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In Suze Rotolo's memoir, the Dylan years call out the loudest

By Carlo Wolff, Special to the Times
In print: Sunday, May 11, 2008

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That's Suze Rotolo arm in arm with Bob Dylan on the cover of the 1963 album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Don Hunstein's photo immortalized Rotolo as the muse of the rapidly maturing bard.

It's her key claim to fame and the reason, she says, that it was difficult to write this memoir of the early '60s. While A Freewheelin' Time fills in some blanks for Dylan followers, it's not essential to understanding the well-covered Zeitgeist of a decade many view through rose-colored glasses (including the self-effacing Rotolo).

A self-described "red diaper baby" (her Italian parents were Communists) from Queens, the restless Rotolo moved to the Village at the dawn of the '60s, working in theater and making jewelry. Her book affirms her creativity, but Rotolo spends too much time on her childhood, and her interpretation of the era doesn't break ground.

What's most interesting about this garrulous book is Rotolo's account of her time with Dylan, whom she met in 1961; they broke up in 1965 after a tumultuous affair. How great an inspiration Rotolo was to Dylan has long been a matter of speculation; the regularly inscrutable Pulitzer prizewinner hasn't helped clarify the issue, of course.

They tangled over Dylan's infidelities, grew more distant when Rotolo, encouraged by her Dylan-hating mother, went to Europe to pursue her academic interests, and foundered permanently when mainstream muse Joan Baez gave Dylan a creative and romantic leg up. "I hated being thought of as so-and-so's chick: I did not want to be a string on Bob Dylan's guitar."

Caught between the budding feminism of the period and her feelings for the self-absorbed Dylan, Rotolo, after a breakdown she treats too cursorily, chose independence. In so doing, she consigned herself to the "trickle-down fame" that explains this intermittently absorbing book.

Cleveland freelance writer Carlo Wolff has followed Dylan since the '60s. He is the author of "Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories."