Marking Yesterday's 55th Anniversary of the Release of Bob Dylan's Freewheelin' with Suze Rotolo's Letter to Her Mother

"Whatever gets you through the night, it's alright, alright." 
--John Lennon

I read the news today, oh boy. Yesterday was the 55th anniversary of Bob Dylan's second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, just three days after his 22nd birthday. Reading this made me want to share the Suze Rotolo letter to her mother which Bill Pagel currently has on display at Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum in Duluth through the end of August.

As nearly every Dylanophile knows, Suze Rotolo was the girl who appeared on the cover of this first album of mostly original songs, many of which appear later on the Witmark Demos, Bootleg Series #9. (In a memorable scene in the movie Vanilla Sky David Aames [Tom Cruise] has transfigured this album cover into an eternal memory with Sofia [Penelope Cruz] as his Suze Rotolo while the tune Fourth Time Around plays.)

SINCE Suze is today's centerpiece, I commend to you Phil Fitzpatrick's moving tribute to this early Bob Muse.

SUZE ROTOLO TO HER MOTHER

July 10, 1962

Mary Rotolo
One Sheridan Square
New York, N.Y  19

Mother, I have lost all faith in being honest to you because you never give Bob a chance. Why can't the two of you even attempt to get along? The constant criticism you have of him only sets the stage for further arguments and disention (sic).  I've talked about this situation with Carla and she agrees that you often put Bob down in his presence while you entertain your friends. Mom - this is not ammusing (sic). Carla told me about the incident that took place last week when you took exception to Bob calling you Mary. You went on a tirade by telling him his parents never taught him manners and that he was never to address her as  anything but "Mrs. Rotolo". Then you turned to Mrs. Evans and remarked, "This is the jerk Bob Zimmerman Dylan, the one Suze likes." I can't believe you acted tis (sic) way. I told you on the telephone when I called you from Rome last week that Bob (once again) hinted at marriage. You told me that I should give this a lot of thought butthat you would be behind any decision I made. Mom, this is not exactly what I call being supportive. All he was trying to do was be friendly. Carla also told me that after Bob left you revealed to Mrs. Evans of the possibility that the two of us might get married. Instead of talking about your daughters (sic) happiness all you raved about was that there were plenty of good catholic boys and that I have no sence (sic). Please consider my feelings for a change. I've always been a good daughter and never gave you any problems. I know that if Dad was still alive he would have at least given Bob a chance. Mom, can you honestly say that you have given him an opportunity to prove himself? I think not. I have been a little homesick lately and go to sleep crying because I miss you and Bob so much. Just give him a chance and I'm sure you'll see the very qualities that made me fall in love with him. Also, please don't get mad at Carla for her telling me what goes on at home.

LOVE ALWAYS XXXXXX

(signed) Susan

In the P.S. she adds that she is sending a couple drawings 

* * * *

When you look at the playlist from Freewheelin', Dylan's second album, it's breathtaking. The lame sales on Dylan's first album, which only sold 5,000 copies in its first year, resulted in his being tagged Hammond's Folly. This second album certified that John Hammond really did recognize something golden when he signed this kid from heartland -- your land, our land -- or whatever land he was from.

After a whirlwind week here (Duluth Dylan Fest 2018 is now past tense) I was out in my garage organizing my art studio while listening to Freewheelin' and all its associations. Hard to believe those songs have been with us for more than half a century. Some have even defined our generation.

Make it a meaningful day. 

Blog on Blog: from the laptop of a Dylanologist still in the foothills

GUEST POST BY PHIL FITZPATRICK

The man is a giant not just in the entertainment field or the music field or the poetry field or any field we try to put him in. He’s a giant in the field of not allowing himself to BE in any one field, let alone to be PUT in any one field. The more I read about him and his music, the less I know. Criticism, interviews, biographies, liner notes, reviews . . . the amount of material is mountainous. And the question still is, do we know Dylan any better after reading more and more of what’s been written about him.

1962 NYC

I thought I knew the guy well back during those heady days of 1963-64 when I was a freshman at Harvard. He was the main attraction at our Freshman Spring Weekend. It was rumored all week that Joan Baez might show up as his guest, a rumor which luckily turned out to be true.

Shortly after I had arrived in Cambridge, someone gave me a copy of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, the artist’s second studio album which had been released the previous spring. It was special. In the intervening fifty-two years, it has not only retained its significance for me, but that significance has increased.

Next Wednesday marks the fifth anniversary of Suze Rotolo’s death. Dylanologists argue about her significance in Dylan’s life after he arrived in New York City, but there can be little argument that among the 36 studio albums Dylan has released since 1962, the cover picturing him and Rotolo walking arm-in-arm in the West Village is among the most recognizable and evocative. What it evoked for me that year was the feeling that companionship and physical closeness were the way to cope with the chill and loneliness of the world.

Listening to that album on a more or less daily basis was a big part of what I remember about the autumn of 1963. Then, on November 22, the album cover provided a different sort of comfort. My world, our world, the whole world was shaken to its foundation with the assassination of President Kennedy. Where before songs like “North Country Girl,” “Corinna, Corinna,” “Don’t Think Twice,” and to some extent, “Blowin’ in the Wind” resonated with the loneliness I was feeling just being so far away from home (a standard Dylan theme over the years, by the way), after this tragedy, I focused more on “Masters of War,” “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” and again “Blowin’ in the Wind,” now for quite a different reason.

Seeing Suze’s ardent, even excited aura at having the whole street and the couple’s whole future to themselves, it was easy to absorb from that photograph the sense that despite the craziness outside, there was still warmth and security if we just turned to the right person.

Hardly Dylan’s first girl friend, Rotolo was nevertheless his first after his fortunes began to turn. They met in 1961 shortly after Dylan’s arrival, and the relationship lasted for three years. Rotolo was both lucky and unlucky to be in the right place at the right time as her lover’s meteoric rise to stardom was beginning. Chronicled most eloquently and, at times, poignantly in A Freewheelin’ Time, Rotolo tells her story with consummate objectivity and sensitivity.

The day I heard that Rotolo had died of lung cancer, I vowed to mark her passing with some sort of response for two reasons: I wanted to honor how influential she had been in that “freewheelin’ time,” and I wanted to reflect more conscientiously than I had in 1963 on how ephemeral are fame, fortune, youth, security, and love. (The computer Watson arrives at a similar conclusion with Dylan’s approval in the television commercial for IBM!)

Already at work on a series of 24-line untitled poems centering on what might simply be termed “the Dylan experience,” I wrote the following in honor of Ms. Rotolo:

Number Nine
- on the passing of Suze Rotolo, 2/24/2011

she was your “Bright Star,” a waif, a muse, yours
for almost enough time to be thought “stedfast”
your nomadic twin for a time musing for herself
and for her bourgeoning Village troubadour, she was
three years your junior; you’ve outlived her now
did your heart reach for that bright star whose
fair skin and golden hair you say dragged you
overboard amid talk and music and banana leaves?
did those Greenwich days fleetingly return, a union
a reunion you two built un-buttressed against distance,
family, different drummers, against diverging roads?
she said it was a “private little existence” and kept
a secret twinkle as she did—it lasted forty years
undiminished before the camera her confessor
how many more of your countless parishioners
chart their own freewheelin’ folkways years from
that February album cover where her wide-eyed
trust wrapped in dark green presses toward you,
where her arms are so tightly locked in yours,
where you amble toward more than a music scene
newly born buffeted by more than slush and wind?
indeed, as you’ve sung since those pre-natal buckskin
days, it ain’t you, not you - it was her, she did go away
from your window and your soul to save her own

* * * *

Dylan Fest Note
As many of you know, this May Mr. Dylan will mark his 75th birthday. Duluth Dylan Fest will once again mark this event with an eight-day week of events from Sunday May 22 thru the 29th. Five new events have been added including the placing of a city-sanctioned market in front of his Central Hillside home on May 24, the date Robert Zimmerman burst from the womb at St. Mary's Hospital here. The full schedule of events will be posted soon.

Meantime life goes on... all around you. Celebrate it.

Photo Credit: Ted Russeell

Suze Rotolo, Vanilla Sky and 4th Time Around

The other night I was talking with a magazine publisher about music and movies. He asked me what I thought of the film Vanilla Sky which he had recently watched twice. I said it was a favorite. He said not everyone feels that way. He especially liked the soundtrack which ultimately led to a discussion of Dylan's 4th Time Around which is equally cryptic as the film but, like Vanilla Sky, is a story that can be figured out.

You may recall the scene where David Aames (Tom Cruise) and Sofia (Penelope Cruz) are walking down a New York City avenue dressed in the manner of the cover photo on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. It's a poignant moment in the film and was a fertile period in young Bob Dylan's career, this being his second album.

The next morning, I woke to learn that the girl on Dylan's arm, Suze Rotolo, Dylan's girl friend and significant early influence, died this week at age 67 after a long illness.

According to a Wall Street Journal article by Stephen Miller, Ms. Rotolo had more to offer the young singer than good looks. She introduced him to the works of Picasso, Kandinsky, and Red Grooms. She gave Mr. Dylan his first exposure to poets such as Byron and Rimbaud and the songs of Brecht and Weill. She brought him to meetings of the Congress of Racial Equality and to protest marches.

Before too long, they moved in together in an apartment on West 4th Street. The relationship was close but occasionally tumultuous. Ms. Rotolo wrote that as Mr. Dylan's fame grew, their relationship diminished. "I was very young, I was still forming myself, but I did know I wasn't a musician, nor was I a musician's 'chick,' " she wrote.

In 1964 they separated and she later went on to have a career as an artist and designer.

What I find especially interesting about the scene in Vanilla Sky is that many, if not most, people who saw the album cover in the film perhaps connected 4th Time Around with that album. but in reality the song is from the double album Blonde On Blonde. It's delicate guitar and laconic harmonica make a deliciously memorable accompaniment.

4th Time Around

When she said
“Don’t waste your words, they’re just lies”
I cried she was deaf
And she worked on my face until breaking my eyes
Then said, “What else you got left?”
It was then that I got up to leave
But she said, “Don’t forget
Everybody must give something back
For something they get”

I stood there and hummed
I tapped on her drum and asked her how come
And she buttoned her boot
And straightened her suit
Then she said, “Don’t get cute”
So I forced my hands in my pockets
And felt with my thumbs
And gallantly handed her
My very last piece of gum

She threw me outside
I stood in the dirt where ev’ryone walked
And after finding I’d
Forgotten my shirt
I went back and knocked
I waited in the hallway, she went to get it
And I tried to make sense
Out of that picture of you in your wheelchair
That leaned up against . . .

Her Jamaican rum
And when she did come, I asked her for some
She said, “No, dear”
I said, “Your words aren’t clear
You’d better spit out your gum”
She screamed till her face got so red
Then she fell on the floor
And I covered her up and then
Thought I’d go look through her drawer

And when I was through
I filled up my shoe
And brought it to you
And you, you took me in
You loved me then
You didn’t waste time
And I, I never took much
I never asked for your crutch
Now don’t ask for mine

Copyright © 1966 by Dwarf Music