El Reinado de Isabel II (Documental Completo) | Nat Geo en Español –  Hw

LACEY: Let’s see how the great problems of the Queen and the monarchy in her life have all been about love, marriage and sex. REPORTER: The question people in Britain are asking this morning is, Where is the Queen? MAN: It’s like having grown up in a monastery with glass walls. Everyone can see inside.

And every moment of weakness will be seen, exposed, and ridiculed. PARKER: The red light is on. STROBER: We are interviewing Larry Adler, a friend of Prince Philip. We are with Commander Michael Avison Parker. We are with Lady Janet Mary Young. ARBITER: For the first time in her reign, the Queen put family before duty.

SKINNER: At this moment we could be witnessing the end of the monarchy and the Queen could possibly be the last. (music) PARKER: She was the Princess and she worked very hard.  He was still in the Navy.

In our innocence we thought this was going to last a long time. After all, the King was very young.  She could have spent another forty years as a princess. LADY P HICKS: When we were on the Commonwealth tour, we were in Kenya. And the Kenyans had a wedding gift for them, a small residence at Sagana Lodge.

PARKER: We had a day or two to adjust, do things, and rest. Prince Philip went to sleep in a small room that was off to one side. The queen was sitting at a desk, writing letters. The phone rang. My colleague said, Mike, there’s a terrible rumor going around that the King is dead. He was sitting among all the press people and they were saying what they heard.

So I said to him, well, Martin, that’s scary, but there’s nothing I can do about a rumor like that.  What I mean is that I won’t do  anything. And he said, “I’m not suggesting you do it,” and hung up the phone. I saw a radio on the shelf above me. And there was an open door to where the Queen was sitting.

I closed the door, turned on the radio and looked for the BBC, then I heard the bell of Big Ben. I thought, oh my God! And my skin prickled. BBC REPORTER: This is London and with immense sorrow, we make the following announcement: at 10:45 a.m. today, February 6, 1952, the King passed away peacefully in his sleep.

PARKER: And that was it. So, I went over to where Prince Philip was sleeping and said to him. His first reaction was as if he had been hit with something very heavy. And he stood there, thinking silently about what it meant that his wife would be queen. And then he got up and went in to tell the Queen. She was crying desperately over the loss of her father.

They walked everywhere together , very close. And then she straightened up, fully aware of the fact that she was queen and that she had to deal with this matter immediately. He went in and at the desk where he had been  working, he began sending all those telegrams, to the countries of the Commonwealth of Nations and to friendly countries such as the United States and others.

LADY P HICKS: There was no time, not even for her if she had wanted to.  Not even worth crying about. And in a very typical reaction from her, she said, ” Oh, I’m so sorry!” This means we all need to go home. LADY P HICKS: As the plane was about to land at London Airport, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, my parents, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, and the entire Cabinet, were forming the reception line in their black clothes.

She bent down, looked outside, and said, ” Oh my God, they’ve sent the hearses!” Instead of his car, there were huge black cars. And somehow, the way he said it, you could tell that at twenty-five he had already realized  that the end of his private life had come. And that was for the rest of his life. He would be a public figure until the day he died.

QUEEN ELIZABETH II: I ask everyone, whatever your religion, to pray for me on my coronation day. BBC REPORTER: And while the storms of cheers increase with the approaching procession  along the river, here, in contrast, the abbey maintains its ancient peace. HEALD: I think what changed for the Queen at the time she succeeded her father was the feeling that she was alone.

I think that’s what really changed for her. PAKENHAM: She had the enormous advantage of having been trained by her own father. I think he must have enjoyed those training sessions with his dad because there was always something very special between the two of them. Nobody else had it. MANN: I remember my father once told me that I should always remember that everything I say or do to anyone will be remembered.

So, if I show disapproval, they will remember that I showed disapproval. Therefore, I think he is very careful not to do so in order not to give any impression that could be interpreted as disapproval. PATHÉ REPORTER: The Duke of Edinburgh came to swear a lifetime of loyalty to his queen. PARKER: She is the Queen.

And he, necessarily, is the husband. (Applause for the queen) PARKER: And what does the husband do? (Applause for the Queen) (music) LACEY: Elizabeth, both as a princess and as a queen, has always been guided by her great sense of duty. But one of the extraordinary things about the queen is that she fell in love and married the first man she met.

LADY P HICKS: My father was there when the king and queen took the two girls to Dartmouth. When Princess Elizabeth was only 12 years old. And since Prince Philip was almost an expert cadet and, of course, a complete Adonis, I think the princess fell madly in love with him at that moment. PAKENHAM: The Queen was too young, no one thought she would fall in love and remain in love with that person for the rest of her life.

What I mean is that she was just a child. VICKERS: But she clearly made a big impression on him and the romance, so to speak, developed very gradually. LACEY: That worried his parents a lot. What father wouldn’t be worried about a daughter who wants to marry the first man she fell in love with?  It was about his personal happiness, about the stability of the crown.

Although her parents accepted Felipe and Felipe had already become another member of the family, they did not allow her to become engaged until she turned twenty-one, several years after she wanted to do so because she was not only with the man she thought she loved, she was with the man who had to bear almost half the burden of the monarchy.

ADLER: He was at his bachelor party the night before his wedding to Princess Elizabeth and he was scared, his face was pale. That man was just beginning to discover what he was getting himself into and realized that he didn’t want to. LADY P HICKS: It was, by far, a conventional British house. He was the man of the family.

He made the decisions. She consulted him in her private life, of course, as a princess. I had many official things to do. But they were able to form a family with those two small children . PARKER: Prince Philip was basically a man, a great man. And she enjoyed doing manly things. I think there must have been times when it was quite difficult for him.

LADY P HICKS: This extremely active, enthusiastic young man  suddenly realized that his entire life was being taken away from him. Maybe they thought he would become a man who would say yes to everything for the rest of his life. That devastated their lives as a married couple. PANELIST: Could you tell me, in your own words, what your job is? PRINCE PHILIP: I don’t have one, I’m self-employed.

PANELIST: But you must have a clear idea of what role you will play in modern society. PRINCE PHILIP: That’s a difficult question to answer. SEWARD: The Queen can no longer be the wife, the mother. She had very little time to spend with her children. So Prince Philip, in a way, became a househusband. He took care of the children, not physically, but he organized them.

MORROW: When she became queen, they would see her maybe for half an hour in the morning, nine o’clock, for half an hour. Then he would leave for a week, maybe a month, or several months, but in a good week, he could be there at night and go up to watch them bathe and sit in a small chair that a footman would bring him.

Do not participate in bath time, splashing, or anything like that, but sit there somewhat restlessly and run out after half an hour. HEALD: I don’t think it was in that sense. Prince Philip and the Queen were significantly different from many upper-middle-class British parents. That was how you learned not to cry in public, not to hug in public, and so on.

HEALD: Life is more civilized now. But it wasn’t anything unusual, Prince Charles’s relationship with his parents. And it wasn’t as if they were being deliberately cruel or cold. That was the only way to do things. MCNALLY: What the Queen and the Duke did with their children, sending them to boarding schools with strict discipline, does not always produce emotionally closed human beings at the end of the process.

SEWARD: Actually, she sacrificed her family. Duty came before personal happiness; he had a job and he did it. OWEN: Elizabeth and her younger sister Margaret were always very close as children, but they both knew that eventually Elizabeth would be on the throne and Princess Margaret would have to find some role.

To be honest, I don’t think he was ever satisfied with that. REPORTER: Upon arrival, Princess Margaret and her husband were greeted with cheers from the crowd, flashing lights, and nervous children. Chaos reigned. Most adults remember that Margaret grew up with her sister and two children; they were much loved by Americans and Britons.

The British and European press have tried to prove that Margaret is having an affair with 29-year-old Roddy Llewellyn, but despite photographs of them together in the Caribbean , there is no evidence to support the rumors. REPORTER: Queen Elizabeth ruled out divorce from her sister Margaret. In return, the forty-five-year-old princess can obtain a legal separation from her husband, Lord Snowdon.

They have been married for sixteen years, but reportedly ten of those years have been stormy. Recent stories about Princess Margaret’s cohabitation with twenty-eight-year-old Roddy Llewellyn have prompted talk of a separation. Divorce is a complicated issue for the British royal family. ARMSTRONG: She was divorced, and the question was whether it was appropriate for the King of England to marry a lady who had been divorced twice.

REPORTER: This is London. A quarter of an hour ago, the Prime Minister arrived at the parliament bar and handed the speaker a message from His Majesty the King. EDWARD VIII: A few hours ago, I fulfilled my last duty as King and Emperor.  I have found it impossible to bear the heavy burden of responsibility without the help and support of the woman I love.

SPOKESMAN: Therefore, at this moment we proclaim that the high and mighty Prince Albert Frederick Arthur George has now become  our one and only legitimate king.  God save the king! PAKENHAM: The two girls were at home in Hyde Park Corner when Princess Elizabeth heard all the noise of the cheers when George became king.

Isabel ran downstairs to see what all the commotion was about, and a footman told her that her father was the king. He went back and told his younger sister, who was six years old. And Princess Margaret said, “Does that mean you’ll be Queen?” And he answered, yes, someday. Princess Margaret said, “Poor you.

” NARRATOR: Princess Margaret has had an active social life, which, for royalty, is an unconventional social life. Now, England is intrigued by the rumor that Margaret has fallen in love. The man is Peter Townsend, a war hero, an RAF captain. However, Townsend has been divorced once, and powerful social and religious forces oppose the romance.

Even so, Margaret wants to marry Townsend. TOWNSEND: The Queen and Prince Philip kindly invited me to dinner and we talked about this. Obviously, it was a very disturbing situation. But I will never forget the Queen’s reaction; it was very sympathetic. Although I suppose he harbored a greater concern. Marriage seemed to be the least likely solution.

VICKERS: The queen was conflicted because as head of the Church of England, she could not allow her sister to marry a divorced man. But as Princess Margaret’s sister, I was obviously very interested in the Princess being happy, and it wasn’t easy. OWEN: I don’t believe for a moment that the Queen said to her, listen, Margaret, you can’t do that.

The advisors told the Queen that this could not proceed.  It was very painful for everyone involved. TOMINEY: It has sometimes been wrongly said that the Queen said that such a relationship could not be allowed. Actually, I was devastated because when the time came, it was the government that said, ‘We cannot allow you to marry this man.

‘ ADVISOR: The following statement has just been issued from Clarence House by Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret.  I would like it to be known  that I have decided. Not marrying the group’s captain, Peter Townsend. Aware of the church’s teaching that  Christian marriage is indissoluble. And mindful of my duty to the Commonwealth of Nations, I decided to bring it to your consideration before anything else .

TOMINEY: I think I felt a lot of sympathy for Margaret because the Queen knew what true love was; she had married the man of her dreams. OWEN: I don’t envy the lives of the royals at all. In fact, they have to live in the public eye all the time; everything they do is reported, quoted, and criticized. But Princess Margaret had a very difficult life.

CLARKE: I think one of the tragedies of her life was that she never knew who she was, she never knew who she was supposed to be, and she left it to others, to the media, to work it out for her. POLICE OFFICER 1 Please back up ! Back up!  Back up! Back up! REPORTER: Don’t push him, he understands. POLICE: We need everyone to move.

REPORTER: It’s a scene of chaos and destruction. This castle dates back to the 9th century. The fire started in the private chapel near St. George’s Hall. The events are being read in the headlines as a repeat of the curses of the Old Testament. The plague and pestilence were replaced by fire, rumors, and scandals, shaking the British royal family.

With three broken marriages among her four children, the Queen’s efforts to promote an image of family harmony are under too much strain. LACEY: Look at how the great issues of the Queen and the monarchy in her life have all been about love, marriage, and sex. The abdication and then Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend.

And that creates problems. PRESENTER: Buckingham Palace condemned the publication of photographs of the Duchess of York and Texas businessman John Bryan. PRINCESS ANNE: Divorce? REPORTER: That’s what they say. PRINCESS ANNE: Nobody said anything like that.  Nobody. WOMAN: I feel very sad.  It is very sad when two people who seem happy married suddenly get divorced.

REPORTER: Royal composure crumbled as Princess Diana, under the watchful eyes of the media, broke down in tears, following the release last week of a book detailing her unhappiness. The book claims that Diana ‘s marriage became so miserable that she attempted to take her own life. QUEEN ELIZABETH II: 1992 is not a year that, when I look back, I do so with pleasure.

In the words of one of my most understanding correspondents, it has turned out to be an Annus Horribilis. No institution, city, monarchy, or anything else, should expect to be free from the scrutiny of those who give it their loyalty and support, not to mention those who do not. But we are all part of the same fabric of our national society, and that scrutiny, by one side, can be just as effective if done with a touch of gentleness, good humor, and some understanding.

SKINNER: As a result of the events of the last few months and the monarchy pressing the self-destruct button, we may now be witnessing the end of the monarchy and the Queen may possibly be the last. REPORTER: Queen Elizabeth says she understands, it’s time for Prince Charles and Princess Diana to officially end their troubled marriage.

The Prince, who admitted on television to committing adultery for more than a year, agrees. The Princess, who admitted her adultery on television a few weeks ago, is devastated and will give her answer after the holidays. SEWARD: The Queen tried to protect Diana, but Diana was very reluctant. MCNALLY: I think the Diana phenomenon, obviously, Charles couldn’t handle it and neither could the Queen.

REPORTER: The Princess of Wales finds herself embroiled in a new round of personal controversies. The polo player and former guard officer claims he had a three-year affair with the Princess. This morning, as she left an exclusive club in London, the Princess of Wales said nothing. Rugby star Will Carling and his wife Julia are separating, and everyone is wondering if the Princess of Wales is to blame.

Confirmation of Princess Diana’s first serious romance since separating from Charles will appear tomorrow in London’s Sunday Mirror newspaper. The proof: a  $400,000 photograph of her kissing millionaire Dodi Al-Fayed during a Mediterranean cruise. NARRATOR: This is BBC One. We interrupt our programming for a news report.

Let’s go now to Martin Lewis in the studio. LEWIS: We interrupted filming because we received reports that Diana, Princess of Wales, was seriously injured in a car accident in France. ANNOUNCER: I can confirm the news, Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car crash in Paris, which also killed Dodi Fayed. REPORTER: The question people in Britain are asking this morning is, Where is the Queen? Oceans of flowers from Diana’s mourners are piling up outside Buckingham Palace, but they have gone unrecognized and, unlike the rest of Britain

where flags are at half-mast in memory of Diana, there is no flag flying over the palace.  There is no one home. OSWALD: When the Princess of Wales died, the Queen was at Balmoral with the two young Princes, whose mother had died in an accident. However, she was punished. Not for leaving them there and returning to London, but for crying in the streets with people who never met the Princess.

LASCELLES: I had two grandchildren. Those who must have been devastated by the sudden death of their mother. Pressuring them to take them to London for publicity seemed unnecessary to me. Why might you feel less at Balmoral than at Buckingham Palace?  Do n’t know. REPORTER: I’m looking through the walls of the wrecked school in the main hall.

There are a lot of people, firefighters and police officers. Mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, everyone. The South Wales disaster . It is feared that nearly two hundred lives were lost today when coal slid towards Aberfan near Merthyr Tydfil. BRANDRETH: One of the few regrets the Queen has had during her reign was that she felt she reacted too slowly in Wales, in a place called Aberfan.

In the sixties MADGWICK: There have always been controversies and criticisms about the fact that the Queen did not arrive in Aberfan earlier or immediately, because obviously Lord Snowdon was the first member of the royal family to arrive in Aberfan. SNOWDON: Princess Margaret couldn’t understand why he wanted to go.

I just did it, I thought, I have to do it. And I stayed there, going into people’s houses, preparing cups of tea. They wanted to talk, but they were in a terrible state of shock. MADGWICK: Regarding the Queen, I think her decision not to come at that time was probably not the right decision for the surviving people, and I think to this day , the Queen bears some guilt for that.

NARRATOR: The queen stood there as a mother, knowing that if circumstances had been different, her son’s name might have been on a sandbag, to mark his place of honor, in a death ceremony. MADGWICK: Of all the tragedies in the world, I think Aberfan has been the one that has most moved the Queen in a single day and perhaps will continue to do so until the day she dies.

REPORTER: Queen Elizabeth and the rest of the royal family are on their usual summer holiday in Scotland and apart from her regular church visit on Sunday, the Queen made no public appearance or statement. But for those close to the royal family, that’s no surprise. MCNALLY: If the monarchy has ever been shaken, it was that one.

Forty-eight hours locked up in Balmoral. When the country wanted the Queen in London and crying. ROBERTS: On the eve of Princess Diana’s funeral, the royal family returns to London, hoping to quell some of the criticism of their actions since Diana’s death. REPORTER: The Queen’s convoy arrived in London. As it made its way towards Buckingham Palace, the limousine stopped at the gate and the Queen and Prince Philip got out to receive the piles of floral tributes.

SEWARD: The Queen was too nervous because she could sense the hostility; in fact, she heard them say, “It ‘s about time they came!” They could hear many of the things the crowd was saying. And then a woman gave her a bouquet of flowers and the Queen asked her, “Would you like me to arrange it?” And the woman said, no, ma’am, it’s for you.

And that broke the ice, it was that moment and I think suddenly people saw her, instead of feeling irritated and angry, suddenly they thought, God, she’s a grandmother who has to deal with all this! (music) ANNOUNCER: Queen Elizabeth will speak publicly today about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Joining me from London is Michael Goldfarb of NPR, to discuss the Queen ‘s extraordinary plan to speak to her subjects.

Any idea what he’ll say today? GOLDFARB: It will be a carefully crafted speech because people are going to listen to it very attentively. QUEEN ELIZABETH II: Since the terrible news last Sunday, we have seen in Britain and around the world an overwhelming expression of sadness at the death of Diana. What I am about to tell you, as Queen and as grandmother, I say from the heart.

First, I want to pay tribute to Diana. He was a talented and exceptional human being. Through thick and thin, she never lost her ability to smile and laugh or to inspire others with her kindness.  I admired and respected her for her energy and commitment to others. I hope that tomorrow we can all come together to express our grief for the loss of Diana and our gratitude for her short life.

WOMAN: I think he said everything he needed to say.  I ca n’t think of what he could have left out. I think it was very appropriate. REPORTER: And now they’ve gathered at the entrance. This is an extraordinary view. As far as I know, we had never seen the royal family standing like that at the gates of Buckingham Palace.

SEWARD: At the funeral, the Queen looked very dignified and bowed her head as Diana’s coffin passed by.  It was spectacular. QUEEN ELIZABETH II: For my part, I believe there are lessons to be learned from her life and from the extraordinary and moving reaction to her death. It is an opportunity to show the whole world our British nation united in grief and respect.

CAMERON: Mr. President, today Her Majesty the Queen becomes the  longest-reigning monarch in the country’s history. And it is typical of his selfless sense of service that he wants us to treat this day like any other. But, although I rarely advocate disobeying Her Majesty, let alone in her own Parliament, I believe that today we must pause and take a moment as a nation to mark this historic milestone and thank Her Majesty for the extraordinary service she has provided to our country for more than six decades.

In sixty-three years and two hundred and sixteen days, he has worked with twelve prime ministers, six archbishops of Canterbury and nine cabinet secretaries. He answered three and a half million letters, sent more than one hundred thousand telegrams to the entire Commonwealth of Nations, and met more people than any other monarch in history.

He has served this country with grace, dignity, and decency, and I hope he will continue to do so for a long time. LACEY: What is important to remember about Princess Elizabeth’s early education was that, although she was a princess, she was not in line for the throne. And I think this gave him a modesty that people respect.

RHODES: I think the only thing he could allow himself to feel was to tell his father, look, I did it!  I have been a Princess for a long time and I have tried to do it the way you taught me. QUEEN ELIZABETH II: There is a motto that many of my ancestors have upheld. A noble motto, I serve. I would like to make a dedication now.  It’s very simple.

I declare before you all that my entire life, whether long or short, will be dedicated to serving you and to the service of our great imperial family, to which we all belong. Subtitles created by SubTitlePro

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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