Suze Rotolo
Suze Rotolo, an ex-lover of Bob Dylan, has written an autobiography of her time with Dylan called A Freewheelin’ Life.
Rotollo is most famous as the girl clutched up tight with Bob Dylan on the front cover of ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’. She was his girlfriend at the time during the early years of Bob Dylan’s career just as he was starting to make a splash in the folk scene of Greenwich Village and his fame was beginning to spread.
Until recently, Rotolo has been unwilling to talk much about Bob Dylan. She has felt that Dylan has cast a shadow over her entire life and wanted to make a life for herself away from that short period of time. However, she nows feels happy enough with herself that she can tell her story and sell a few books in the process.
Although she has often been portrayed as a hanger-on, this is far from the truth. Suze Rotolo is credited with inspiring Dylan’s political songs and his support of socialist ideas. Rotolo herself was brought up in a strongly socialist family and she refers to herself as being a ‘red diaper baby’.
What marks this book out from the hundreds of other books on the life of Bob Dylan is her closeness to Dylan but also, much more so, that it is one of the few books on Dylan written by a woman. This means the book is much less about ego-tripping and self aggrandizement, and focuses much more on feelings and emotions. Which gets the reader much closer to understanding where Dylan’s songs come from and the environment from which he and they came.
It’ll be well worth your time checking out A Freewheelin’ Life by Suze Rotolo.
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