She dated the folk singer for 4 transformative years and wrote an acclaimed book about Greenwich Village in the '60s. The cover of 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan' shows the couple walking arm-in-arm.
Suze Rotolo, Bob Dylan's former girlfriend in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, who appeared walking arm-in-arm with him on the iconic cover of his album “The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan," has died. She was 67. Rotolo, who played a role in the young Dylan's evolution as a singer-songwriter and later had a career as an artist, died of cancer Friday at home in Greenwich Village, said her son, Luca Bartoccioli.
She was a 17-year-old art- and poetry-loving civil rights activist from Queens when she met the 20-year-old folk singer from Minnesota at an all-day folk concert at Riverside Church in Manhattan in the summer of 1961. “Right from the start, I couldn't take my eyes off her," Dylan wrote in “Chronicles: Volume One," his 2004 memoir. “She was the most erotic thing I'd ever seen."
Rotolo later wrote that Dylan “made me think of Harpo Marx, impish and approachable, but there was something about him that broadcast an intensity that was not to be taken lightly."
So began a four-year relationship that was immortalized on a wintery day in 1963 when photographer Don Hunstein captured the young couple walking down a snowy Greenwich Village street, Dylan's hands thrust in his pockets and Rotolo's hands wrapped snuggly around his arm.
“It was freezing out," she recalled in a 2008 interview with the New York Times. “He wore a very thin jacket, because image was all. Our apartment was always cold, so I had a sweater on, plus I borrowed one of his big, bulky sweaters. On top of that I put a coat. So I felt like an Italian sausage."
The photo became the cover of Dylan's breakthrough second album, which includes the songs “Blowin' in the Wind," “A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," “Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" and “Masters of War." “The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" also inspired the title for Rotolo's 2008 memoir, “A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties," which reviewers praised for capturing the era's Bohemian atmosphere.
“She was happy she came out with it because it kind of helped satisfy people's curiosity about what went on" with her relationship with Dylan, Rotolo's son said Monday. But, he added, the book is “about her life—about who she was—and not being just this guy's girlfriend."
Rotolo was born in Queens, N.Y., on Nov. 20, 1943, a so-called red-diaper baby whose parents were members of the American Communist Party. Her father died when she was a teenager, and she traded Queens for Greenwich Village after graduating from high school. She was working in the office of the Congress of Racial Equality—and had seen Dylan perform at a small club in the Village—when she met him at the folk festival.
Suze Rotolo, Bob Dylan's former girlfriend in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, who appeared walking arm-in-arm with him on the iconic cover of his album “The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan," has died. She was 67. Rotolo, who played a role in the young Dylan's evolution as a singer-songwriter and later had a career as an artist, died of cancer Friday at home in Greenwich Village, said her son, Luca Bartoccioli.
She was a 17-year-old art- and poetry-loving civil rights activist from Queens when she met the 20-year-old folk singer from Minnesota at an all-day folk concert at Riverside Church in Manhattan in the summer of 1961. “Right from the start, I couldn't take my eyes off her," Dylan wrote in “Chronicles: Volume One," his 2004 memoir. “She was the most erotic thing I'd ever seen."
Rotolo later wrote that Dylan “made me think of Harpo Marx, impish and approachable, but there was something about him that broadcast an intensity that was not to be taken lightly."
So began a four-year relationship that was immortalized on a wintery day in 1963 when photographer Don Hunstein captured the young couple walking down a snowy Greenwich Village street, Dylan's hands thrust in his pockets and Rotolo's hands wrapped snuggly around his arm.
“It was freezing out," she recalled in a 2008 interview with the New York Times. “He wore a very thin jacket, because image was all. Our apartment was always cold, so I had a sweater on, plus I borrowed one of his big, bulky sweaters. On top of that I put a coat. So I felt like an Italian sausage."
The photo became the cover of Dylan's breakthrough second album, which includes the songs “Blowin' in the Wind," “A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," “Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" and “Masters of War." “The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" also inspired the title for Rotolo's 2008 memoir, “A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties," which reviewers praised for capturing the era's Bohemian atmosphere.
“She was happy she came out with it because it kind of helped satisfy people's curiosity about what went on" with her relationship with Dylan, Rotolo's son said Monday. But, he added, the book is “about her life—about who she was—and not being just this guy's girlfriend."
Rotolo was born in Queens, N.Y., on Nov. 20, 1943, a so-called red-diaper baby whose parents were members of the American Communist Party. Her father died when she was a teenager, and she traded Queens for Greenwich Village after graduating from high school. She was working in the office of the Congress of Racial Equality—and had seen Dylan perform at a small club in the Village—when she met him at the folk festival.
Complete on: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=76974
0 Comments:
Post a Comment