There is a warmth about this book that comes to its pages as naturally as a leaf falling from a tree. That is a rare gift, and all the more remarkable considering Suze Rotolo must have felt as if she was caught up in an emotional tempest of Shakespearean proportions during its creation.
A Freewheelin' Time is Rotolo's account of her personal memories of Greenwich Village in the early part of the nineteen-sixties. It was the era of the Folk Music revival, the defiant stand of the freedom-fighting artist . . . and the appalling thundercloud of impending doom that was the missile-crisis stand-off of superpowers playing toy soldiers with the rest of mankind. To be young then, as Suze Rotolo was, must have meant many things; to have met and fallen in love with a guy called Bob Dylan at the same time will probably take a lifetime to get into perspective.
There has been an awful lot written about Dylan throughout the years, with no doubt more to come. What is so refreshing and inspiring about this book (which is not, incidentally, all about Dylan) is the fact that Rotolo speaks with no bitterness, no animosity, no rancour, about a true romance that played itself out during the very months and years that Dylan developed his unique talents into something that even today cannot really be fully quantified. Just as there will only ever be one Shakespeare, one Dickens, one Muhammed Ali, there can only ever be one Bob Dylan . . . so do not wait for another.
Few partnerships can withstand the insanity of world-wide fame. Dylan was a difficult enough character as it was, but as his star rose to unprecedented heights the day-to-day realities of keeping a relationship on an even keel became too much. Rotolo, to her eternal credit, refrains from scattering blame around or complaining about what might or might not have been. She tells it like it was, there in the Village amongst the cast of brave, talented and oft-crazy one-offs; there in the Dylan circus, good and bad, happy and sad.
If you get a chance to read this book, please grab it. For this is more than a vibrant recollection of experiences of one of the most influential periods in twentieth-century culture. Herein lies an example of how to take the rough with the smooth, and let good intentions towards people always take preference over negative attitudes.
The book ends with a classic sentence about the sixties - one that people today would perhaps do well to take note of:
"The new generation causing all the fuss was not driven by the
market: we had something to say, not something to sell."
