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

A Freewheelin Time is Suze Rotolos firsthand, eyewitness, participant-observer account of the immensely creative and fertile years of the 1960s, just before the circus was in full swing and Bob Dylan became the anointed ringmaster. It chronicles the back-story of Greenwich Village in the early days of the folk music explosion, when Dylan was honing his skills and she was in the ring with him.

A shy girl from Queens, Suze Rotolo was the daughter of Italian working-class Communists. Growing up at the start of the Cold War and during McCarthyism, she inevitably became an outsider in her neighborhood and at school. Her childhood was turbulent, but Suze found solace in poetry, art, and music. In Washington Square Park, in Greenwich Village, she encountered like-minded friends who were also politically active. Then one hot day in July 1961, Suze met Bob Dylan, a rising young musician, at a folk concert at Riverside Church. She was seventeen, he was twenty; they were young, curious, and inseparable. During the years they were together, Dylan was transformed from an obscure folk singer into an uneasy spokesperson for a generation.

Suze Rotolos story is rich in character and setting, filled with vivid memories of those tumultuous years of dramatic change and poignantly rising expectations when art, culture, and politics all seemed to be conspiring to bring our country a better, freer, richer, and more equitable life. She writes of her involvement with the civil rights movement and describes the sometimes frustrating experience of being a woman in a male-dominated culture, before womens liberation changed the rules for the better. And she tells the wonderfully romantic story of her sweet but sometimes wrenching love affair and its eventual collapse under the pressures of growing fame.

A Freewheelin Time is a vibrant, moving memoir of a hopeful time and place and of a vital subculture at its most creative. It communicates the excitement of youth, the heartbreak of young love, and the struggles for a brighter future.

"In July 1961, Rotolo, a shy 17-year-old from Queens, met an up-and-coming young folk singer named Bob Dylan at an all-day folk festival at Riverside Church in Manhattan, and her life changed forever. For the next few years, Suze and Bobby lived a freewheeling life amid the bohemians in the emerging folk scene in Greenwich Village. Rotolo offers brief glimpses of the denizens populating the new music scene below 14th Street in the early '60s and recalls the excitement as writers and musicians like Dylan wandered in and out of each other's lives and apartments, trading music and lyrics to produce a new sound that would change American music. Yet as the woman who's clutching Dylan's arm on the cover of his second album Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Rotolo doesn't give us a very freewheelin' memoir. She offers shallow, almost schoolgirl-like reflections on the man she loved and lived with for three years. In a dull and plodding manner, Rotolo provides no new insights into Dylan, claiming, as have so many, that he is mysterious and enigmatic. In an excerpt from one of her journals, she writes ambivalently that she believes in his genius and that he is an extraordinary writer, but that she doesn't think he's an honorable person." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Rotolo, who was romantically involved with Bob Dylan from 1961 to 1964 (she's the girl on the cover of his debut album), has written this memoir of the rise of the folk music movement in Greenwich Village from a firsthand perspective. Exhibiting a writing style that is succinct yet impassioned, she vividly recreates that period in history while recounting her own growing political awareness, and explains how folk music eventually led her to a life of activism (she became involved in the Civil Rights Movement). Fans of Bob Dylan and folk music in general should enjoy this volume. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

A Freewheelin' Time is a moving account of the fertile years just before the circus of the 1960s was in full swing with Bob Dylan as the anointed ringmaster. Suze Rotolo chronicles the backstory of Greenwich Village in the early days, when Dylan was honing his skills and she was in the ring with him.

Set during the time when Dylan was writing the soundtrack to the cultural revolution of the 1960s, this is a wonderfully romantic story of their sweet but sometimes wrenching love affair and its eventual collapse under the pressure of Dylan’s growing fame.

A shy girl from Queens, Suze was the politically active daughter of Italian working-class Communists. Her story is filled with vivid memories of those turbulent years of dramatic change and poignantly rising expectations—when art, culture, and politics all seemed to be conspiring to bring our country a better, freer, richer, and more equitable life. And like Joyce Johnson's classic Minor Characters, A Freewheelin’ Time forthrightly describes the sometimes frustrating experience of being a woman in a male-dominated artistic milieu before women's liberation changed the rules for the better.

Suze Rotolo (aka Susan) is an artist who lives in New York City with her family.