. When I announced to the queen that Harry was her caller, there was just a stony silence.
In fact, it was so uncomfortable that I filled the silence myself by saying, “Thank you, your majesty.” And then connected there. And Britney, given we now know >> that the tone and the tenor of these phone conversations between Harry and the late queen, and I have to give credit, by the way, to Angela 11, who has always consistently reported here on Outspoken that Harry used to yell at the late Queen in these conversations.
It makes so much sense. >> Yes. And I’m sure she knew as well that when he was calling, it was just never anything good. He wanted something. He wanted to complain about something. Like it was not a call that she ever looked forward to. And and knowing my grandparents, they love it when I call. And so if you’re getting to the point where your your grandmother doesn’t really want to take your call and feels forced to, that’s just such a bad sign.
But I can completely and utterly imagine her majesty on the other end of that phone going, “Golly, what mess is he wanting me to clean up now? What do him and his wife want? like I’ve give tried to give them everything and they’re never satisfied. And not to mention the fact that they still now use their kids as a weapon against Charles not letting him see them and not coming to the UK with them.
And so and Harry demanding security that they can’t they can’t actually give him like that’s not their their power to do. And I just feel for the queen so much there that she used to have this wonderful relationship with Harry. And as we’ve heard as well from Lady Elizabeth that he blew it up. He blew it up for his his wife because he was a weak man and was more than willing to be led around her by her and it’s resulted in a catastrophic disaster that has consumed his life.
>> Well indeed. And Richard Kay goes on, “This incident happened during the co pandemic, a time of considerable anxiety for the queen. Her increasingly frail husband, Prince Philip, was nearing the end of his life, and the fallout from Harry and Megan’s decision to abandon Britain for a life of pampered exile had triggered a series of royal crises.
Even so, the telephonist has never forgotten the moment, telling me it was memorable because the queen would never not acknowledge you to this longstanding and loyal servant.” There’s that word, Britney. I just still don’t like it. I’m sorry. I don’t I don’t like it. We’re in 2025. But there you go.
The absence of the usual courtesy was a direct result of the tensions and discord sewn by the prince and his wife. Then he moves on to talk about Lady Elizabeth Anom and these incredible revelations that have come directly from not just the Queen’s late cousin, but also her BFF. And one of Lady Elizabeth’s personal assistants has said to Richard she was rightly proud of her closeness to the Queen, but she was also very discreet and highly respectful.
And Richard Kay goes on to report, “Nevertheless, it is that closeness and the Queen’s reported views about the troublesome Sussexes, which is crucial. After all, it is the question we all want to know the answer to. What did Elizabeth and indeed Philip really think of Harry’s bride? Did she even like her? And how did her affection for her grandson to whom she was once devoted end up souring to the point where Lady Elizabeth confidently described the relationship with his grandmother as blown? Accounts of the drama surrounding the couple’s Windsor
Castle wedding, their subsequent departure, and the fallout between Harry and his brother, Prince William, are not new. And Harry, of course, has written a version of these events in his memoir, Spare, which conveniently skates over suggestions that his relationship with his grandmother and her staff was anything less than serene.
What has been missing have been the views of those they left behind amid the wreckage of Mexit. Thanks to convention and a reluctance to play the couple at their own game, the Windsores have largely concealed their hurt behind a grimfaced royal rectitude. Initially, both Lady Elizabeth and the Queen were fans of the articulate and confident 36-year-old American actress who had won the prince’s heart.
According to Bidal Smith, Lisa thought Megan po Me Megan poised, very natural, intelligent, and thoughtful, but added that she was clearly brighter than Harry and has to be careful not to overshadow him. Does this chime with the Queen’s view? Richard K reports, “I believe it does. When Harry first took Megan to to tea with his grandmother at the palace, a footman told me at the time that the queen beamed at her staff telling them how much she liked her.
But when Lady Elizabeth made suggestions about the wedding, the actress, while full of charm, was unforthcoming. Harry subsequently wrote to this veteran of royal suarees, explaining that they were going another way, adding, “I am close to my grandmother and she is content with this.” So Britney, that is critical, I think, to the historical point here because of course what Megan wants the world to believe and let’s just call it as it is, what she wants the world to believe is that this disdain towards her was coming from
racism. And I’m very concerned, Britney, that that’s something that in the decades to come, if woke comes back, is something that could take hold. And the thing is the late Queen Elizabeth II was the least racist woman on earth. I mean look at her work in the Commonwealth. Look at the people who she loved most Britney you know outside of her own immediate family.
It was a lot of the leaders in Africa and it was a lot of the leaders throughout the Caribbean. Okay. So to suggest that this woman is racist is absolutely absurd. And so I think this is what’s important about this history here and something that has been a little bit missed in the reporting of this. It’s not just like the late queen met Megan and didn’t like her. She loved her. She was beaming.
She thought this woman was great. It was Megan’s behavior that changed the way the late queen felt about her. >> Yes. And when it comes to how Megan really was absolutely atrocious in the leadup to her wedding, that is what soured so many on her. But I think the queen, like you could say many people, initially they meet Megan, they think she’s great.
But after a while, sort of the charm that Megan puts on, I think starts to reveal itself as sort of false to people. They start reading into it going, I just don’t know if she’s being truthful here or not. And as Megan became so demanding in the leadup to the wedding, I mean, to be to be quite frank, like Harry’s book said, she was marrying the spare.
And yet, Megan wanted to be treated like the queen. She didn’t want to put any of her ideas past the monarch. She wanted to keep her dress secret allegedly. and and so many different things that Megan just showed throughout the whole process of the leadup to the wedding that she had zero respect for not only Harry but his grandmother, his father, the institution that she was supposed to represent and marry into.
And I think her majesty felt that. I think they all did. And I actually think the whole royal family was actually very thrilled that Megan had this mixed race heritage because it helped with the Commonwealth. And that’s why she made them the president and the vice president of the Queen’s Commonwealth trust is that I think she really loved that and loved what that meant for the future.
But it was Megan’s character that’s always the issue. You know, you can always go back to the Martin Luther King quote. You want to be judged by the content of your character, not the the content of your skin. And what’s basically happened to Megan is that we judge her based on her character. And she has shown that over the years, and it’s been reiterated again and again through reports and reports of alleged bullying and bad behavior behind the scenes, that Megan is not the perfect saintly image that she tries to appear to be, but that she
is actually, in my personal opinion, not so great a person. And that’s what the royal family came to believe rather quickly. They were probably hoping that her diva behavior was just for the wedding and that it would, you know, once they were married, it would dissipate, but it just got worse. And they wanted to they and they gave Harry what he wanted despite their reservations.
And so that Harry and Megan complain at all about the royal family’s treatment of them is just an absolute joke. And Richard Kay goes on uh reporting that Lady Elizabeth Ansom had said, “When I spoke with the queen, she said she is not at all content.” Plainly upset, the socialite added what turned out to be a prophetic observation.
Megan could turn into nothing but trouble, she sees things in a different way. By now, the Queen was also dismayed at developments. She was upset that Harry had asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to officiate the wedding without first obtaining the permission of the dean of Windsor, the cleric in charge of the church where the ceremony was to be held.
As a high society event planner herself, Lady Elizabeth understood only too well. What an embarrassing situation this put the queen in. Harry seems to think the queen can do what she wants, but she can’t. She told Beetlesmith. On the religious side, it is the dean of Windsor’s jurisdiction. As a result, Lady Elizabeth told the writer Harry has blown his relationship with his grandmother.
This failure to follow protocols had made the queen really upset. She said she was shocked when the queen told her how much this had saddened her in her blog, her Substack, her amazing substack. Beetlesmith quotes Lady Elizabeth saying that Harry was rude to the queen for 10 minutes. This the this uh sorry this originated in a polite inquiry from the queen about the wedding dress and Megan wouldn’t tell her.
Her distress was not just at the lack of cander and bad manners of the couple but the lack of respect shown as a monarch. Towards the end of April with the ceremony only 8 weeks away Harry and the queen were said by her confidant to have patched things up. She told the prince that she felt left out of the wedding plans and her grandson subsequently wrote her a letter about what was happening.
Asked if Megan was being bossy, Lady Elizabeth told Beetle Smith, “So I gather very much so.” The implication is that this must have been relayed to her by the Queen. 2 weeks before the wedding, the hurt had clearly returned to her majesty and with it the most devastating assessment. The jury is out on whether she likes Megan.
The Queen’s cousin is quoted as saying, “My Jamaima is very worried. Harry is besotted and weak about women. We hope, but don’t quite think she’s in love. We think she engineered it. It’s worrying that so many people are questioning whether Megan is right for Harry. The problem, bless his heart, is that Harry is neither bright nor strong, and she is both.
Now, Richard Kay goes on to say, Britney, what makes these disclosures so compelling is that the Queen was always cautious about what she said about the couple because they were so sensitive to any criticism. However, it was to Lady Elizabeth that the queen made her only publicly revealed remark about the wedding, which was that the bride’s gone dress gown was too white.
In the monarch’s view, it was not appropriate for a divorcee getting remarried in a church to look quite so flamboyantly virginal. And Britney, I know that is true because another piece of my very early reporting in regards to this, which remember only became public after the wedding. I only went public with this in November 2016, but it was utterly categorically true, was that the late queen was horrified that Megan was wearing a veil to the wedding because she was a divorce.
And you’ll remember when Camila remarried Charles in that 2005 ceremony out of respect for the queen. Camila was not in white Britney and she did not wear a veil. But Megan didn’t give a damn what the queen thought about these important traditions. >> No. And it’s quite startling when you think that Harry and Megan didn’t want to tell the queen anything about the wedding dress, anything they they tried to keep.
And and they they really have kept their honeymoon a secret. Like they refuse to tell family members where they went. And the whole thing is is that Harry’s family is paying for the wedding. They’re paying for the dress and she refuses to give them any information about it because she knew they wouldn’t approve. And I don’t see what Megan’s whole reservation is about.
Let’s say the thing is when you marry into an an institution like the monarchy, they’re not immune to new ideas, but you have to be within the institution, learn how it functions, and then you can propose new ways of doing things. What Megan did from the jump is just go, I know better. We’re going to do things my way because I’m better than you.
And Megan, I think she thinks she’s quite bright and I think Harry is pretty dim and she’s much brighter than he is. And he just was led around by her and he was looking, I guess, for not only a wife, but I think a mother figure in some twisted way. And so he definitely got that with Megan. But the catastrophic fallout, you just got to can’t help but wonder, was it worth it at the end of the day for Harry to go through with this? because he has wrecked his life in so many ways.
He’s wrecked his family relationships, lost time with his grandmother and grandfather who have now both passed. He might miss out on relationships and building a relationship again with his father, his brother, and all for Megan. And really, was it worth it? I don’t know. Because if Harry had married somebody different, I think we’d be looking at an entirely different scenario here.
And I think that’s what every royal family member’s concern was. None of them liked her by I think the wedding. All of them were like hearing the bad stories going on and they were concerned and then they’re in there in their service and Zara’s giving the funny eyes during the long sermon and they’re just kind of giggling to themselves about it.
>> But the public didn’t know. >> That’s the thing. This wasn’t a media creation at this point. The public didn’t know. And Britney, just to pick up on one of your points, it’s like >> Megan should have been delighted because if the late queen had her way, Harry would never have been marrying a divorce.
She had already significantly modernized. You know, she didn’t let her own sister marry the love of her life because of tradition. And if you just look once again at Camila and Charles in those very happy wedding pictures, I mean, Camila looked beautiful. She still wore a lovely headdress, right? And how important was it for you, Megan, to wear a damn veil at your wedding, given that you’re hardly a traditionalist love when it comes to nuptuals, given your wedding with Trevor Englesen was full of everyone smoking pot. I mean, come on.
>> Well, and the hubris of Megan, too. She put all the flowers of the Commonwealth on the edge of her veil. And the only royal I’m aware of who has put Commonwealth flowers on an outfit was her majesty Queen Elizabeth at her coronation. And so that gives you the the level of hubris of Megan’s ego. And not to mention the fact that that veil was horrible.
It only looked good maybe once or twice, but it got bunched. It got stuck because it was so ridiculously long. Did it really? I mean, even Princess Eujenei didn’t wear a veil. Why did Megan need to? It was just for vanity. >> It was total vanity. >> But you know why? You know why? You know why? Because Catherine did. >> Because Catherine did at her wedding.
And if Catherine did at her wedding, Megan would at her wedding. Because it was all about that huge jealousy. She started to notice, oh, they’re getting more than we are. Anyway, uh Richard Kay goes on and says that the Queen was also uncomfortable with Charles’s decision to stand in for Megan’s father, Thomas Markle, and walk her down the aisle after the retired television cameraman declined an invitation to his daughter’s wedding due to health issues.
The Queen’s reservations about her grandson’s choice of bride continued after the wedding. Stories began emerging of Megan’s alleged high-handedness towards staff and a growing rift between Harry and William. Megan and William and Kate are not working well. Lady Elizabeth reported to be Smith.
That is what the queen said, particularly about the two girls. Megan also had a new nickname behind Alice Walls. We call her the American. One figure who worked for Queen Elizabeth told me at the time, “This was a not so subtle nod, I was told to the Duchess of Windsor, the twice married US adventurous who provoked the abdication crisis of the Queen’s uncle, King Edward, in February of 2019.
” Beetle Smith writes that she spoke on the phone to Lady Elizabeth who unequivocally told her, “I don’t trust Megan an inch to begin with. She was not bad. A straightforward starlet used to public speaking and charity work. The wedge between the brothers is really bad.” Richard K goes on, “Soon the dramas of Megs that were overwhelming the royals at a time, and even a phone call from California was greeted with dread by the queen.
But Lady Elizabeth did not live to witness the full fallout.” And I think that’s one of the things that has been so shocking for me, Britney, in terms of what we’re learning from Beyond the Grave, from Lady Elizabeth Anom. Remember the bulk of that was before Mexit. So when people talk and remember I’ve reported a lot of this when people talk about the fact that there were actually health impacts on the late queen in regards to how Megan and Harry had acted.
The video opens with Dan Wooten discussing what he describes as the true source of tension between Meghan Markle and the late Queen Elizabeth II. According to the commentary, the conflict was never simply about royal protocol or media coverage. Instead, Wooten argues the queen became deeply troubled by Meghan Markle’s attitude toward the institution itself and the way she allegedly approached royal life from the very beginning.
The hosts explained that Queen Elizabeth viewed the monarchy as a lifelong duty built on sacrifice, discipline, and service. According to the discussion, there were growing concerns inside Buckingham Palace that Meghan Markle did not fully understand or respect those traditions. The segment suggests the Queen initially welcomed Megan warmly into the royal family and genuinely hoped the marriage between Harry and Megan would strengthen the monarchy.
However, according to royal insiders discussed in the video, tensions escalated rapidly once palace staff and senior royals began raising concerns privately behind the scenes. The commentary frames this as the beginning of a much larger breakdown that would eventually lead to Mexit and years of royal conflict. According to royal commentators, the queen strongly believed palace staff deserved respect regardless of rank or position within the royal household.
The video suggests this issue deeply affected the queen’s perception of Meghan Markle moving. Ultimately, this video presents the breakdown between Meghan Markle and Queen Elizabeth as far more serious than simple personality clashes or media misunderstandings. According to Dan Wooten and multiple royal commentators, the conflict reflected deeper concerns about royal duty, institutional loyalty, family trust, and the future direction of the monarchy itself.
While supporters of Meghan Markle argue she faced enormous pressure inside the royal system, critics believe the late queen recognized serious warning signs long before Megit unfolded publicly. Whether viewers agree with the commentary or not, one thing remains clear. The global fascination surrounding Meghan Markle, Prince Harry, Queen Elizabeth, and the future of the royal family shows no signs of slowing down.
So, what do you think? Did Queen Elizabeth lose trust in Meghan Markle early on? Was the fallout between Harry, Megan, and the monarchy inevitable, or do you believe the royal family failed to support the Sussex’s properly from the beginning? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And if you enjoyed this royal commentary breakdown, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and turn on notifications for more royal family updates, analysis, and breaking news.
Thanks for watching and we’ll see you in the next
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.
