A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties

By Suze Rotolo

“The girl with Bob Dylan on the cover of Freewheelin’ broke a forty-five-year silence with this affectionate and dignified recalling of a relationship doomed by Dylan’s growing fame.” –UNCUT magazine

Suze Rotolo chronicles her coming of age in Greenwich Village during the 1960s and the early days of the folk music explosion, when Bob Dylan was finding his voice and she was his muse.

A shy girl from Queens, Suze was the daughter of Italian working-class Communists, growing up at the dawn of the Cold War. It was the age of McCarthy and Suze was an outsider in her neighborhood and at school. She found solace in poetry, art, and music—and in Greenwich Village, where she encountered like-minded and politically active friends. One hot July day in 1961, Suze met Bob Dylan, then a rising musician, at a concert at Riverside Church. She was seventeen, he was twenty; they were both vibrant, curious, and inseparable. During the years they were together, Dylan transformed from an obscure folk singer into an uneasy spokesperson for a generation.

A Freewheelin’ Time is a hopeful, intimate memoir of a vital movement at its most creative. It captures the excitement of youth, the heartbreak of young love, and the struggles for a brighter future in a time when everything seemed possible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: May 13, 2008
• ISBN: 9780767929127

Reviews for A Freewheelin' Time

[timbazzett · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another bestseller I am years late coming to, but Suze Rotolo's fine coming-of-age-in-the-60s memoir, A FREEWHEELIN' TIME, is still relevant, still a fine and compelling read. And not just because she was Bob Dylan's first girlfriend and appeared on the cover of that album with him. Nope. She's got a voice of her own, and this is not just an "I knew him when" kind of book. It's a true memoir, and she tells her own story the best she can remember it, fifty years later. True there is plenty of name-dropping here and there throughout the narrative, but she still manages to tell her own story, and does it with charm and honesty. The one revelation that did shock me - was I the last one to know? - was that she became pregnant during her Dylan years, and had an abortion, which was illegal and could be dangerous at the time. She suffered a long period of depression after that too.Indeed, in looking back at those pre-feminist years, Rotolo recognizes now how innocent and 'unfree' she was then, as a young woman, noting -"In my youthful confusion I was still struggling for permission to be. All that was offered to a musician's girlfriend in the early 1960s was a role as her boyfriend's 'chick,' a string on his guitar."She remembers too going with Dylan to see PULL MY DAISY, an experimental new film from the time which featured Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso and other writers and artists. "I identified with the men in the film, not the women, who seemed insignificant in the midst of these wild, funny and offbeat guys. I wanted to be them, but didn't know how. I envied them their freedom. Many years later when I saw the film again, I was shaken by that memory. This time I was cognizant of the women and their role in the story. They were inconsequential and extraneous in the way a prop is part of the set."Rotolo went on to become an artist in her own right. She carries no grudges or hard feelings from those years, saying -"... I see no reason to take anyone to task for the foibles of the young. We were a passionate lot, dedicated to whatever it was we were doing." Suze Rotolo is a fine writer, who knows by now just who she is. She's the same age as I am, so a lot of her memories are mine too, only different, of course. It might have helped too that I was listening to some early Dylan as I read. I enjoyed the heck outa her story. Thanks, Suze. Very highly recommended. - Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

[joeldinda_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book's about the Village in the sixties, and about Suze Rotolo's youth. Since Bob Dylan was important to both, this memoir talks a lot about his early career, but even that's usually more about the Dylan/Rotolo relationship than about Dylan's work. And that's OK. If this were any other author, looking back at that time and place, we'd expect lots of context and little Dylan. Here we've got Rotolo doing something similar.The book reads like she made a list of things she wanted to say, arranged that list more or less chronologically, then wrote a few paragraphs about each topic. The result is unpolished, but generally successful and even charming. That she glosses over entire aspects of Dylan's character is occasionally obvious and sometimes frustrating, but it's her story to tell. She tells it well enough.There's lots of non-Dylan material that historians and others will find interesting and/or useful: A sense of the Greenwich Village geography in the 60s, including descriptions of the most important venues. It's a fine portrait of her social sphere, which included many folks who became somewhat important in music and the arts--some in large ways. Her family history is absolutely fascinating, which is really unusual in such a volume. She was a good observer, and an adequate writer. You can easily understand why Dylan found her attractive.There's an odd recurring theme, by the way. One of the reasons Rotolo's relationship with Dylan ended was her resistance to subsuming her identity in his (she tells us three times that she didn't want to be just "a string on his guitar," an image that's interesting once). I certainly don't doubt her sincerity about this, in the sixties or when she was writing, but the fact is that the book's selling point is her Dylan relationship. I'm sure she recognized the irony.Anyway: A fine book. Worth your time if you're interested in that time and place, or the musicians who worked there.

[michael_godfrey-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Rotolo masterfully avoids the pitfall of a voyeuristic obsession with The Great Man, and takes us instead into a journey through Greenwich Village in the days of its bohemian incarnation. She writes lightly, playfully almost, but her words are multi-dimensional, weaving in and out of personal, societal and global narratives that explore politics, sociology, sociology of music, the politics of friendship, the politics of fame. This is, rightly, not a Dylan book, but a Suze Rotolo book, and outstanding with it. If it provides insights into the early maelstrom life of The Bard (and it does), so be it, but it will long be valuable for providing insights into one helluva a maelstrom place in one helluva maelstrom era.

[ericlee_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It was one of the iconic images of the early 1960s: a young Bob Dylan walking down a snow-covered street in Manhattan, looking down, while a young woman clutching his left arm walks with him, facing the camera, a knowing smile on her face. The photo appears on the cover of Dylan's second, breakthrough album, and the woman in the picture is Suze Rotolo. Rotolo was a 17 year old girl when she met Dylan, who was three years older, and the time she spent with him was the time he made the transition from unknown folk singer to superstar. This could have been a book only about Dylan, and a lot of it is, but it's also Rotolo's own story, a story of love and frustration and betrayal, and of a young woman's coming of age in Greenwich Village in the 1960s. Though the chronology can be a bit confusing, the story is actually quite well told. Sadly, Rotolo passed away just two years after writing the book.

[elkiedee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Suze Rotolo is best known as Bob Dylan's girlfriend at the start of his career, but this memoir shows that there's so much more to her than that. It is clearly marketed as a bit of Dylanology, with the famous album cover photo of the couple on the front cover of the book, but it's as much a memoir of a young woman growing up and making a life for herself.I enjoyed her portrait of the period. She was a red diaper baby - her parents were communists - and brought her up with a commitment to social change and justice and an ability to think for herself. By 17 she was living independently of her family and earning a living with a variety of casual jobs while pursuing her interests in art, reading, music etc.Her relationship with Dylan lasted a few years though they only lived together briefly for various reasons. He also had affairs with others including a very public liaison with Joan Baez, and in the end they went through a slow and painful split. But this is no kiss and tell memoir - she writes about it all in a very dignified way.There are also stories which have little to do with Dylan, such as her trip to Cuba with a group of students to test the US government ban on travel to Cuba. After this Rotolo became a bit disillusioned with the politics of her upbringing and of the New Left, and dropped out of political activity.Recommended reading particularly if you're interested in the 60s, the music or the history of the American left.

[nmele_4 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Okay, I'm nostalgic about the Sixties. I enjoyed this memoir of Greenwich Village in the early 1960's--despite the cover photo and Rotolo's well-known status as Bob Dylan's girlfriend at the time, she writes about so much more than Dylan. This book covers, among other things, the Red Scare and its effect on left-wing families; the folk revival; experimental theater; the Cuban Revolution and the ban on travel to Cuba; and Rotolo's childhood and early adulthood. It's very engaging, and near the end she states a truth that needs to be stated now more than ever: the Sixties wasn't just about sex drugs and rock and roll, it was about making a better world.

[satyridae · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I know better. I really do. This was less awful than these things usually are.

[idranksometea · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed reading this book. I'm not a Bod Dylan fanatic or anything of the sort. Luckily, this book wasn't about him. It was about love, folk music, being young, and NYC in the 60s. I really liked Suze Rotolo's description of the 1960's and her approach to different life-events. Also, I loved that I was able to feel her as a real person throughout the book (which is one of the many great things about memoirs, they don't have to try to be authentic, they just are). I would most definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes both NYC and music. You will like it.

[snash_44 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties is Suze Rotolo's memoir of her life during that decade. Four years of that time she was Bob Dylan's girlfriend so an inside look at the early Bob Dylan is a major draw of the book. It's more than that, though, for she lived an interesting life herself and rubbed shoulders with multitudes of legendary figures of that time. The book is written in a somewhat disjointed style, taking various threads forward in time and then going back to pick up another. It feels true to the chaotic exciting time and place it describes.

[zappa_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Rotolo masterfully avoids the pitfall of a voyeuristic obsession with The Great Man, and takes us instead into a journey through Greenwich Village in the days of its bohemian incarnation. She writes lightly, playfully almost, but her words are multi-dimensional, weaving in and out of personal, societal and global narratives that explore politics, sociology, sociology of music, the politics of friendship, the politics of fame. This is, rightly, not a Dylan book, but a Suze Rotolo book, and outstanding with it. If it provides insights into the early maelstrom life of The Bard (and it does), so be it, but it will long be valuable for providing insights into one helluva a maelstrom place in one helluva maelstrom era.

[aulsmith · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Suze Rotolo is famous for being Bob Dylan's girlfriend, but you should read this book because she had an interesting life all on her own. Born into an old left Italian family in New York City, Suze was intimately involved the folk scene long before Dylan arrived. This is her story, with Dylan on the side.