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21 Sep 08 - 05:57 AM (#2446386) Subject: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Bonnie Shaljean Has anyone read this? What did you think? Review here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/sep/21/music.books |
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21 Sep 08 - 06:16 AM (#2446390) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Jim McLean In late 1962 and early 1963 my wife, Alison Chapman McLean,took many pictures in the Troubadour including these. http://www.richardandmimi.com/troubadour2.html Was this Suze Rotolo (scroll down through the pictures)? I saw Dylan with her a few times then. |
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21 Sep 08 - 06:38 AM (#2446397) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Bonnie Shaljean She certainly bears a resemblance to the photo of Suze on the cover of Freewheelin'. Here's another pic, from a different angle that shows her face more clearly and is obviously from the same photo-shoot. Hope this link works: http://www.dylanimages.com/Ny%20mappe/Freewheelin%20Bob%20Dylan%20Outtakes%20Fro Great archive, Jim - |
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21 Sep 08 - 07:05 AM (#2446410) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: The Borchester Echo Here's another from the same shoot, reproduced in the New York Times review of her book, which bears a remarkable resemblance to the pic taken in the Troubadour. I wasn't aware that Ms Rotolo had been in England at the time, though it's well-documented that His Bobness nipped over to Italy to see her during his first visit. Just think, I may have met her after all without realising it. |
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21 Sep 08 - 07:10 AM (#2446411) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Jim McLean If you go to www.richardandmimi.com and choose troubadour you'll see other pictures taken about the same time showing Dylan etc. |
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21 Sep 08 - 08:50 AM (#2446436) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Stilly River Sage Suze Rotolo was interview by Terry Gross on Fresh Air on May 14, 2008. It's a 25 minute interview that is quite interesting, much of it about that photo and those years. SRS |
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21 Sep 08 - 10:21 AM (#2446484) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: The Borchester Echo However, having listened to the above radio interview, Suze states quite categorically that she doesn't play any instrument. So it seems somewhat unlikely that it was she who picked up and played an autoharp at the Troubadour. |
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21 Sep 08 - 10:37 AM (#2446494) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Michael S Diane wrote: (Suze states quite categorically that she doesn't play any instrument. So it seems somewhat unlikely that it was she who picked up and played an autoharp...) The lady in the Troubadour photo sure looks like Suze Rotolo to me. At age 18 or so, perhaps in the company of her musician boyfriend, she picked up and strummed an instrument at a musical event. This is hardly inconsistent with the statement of the now sixty-something Suze that she doesn't play an instrument. I've seen an awful lot of amateurs strumming and shaking things they couldn't play very well, or at all. Michael Scully |
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21 Sep 08 - 11:24 AM (#2446511) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Stilly River Sage http://www.richardandmimi.com/troubadour2.html That's the link to the Alison Chapman McLean photos. It does look like Rotolo, and I'm inclined to agree with Michael. I've picked up dulcimers a few times and played small tunes, but I don't "play" the dulcimer, I play the piano. I just pick out tunes on the dulcimer. Someone could probably track down Rotolo and simply ask if she is the woman in McLean's photo. SRS |
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21 Sep 08 - 11:45 AM (#2446524) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: The Borchester Echo Is it a dulcimer? Or is it an autoharp? Or indeed a zither? Who knows? Did she? (If it is indeed her . . . ) |
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21 Sep 08 - 11:56 AM (#2446533) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: The Borchester Echo In the pic of Dominic Behan, is that Gordon McCulloch behind his right shoulder? |
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21 Sep 08 - 12:02 PM (#2446540) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Jim McLean Yes, Diane, it's Gordon alright. Alison has many pictures of him and Bobby Campbell with Dominic. |
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21 Sep 08 - 12:53 PM (#2446557) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Art Thieme Those are fine looks back. Thanks so much. Art |
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21 Sep 08 - 01:00 PM (#2446563) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Bonnie Shaljean The Fresh Air radio interview was really interesting - I've bookmarked the whole website. Cheers... Suze's background is just as compelling as her Dylan years - growing up a commie child during the fear-locked McCarthy era, in one of the most diverse, intellectually invigorating communities in the whole USA. Amongst all this cultural bounty her family were forced to keep a huge part of themselves concealed from the public, which meant Suze learned from an early age to live in secret. No wonder she hated the increasingly intrusive glare of Dylan's PR spotlight. I'm looking forward to reading more about her formative years. If she chooses to tell us. I'm very glad she's stepped forward, though at times I wish she'd be a bit less diplomatic and more forthcoming. But that's her prerogative. She sounds like she'd be fun to know, in her own right and not for her ex-partner. I heard a radio interview once with the lady who is the original of Cohen's Suzanne. Wish I could bag that again, and start a collection of podcasts. This one is now safely in the belly of my iTunes. (And I learned how to pronounce Suze's surname correctly...) |
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21 Sep 08 - 03:16 PM (#2446663) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Amos The magic of those years can still take a tight grip on the fancies of those who were there, or near, or just wish they were. For one thing, with the sassy immortality of the newly hatched, we all knew that we were not going to be infected by the grim shadows that had twisted the minds of all human generations before us, such as death and pain. We had "it", we WERE "it", and it was Magick!! The conceit was endemic--it lay behind many of the star-studded stories and songs of the era. But if you wanted one line to pop that bubble, to re-assert the core normal humanity in all that fancy footwork, it is this quote from Suze, in her 60's, revisiting Jones Street and the site of that epic photograph on the "Free Wheelin'" cover. She who became the long-haired symbol of that age of youth, pulchritude and enchantment, cuddling the arm of the newly anointed Prince of Nonchalant Newness, the poet of the age, had this to say, remembering the wintry day when the photo was taken: "Every time I look at that picture, I think I look fat." ...et Plus c'est la meme chose. But despite that, thanks so much for the memories. A |
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21 Sep 08 - 03:40 PM (#2446679) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: The Borchester Echo She does look fat (anybody would), wearing a heavy jumper under a winter coat. One of my most exhilarating moments was walking down West 4th Street, not wearing quite so much as it was a hot day, in their footsteps, singing Positively 4th Street. An ambition fulfilled. |
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21 Sep 08 - 03:47 PM (#2446684) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Stilly River Sage Diane, Obviously, she has an autoharp. ;-) I used the dulcimer as my own example for how one might be caught with an instrument in one's hands but not consider oneself a "player" of said instrument. Terry Gross has some of the best interviews around, and they go back many years. If you start checking out the archives at her web site you'll be amazed at the folks who have sat opposite that very talented interviewer. SRS |
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21 Sep 08 - 04:18 PM (#2446703) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: PoppaGator Just finished reading the book this morning. Intersting and enjoyable. Without vioating Bob's privacy in any way, she provides a lot of insight into his experience, and the experience of everyone around him, in that face of all that sudden fame. I found it very interesting to learn how the fabled "generation gap" affected a "red diaper baby," someone whose parents were old-school Communists. Most of my peers, like myself, found ourselves at odds with parents who were pretty much polar oppoosites of Suze's ~ conventionally religious, "patriotic"/nationalistic, and anti-Communist. Now I ca see that having left-wing parents wouldn't really have been that much different. |
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21 Sep 08 - 04:37 PM (#2446715) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: meself My computer only wants to download the top bit of the Freewheelin' album cover - back and front - linked above. But I'm intrigued by the beginning of the second sentence of the blurb on the back: "For most of his 22 years, he "road freight ..." I take it that that's a reference to riding freight deliveries in through the back door of his parents' furniture store? |
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21 Sep 08 - 04:46 PM (#2446734) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Bonnie Shaljean LOL "...road freight trains for kicks and got beat up for laughs, cut grass for quarters and sang for dimes." There's more - about the coyote's call and the train whistle's moan and old time pals and first run gals, and the sounds he sopped up during all those years on the road - but you get the idea. |
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21 Sep 08 - 04:47 PM (#2446739) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: PoppaGator At the time "Freewheelin'" was released, I believe that Bob was still getting away with his self-created-myth autobio, at least in part. A little earlier, his BS was being accepted even more easily. Some of the early newspaper and magazine articles and reviews included in Suze's book describe Bob as "from Gallup New Mexico" and pass along other such fabrications. (Copies of complete stories appear as illustrations in the book; there are few if any quotes in the actual text. The articles, reviews, magazine covers, posters, etc., are not especially easy to read, but it's possible to read them, and they are generally presented in complete form.) I don't remember how long it took me to learn that Bob Dylan was really from Hibbing MN and that he was really Bob Zimmerman. Probably an album or two, or even three, later than "Freewheelin'." Although I was very intersted and paying attention, I was young and had no privileged vantage point ~ i.e., not a Greenwich Village insider. I doubt that I learned the truth about Bob any sooner than any other interested member of the general public. |
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21 Sep 08 - 04:51 PM (#2446742) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Little Hawk Jim, the girl in the last picture is surely Suze Rotolo. |
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21 Sep 08 - 04:57 PM (#2446747) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Bonnie Shaljean > I doubt that I learned the truth about Bob any sooner than any other interested member of the general public. Nor did Suze. She says she only found out his real name when some stuff fell out of his pocket (or some such thing) and she saw his real name on his draft card. (Were guys required to carry those around with them? If not, why on earth did he?) She says she was hurt that he hadn't been truthful with her. Catch the Terry Gross interview, if you haven't already. (Gross has her own Wiki entry.) |
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21 Sep 08 - 05:06 PM (#2446760) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Little Hawk If you take on a stage name, then that IS your real name from then on if you wish it to be, and what business is it of anyone else what you wish to call yourself? A name is just a temporary label for that which cannot be definitively labelled: a living soul. As for Bob's wonderful yarn-spinning about Gallup, New Mexico and all that...ha! Gotta give the kid some credit for a lively imagination and a lot of nerve. He wanted to be the kind of man he most admired...which at that point in his young life was Woody Guthrie. That changed soon enough. He became Bob Dylan, and then he didn't have to be Woody Guthrie any longer. He didn't need yarns about Gallup, New Mexico by that time either, having become a living legend rather than a concocted one. |
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22 Sep 08 - 11:59 AM (#2447323) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: PoppaGator Prior to January 1, 1973, it was a Federal offense for a male US citizen between the ages of 18 and 40 NOT to carry his draft registration card on his person. I don't remember what the punishment might have been, but it was serious. Of course, it was not enforced rigorously by stopping random guys on the street and ordering them to produce their "papers," like in Nazi-occupied Europe ~ BUT if you were arrested, or even detained (i.e., "pulled over" in a car) for any reason, the cops would ask to see your draft card, and you'd sure better have one or risk being turned over to the federal authorities. Also, your draft card was generally considered sufficient proof of age to buy drinks at a bar, especially in those few states (including New York) where the drinking age was 18. The draft card did not include a photo, but neither did most other forms of identification back in those days. I don't believe my first drivers license had a photo. The concept of "photo ID" as being universally used and required was still far off in the future back then. If you youngsters don't understand that everyone had a draft card, and was required by law to have it on his person at all times, I suppose you wouldn't understand just how dangerously radical a gesture it was to publically burn or otherwise destroy your draft card. It was certainly something that Bob never did, although a fair number of his listeners certainly did so ~ but very few of them during the era covered by Suze's book ~ not before '67 or '68. |
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22 Sep 08 - 12:08 PM (#2447329) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Amos And, ironically enough, neither Suze nor Joanie burned theirs. A |
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22 Sep 08 - 12:46 PM (#2447365) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: PoppaGator Them girls didn't have no draft cards. As Suze emphasizes throughout her book, this was back in the days before "Women's Lib." In this particular case, regarding military conscription, gender inequality worked in favor of the females. |
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22 Sep 08 - 02:28 PM (#2447463) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Bonnie Shaljean What year did that birthday-lottery thing take effect? It was while I was at college because I remember we had a Number 1 and a Number 364 in our year, and it was not a large institution. I was living in England by 1973 so it can't have been then - The "inequality" of not having to be drafted was not lost on some of us, believe me! |
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22 Sep 08 - 02:50 PM (#2447483) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: PoppaGator I'm not sure of the exact date of the draft lottery, because I was already draft-delinquent by that time, and would not be excused from eventual arrest and induction regardless of whether I drew a high or low number. I think it has to have been been sometime during the 68-69 school year, probably spring of 1969. |
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22 Sep 08 - 03:01 PM (#2447497) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Amos Most likely. I know it was later than 1967. A |
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22 Sep 08 - 03:32 PM (#2447533) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Bonnie Shaljean It was December 1st, 1969. But I cheated. I peeked in Wiki. More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_lottery_(1969) |
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22 Sep 08 - 03:39 PM (#2447540) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Bonnie Shaljean I have wondered over the years whatever happened to our guy who got the number 1 (he was a fine pianist - it was a music conservatory). Just been to the website to search the Wall. His name's not on it. :-) :-) :-) |
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22 Sep 08 - 04:30 PM (#2447589) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Stilly River Sage Now search for him elsewhere--to see if he stayed with music! I have a friend who actually took a class in college about how to survive in prison as a conscientious objector. Pretty grim. The draft board wasn't recognizing American Indian sensitivities or religious beliefs as valid, and they even rejected a letter written by a mentor of his who was a Catholic priest who explained about his cultural attitude toward this war. He lucked out because Nixon let some of them off the hook--I don't remember exactly how it worked, but he wasn't drafted and wasn't imprisoned. SRS |
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22 Sep 08 - 04:40 PM (#2447595) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Little Hawk Every government is really a dictatorship under the skin, regardless of its outer pretences of "freedom" and "democracy". You find that out as soon as you try to use your own natural (or God-given?) freedom of conscience and make a decision for yourself, such as not carrying a stupid little card that allows them to take you against your will and against your own best interests, and put you in their armed forces, and send you off to fight a colonialist war in a small Asian country. To cooperate with them and carry the damned card so they wouldn't arrest you was to admit the plain truth: that you were living in a velvet dictatorship. And everyone in the antiwar movement knew it. We were fighting, as best we could, against a military dictatorship. The whole youth movement was well aware of it. We also saw some of our best leaders killed and our best dreams destroyed. No one who was there can ever forget it. |
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22 Sep 08 - 04:58 PM (#2447606) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Folknacious Ref girl with autoharp in Troubadour photos. I just read the Suze Rotolo book and she didn't go to London: Dylan went to London while she was coming back from Italy. HOWEVER: one of Rotolo's best pals in New York at that time was Janet Kerr, who did play the autoharp, who visited her (with autoharp) while she was in Rome and then headed north to France and beyond. Could it be Janet Kerr? |
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22 Sep 08 - 05:06 PM (#2447611) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Don Firth In 1951, at the age of 22, I didn't have a draft card. I hadn't registered for the draft because I didn't think I had to. I'd had polio at the age of two, and as a result, I walked with the aid of a leg brace and a pair of aluminum forearm crutches. Obviously IV-F. But I was informed by a friend that it was the law, no exceptions, and I'd better get my rear down to the draft board and register. So I did. No penalty. They accepted my misunderstanding with a very mild reprimand. But I did have to report for a pre-induction physical. I've written a pretty funny piece (entitled "At War with the Army") on what happened during the physical and some of the tricks a couple of army doctors tried to see if I was faking. Pretty hilarious (but true), but too long to post here and would constitute severe thread drift. A few weeks later, I got my draft card. IV-F, as I was sure it would be, but at least now, I was legally IV-F. But some years later, I was called back for an interview, had to fill out what amounted to a job a résumé, and was reclassified as I-Y, which means "draftable in time of national emergency." I figure that was probably okay, because if a nuclear holocaust broke out, I would probably be in some concrete bunker 300 feet underground, pounding a typewriter. . . . Fun times! Don Firth |
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22 Sep 08 - 05:16 PM (#2447618) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: The Borchester Echo If you mean the Janet Kerr who was formerly fiddler in the New Deal String Band and of Blue Ridge Mountain Field Trip fame who used to work for Bill Leader in the 70s, no it's not her. She was living in London in the late 60s (at one time in the same flat as me) but she's a bit younger than I am and would still have been at school in Essex in 1963. |
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22 Sep 08 - 05:18 PM (#2447620) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Jim McLean We didn't have draft cards when I was called up for National Service in 1956/7, in Scotland. I refused to go and registered as a Conscientious Objector ... it was the time of the Suez fiasco .. and I was jailed for six months in Glasgow's Barlinnie prison, quite a memorable experience. |
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22 Sep 08 - 06:31 PM (#2447678) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Don Firth {Correction: In 1951, I was 20, not 22. Let's not rush this!} Don Firth |
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22 Sep 08 - 06:35 PM (#2447682) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Stilly River Sage Don, Did you post that article on a thread here at Mudcat? I know you had a long one going some years back. I do wish you'd just go ahead and write the darned book and we'll see about getting it published online if not on paper. Print on demand maybe. SRS |
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22 Sep 08 - 06:47 PM (#2447688) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: meself Interesting thread drift. But, getting back to Dylan and Suze and her finding out of his real name by accident, there is an anecdote about Dylan visiting Ramblin' Jack Elliot, and happening to notice the name on some mail that just arrived, going into gales of laughter ... |
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22 Sep 08 - 07:12 PM (#2447702) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Mark Ross Actually it came out that Jack's birth name was Eliot Adnopoz when his parents came to a gig he did at Gerde's Folk City. The way Van Ronk told the story Dylan heard this and fell on the floor laughing. Just when he started to recover, Barry Kornfeld leaned under the table and whispered "Adnopoz" which set Dylan off again. Mark Ross |
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22 Sep 08 - 07:40 PM (#2447717) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Folknacious Diane Easby: "If you mean the Janet Kerr who was formerly fiddler in the New Deal String Band and of Blue Ridge Mountain Field Trip fame who used to work for Bill Leader in the 70s, no it's not her. She was living in London in the late 60s (at one time in the same flat as me) but she's a bit younger than I am and would still have been at school in Essex in 1963." Different Janet Kerr then? American, girlfriend of John Herald, as described in the book. Living in Greenwich Village in the early 60s. Coincidence of name? Maybe somebody who knew that Janet Kerr can look at the photo linked near the beginning of this thread - the timing, autoharp and "friend of Bob Dylan's" all fit. |
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25 Mar 09 - 08:32 PM (#2597447) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: GUEST,Janet Kerr I can clear up the mystery of the girl with the autoharp. It is I, Janet Kerr. After being with Suze Rotolo in Perugia in the summer of 1962 I went to London for the winter. I was friends with Bob Dylan, Ethan Signer and Richard Farina at the time and we had some fun at the Troubadour. |
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26 Mar 09 - 08:05 AM (#2597660) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Michael S Thank you for stopping by and clearing that up, Janet. I'm sure folks here would love to hear any memories of that time you wanted to share. Cheers Michael Scully |
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26 Mar 09 - 08:11 AM (#2597664) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Jim McLean Now we know, Janet, I'll contact the Richard and Mimi web page organizer and have proper credits posted. It's taken 46 years to clarify this and I remember seeing you in the troubadour where my wife took the photo. |
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26 Mar 09 - 10:06 AM (#2597732) Subject: RE: Suze Rotolo memoirs (re Bob Dylan) From: Stilly River Sage It was nice to revisit this thread. And thanks for settling a burning question! SRS |
