The cover of the album (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, 1963) shows a baby-faced, up-and-coming Dylan strolling New York’s snowy Greenwich Village, arm-in-arm with teenaged girlfriend Suze Rotolo. While their relationship only lasted about three years, the image has forever tied Rotolo to Dylan.
Dylan’s Freewheelin’ Cover Became a Rock Icon
As Rotolo explains in her 2008 memoir A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties, the image was somewhat impromptu, one of a series of casual promotional shots. Chosen for the cover of Dylan’s second album (his first all-original) the image was something of a breakthrough for its fresh honesty, a description that can dittoed for the music within.
That everlasting connection to the legendary singer/songwriter has been a problem for Suze Rotolo ever since. “He became an elephant in the room of my life,” she relates in the preface to A Freewheelin’ Time, “…my instinct was to protect my privacy, and consequently his.”
Suze Rotolo Was Strong Influence on Young Bob Dylan
Suze (pron. Sue-zee) Rotolo is an artist and writer who still lives in the Village. Though she was three years his junior—just 17 when they met—her influence on the formative Dylan can hardly be overstated. Raised in the nearby borough of Queens by socialist parents, Rotolo’s strong political background rubbed off strongly on Dylan at a time when he was searching for an image and voice of his own.
Her interest in human rights, her involvement in Bertold Brecht productions, and her visual art all influenced the young Dylan enough to become part of the performer’s music and persona. While Rotolo acknowledges sharing ideas, discussing cultural issues, and instances like bringing Bob to see Picasso’s Guernica, she makes no attempt to take any credit regarding Dylan's direction and ultimate success.
Indeed, there is almost a subdued tone in relating her life with Dylan, and nothing about what she writes in this respect comes across as “tell-all.” Rotolo treats Dylan with respect, even when her stories turn a bit negative, she remains gentle. In sharing a cause of their eventual breakup, an inability to trust him: “Bobby wove tales and embellished…some of the tales were out of sync with a previously woven one.”
Author Rotolo Details the Folk Music Scene
As the book's subtitle, A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties suggests, however, this is not just another book about Dylan. Rotolo was involved in the village’s folk scene at a very young age, doing the artwork for Gerdes Folk City posters, for one. She knew many of the musicians and artists who were helping lead the cultural revolution that was taking place with the village as its nerve center.
People like Dave Van Ronk, Sylvia and Ian, Mark Spoelstra, “Ramblin’” Jack Eliot and others are all given their due, as are the classic village folk hangouts: Gerde’s Folk City, The Gaslight, The Kettle of Fish, The Bitter End among them. Throughout, Rotolo is able to wonderfully impart the excitement of the time and place, and do so in a fine, natural style.
Suze Rotolo’s A Freewheelin’ Time will delight Dylan fans in its candidness and be a welcome text for students of the 1960’s era, “folkies” in particular. A standout aspect of this book is the author’s casual honesty. In addressing her own memory, she states, “the only claim I make for writing a memoir of that time is that it may not be factual, but it is true.” Sounds like a Bob Dylan lyric.
Rotolo, Suze (2008). A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties. New York: Broadway Books. ISBN 0767926870.
Dale Van Every - Dale Van Every is a freelance and fiction writer living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He earned his Masters Degree in English Literature from ...
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