Gawker
Artist Suze Rotolo has written a book about her four years as Bob Dylan's muse in the early Sixties. But be warned: "This is about as far from a juicy tell-all as a memoir can get: Rotolo does share some private details of the story of her romance with Dylan—the two met in 1961, when Rotolo was 17 and Dylan was 20, and were a couple for some four years—but her approach is so sensitive, discreet and affectionate that she never comes off as opportunistic. This is an honest book about a great love affair, set against the folk music revival of the early 1960s, but its sense of time and place is so vivid that it's also another kind of love story: one about a very special pocket of New York, in the days when impoverished artists, and not just supermodels, could afford to live there."
"'Whenever I looked around, Bobby was nearby. I thought he was oddly old-time looking, charming in a scraggly way. His jeans were as rumpled as his shirt and even in the hot weather he had on the black corduroy cap he always wore. He 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.'
"Dylan was, she says, 'funny, engaging, intense, and he was persistent. These words completely describe who he was throughout the time we were together; only the order of the words would shift depending on mood or circumstance.' Rotolo and Dylan immediately became inseparable, and not long after their meeting she moved into the small walk-up Dylan found on West Fourth Street. The headiest parts of the book detail their time there and the friends they made in the glory days of the folk music revival, among them singer-songwriter duo Ian and Sylvia Tyson and folk legend Dave Van Ronk and his wife, Terri Thal, a leggy, lanky, unconventional beauty who, on hot days, would greet guests at the couple's West Village flat dressed only in a white bra and panties." [Salon]
Comments
No self-respecting hippie would wear a bra and panties much less think it was risqué.
I got your special pocket of New York right here.
If I don't wear panties does that mean I can haz star?
@Word salad: Haven't you heard? The not having a star is the new having a star.
@UnstableMabel: Thats what I keep telling myself.
A weather report from Bob Dylan's home state of Minnesota.
It is April 26th and it is snowing.
No fucking wonder he moved to that special pocket of New York.
That's the most feminine picture I've seen of Cate Blanchett in months.
@UnstableMabel: I also tell myself 35 is the new 20.
@UnstableMabel: the only thing better than going to butter is not going to butter.
In the Hajdu biography of Bob Dylan she came off as a saint. To me, that album cover of them on the snowy street with the Volkswagen bus in the background is iconic.
I look forward to reading this.
[donmaxx.files.wordpress.com]
@UnstableMabel: What I *hear* you saying is that one need not have the accoutrement to actually be a star.
@In Other News...: I hope you don't mind that I love your mind, but don't mind me if you do.
@Nard38: Hilarious!
@Word salad: Exactly! Who needs all the fruit anyway. Quality should always be understated.
Anyway it's getting dead common, and my mother always warned me against the perils of being dead common and it's cheap trappings. *sniff*
its
@Word salad:
There were no hippies in the early sixties; they were bohemians...they washed and often wore underwear.
@UnstableMabel:
Well, I *do* drive a VW. Anyway, is there a map to the gawker star's homes so we can see how they live?
@City_Dater:
Are you referring to the cool-man-beatniks (sp)?
@Word salad: Now that's an interesting concept, and taking gawker stalking to a whole new level!
I met Suze Rotolo at a Jim Marshall book party at the Morrison Hotel Gallery in SoHo. (Jim Marshall--famous rock photog took the cover photo for The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan which features Bob and Suze walking down an alley in what is now called NoLita.) I was taking a picture of her and Jim and they asked me to get in it with them and all the press photographers starting flashing bulbs at us. It was the happiest rock n roll geek moment of my life. She is the sweetest. Jim liked being surrounded by girls.
in dylan's auto-bio his memories of nyc 1961 were some of the most fascinating, especially contrasted to the artist-unfriendly manhattan of 2008. it sounds like her book will cover similar ground & thus hers is definitely of interest.
@Word salad:
Didn't you know? We're all 40-something divorced attorneys from Seattle now! We all live in a big dorm, actually. Conbon has way too many posters of the Gilmore Girls in his room and Richard has a pet ferret named Tinz that wears only designer t-shirts. I love our crazy family. I wish Smails would learn to put the seat down, though. Sigh.
@Word salad: Ah, but this was pre-hippie times. I remember as a tiny tot that even beat chicks wore stockings sometimes (that means garters, honey.)The no-undie regime started around 67.
@Hez: And Hez spits on her Maybelline eye shadow so it goes on darker. Me I stay in my room reading The Bell Jar over and over.
@SarahHeartburn: I do! How did you know! But it's MAC, because it makes me feel more grown-uppy. But I store it in Caboodles, because WWJAD?
@yourfriendandneighbor: Oh good - I was wondering if she was the gf in that album cover. I'm glad you answered it for me.
Now that I've done a Google image search to refresh my memory of that cover, I see a foreshadowing of Bob's entry into the Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians club. And if he's not there, maybe he should be? For the mom jeans alone.
[menwholooklikeoldlesbians.blogspot.com]
old people music sucks.
@Hez: Ha!@
href="#c5393261">SarahHeartburn: Good one! My response was to be humorous, yet not being historically accurate on underpinnings was surely an unforgiveable faux pas. I plead guilty on jumping too far into time, but refer to the 'Dirty Hippies' reference above the title that spurred my response and find it in your heart to cut me some slack. However, you offend me by omitting leotards!
Can I just rant here about how much I hate names like "Suze"? Like are we supposed to pronounce it Suzie, like the financialesbian, or is it just Sooze like snooze? We don't pronounce Rude or Jude as Rudy or Judy... this all seems very shifty to me. Dirty hippies, indeed.
@Hez:
Don't quote me, but I think this one's pronounced like "Susie."
I look exactly like Bob Dylan circa this picture. At least three or four times a week someone stops me and says, "You know who you look like..."
It's always Bob Dylan. Except once it was Vincent Gallo and I almost sent the man to the hospital.
@Word salad: You're right, black tights were right there in the zeitgeist. Hettie Jones, in her memoir about beat days, has a bit about black tights, and how Diana Trilling bitched about beat women wearing them. Don't miss her book, by the way. I worked with her briefly years ago at NYU and she's one of my personal goddesses.
[www.amazon.com]
[hettiejones.googlepages.com]
@Hez: Yeah, hon, but back in the day, just doing something funky with a common nickname was subversive. Really. The world was a cold place in the old days.
@SarahHeartburn:
I will check that out, thank you. So, did you ever watch Dr. Kildare? Name that actor!
@SarahHeartburn:
I blame the whole thing on pantyhose. Talk about Iron Maidens.
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