Review Of Suze's Book
Babs
Music
Memoirs of a Girl From the East Country (O.K., Queens)
By ANTHONY DeCURTIS
IT is one of the most evocative images of Greenwich Village in the
1960s. An attractive young couple are walking down the middle of a
snow-covered street. His head is down and tilted toward her. He’s
wearing an artfully half-buttoned brown suede jacket, but his hands
are stuffed in his jeans’ pockets against the cold. She is smiling,
huddling against him. Shot in February 1963, the photo would come to
epitomize the romantic youth culture of the time — its freedom and
fragility, its rootlessness and sense of purpose.
The couple is Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo, then his girlfriend, and the
photograph graced the cover of Mr. Dylan’s groundbreaking second
album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” (Columbia), which came out three
months later. “Freewheelin’ ” — which includes songs like “Blowin’ in
the Wind,” “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and “Masters of War” —
established Mr. Dylan, who had just turned 22, as the spokesman of his
generation.
Last month, more than 45 years after that photograph made her a
nationally known figure, Ms. Rotolo, now 64, stood on the spot on
Jones Street where it was taken and eyed the reporter accompanying her
warily. “I don’t do re-enactments,” she said, laughing.
After rarely discussing her relationship with Mr. Dylan since they
broke up in 1964, Ms. Rotolo has looked back, mostly with affection.
Her book “A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the
Sixties” comes out this week, and a similar photo from the
“Freewheelin’ ” session serves as its cover.
Looking elegant in a lightweight black coat, a long gray skirt and
black boots, Ms. Rotolo, who is now a visual artist, recalled the
original photo shoot. “We were facing this way,” she said on Jones
Street, as she pointed north toward Fourth Street. “I figured they’d
choose one of Bob by himself, so it was astounding, really
surprising.”
With her long light-brown hair, Ms. Rotolo became a model to emulate
for young women and an object of desire for men at the time. She does
not recall it that way, however. “It was freezing out,” she said. “He
wore a very thin jacket, because image was all. Our apartment was
always cold, so I had a sweater on, plus I borrowed one of his big,
bulky sweaters. On top of that I put a coat. So I felt like an Italian
sausage. Every time I look at that picture, I think I look fat.”
In “A Freewheelin’ Time” Ms. Rotolo walks a delicate line between not
wanting to exploit her relationship with Mr. Dylan but needing to
address people’s understandable curiosity about it. “Feeding the
beast” is how Ms. Rotolo describes the futility of trying to gratify
the endless hunger of Dylan fanatics. “When you know that someone is
human, to make them godlike is disconcerting,” she said. “I’m not a
rapacious Dylan junkie.”
When the couple first met in July 1961 at a folk concert at Riverside
Church at which Mr. Dylan performed, they were just two of countless
young people who had made their way to Greenwich Village to reinvent
themselves. He had left his native Minnesota to pursue his dream of
following the path blazed by his idol Woody Guthrie. Ms. Rotolo
meanwhile had grown up in Queens, the daughter of working-class
Italian Communists during the height of the McCarthy era. Well read,
artistically inclined and intellectually adventurous, she yearned for
an environment in which her interests did not seem weird, let alone
dangerous, for a 17-year-old girl. In the 20-year-old Mr. Dylan she
encountered a “kindred spirit,” she said.
They lived together in a small apartment on West Fourth Street and fed
each other’s ravenous hunger for meaning. “We created this private
world,” Ms. Rotolo recalled over lunch in an Italian restaurant on
Waverly Place. “We were searching for poetry, and we saw that in each
other. We were so ultrasensitive, both of us. That’s why it was a good
relationship, but also why it was difficult.”
Mr. Dylan has been a gnomic figure for so long that it’s sometimes
hard to recollect the Chaplinesque aspect that characterized him in
his youth. His boundless enthusiasm proved a delight for the more
reserved Ms. Rotolo. For his part Mr. Dylan soaked up her passion for
the likes of William Blake, Bertolt Brecht and Arthur Rimbaud; he
inscribed a paperback edition of Byron’s poems to her “Lord Byron
Dylan.” Equally important, her political activism, particularly in the
civil rights movement, spurred his thinking and writing about those
issues.
“She’ll tell you how many nights I stayed up and wrote songs and
showed them to her and asked her: ‘Is this right?’ ” Mr. Dylan told
his friend and eventual biographer Robert Shelton. “Because I knew her
father and mother were associated with unions and she was into this
equality-freedom thing long before I was.”
Their romance, then, began on the basis of an equality that became
impossible to sustain. She would soon feel overwhelmed by the
obsessive attention the world focused on Mr. Dylan. Having made the
symbolic journey across the East River to discover herself and what
she might become, she felt lost once again, reduced to being Mr.
Dylan’s chick and urged even by her most well-intentioned friends to
accommodate her life in every way to his genius.
In approaching Ms. Rotolo about doing the book, Gerry Howard, an
editor at Broadway Books, mentioned “Minor Characters,” a memoir by
Joyce Johnson, who had been Jack Kerouac’s lover at a similar stage in
his career. “I’m a great fan of ‘Minor Characters,’ and I thought Suze
stood in exact relation to Dylan as Joyce Johnson did to Kerouac,” Mr.
Howard said. “They were present at liftoff and then had to live in the
backwash of all that.”
It turned out that Ms. Rotolo too was a fan of “Minor Characters,”
which is something of a pre-feminist classic, and saw her story in
similar terms. In part for that reason she chose to write the book
herself rather than with a collaborator. (Disclosure: I share a book
agent with Ms. Rotolo.)
For his part Mr. Dylan was no less disoriented by his rising success
than Ms. Rotolo was, and he resented Ms. Rotolo’s need for distance. A
nearly six-month trip she took to Europe with her mother in 1962, for
example, left him distraught. The pained letters he sent her (“Yes
maybe I wish maybe you didn’t cut your hair — it’s so good ... it’ll
grow back tho huh?”) reveal a vulnerable side of Mr. Dylan that has
rarely been seen.
In the grip of his own struggle, he turned to other women for support,
most notably Joan Baez, who, having become a star herself when she was
barely 20, could help him negotiate this strange new terrain. Their
romantic involvement, which included Ms. Baez’s frequent requests that
he perform with her, also significantly expanded his audience, a fact
not lost on Mr. Dylan.
“He needed somebody who could guide him,” Ms. Rotolo said. “I could
not be the person he needed at that time. I needed that myself. I was
still finding out who I was. I had no sense of mission or dead-on
ambition, whereas he did. It’s a male-female thing, and it’s also of
the time. I knew I was an artist, but I loved poetry, I loved theater,
I loved too many things. Whereas he knew what he wanted and he went
for it.”
When Ms. Rotolo became pregnant, she and Mr. Dylan agreed that she
would have an abortion, which was illegal (and often dangerous) at the
time. That further strained their relationship.
“The alliance between Suze and me didn’t turn out exactly to be a
holiday in the woods,” Mr. Dylan wryly concludes in his 2004 memoir,
“Chronicles, Volume One.” (Mr. Dylan declined to be interviewed for
this article.) But he describes their first meeting in more glowing
terms: “She was the most erotic thing I’d ever seen. She was fair
skinned and golden haired, full-blood Italian. The air was suddenly
filled with banana leaves.”
He often wrote about their love affair, most prominently in “Don’t
Think Twice, It’s All Right,” “Tomorrow Is a Long Time,” “Boots of
Spanish Leather” and “One Too Many Mornings,” and most caustically in
“Ballad in Plain D,” in which he castigates her mother and older
sister, who did not approve of him. In his liner notes to “The Times
They Are A-Changin’ ” (1964), Mr. Dylan wrote, “ah but Sue/she knows
me well/perhaps too well/an is above all/the true fortune teller of my
soul.”
On a perfect spring afternoon Ms. Rotolo agreed to stroll through
Greenwich Village and reminisce about some of the sites she writes
about in “A Freewheelin’ Time.” After the stop on Jones Street, she
walked toward Fourth Street, where the drones of a man playing a sitar
floated from the Music Inn, a crowded instrument store that looked
unchanged from the ’60s. “Musicians would just come and play at Allan
Block’s,” she said, referring to the famed sandal store and folkie
hangout that had been next door, “the way they would at Izzy Young’s
Folklore Center on MacDougal Street. If they didn’t have an
instrument, they could go to the Music Inn and borrow one.”
A few doors east stood 161 West Fourth Street, where she lived with
Mr. Dylan in a two-room walk-up for $60 a month. “Well, some things
have changed,” she notes, as she eyes the “exotic novelties” shop that
has replaced Bruno’s Spaghetti Store on the ground floor. Their
apartment “was in the rear,” she said, “and we looked out on this
little garden. There was a pizza place somewhere, so there was always
a smell of stale sauce.”
Further west on Sheridan Square she pointed out the newspaper stand on
a small island in Seventh Avenue where she and Mr. Dylan awaited the
early edition of The New York Times that included Mr. Shelton’s
review, now legendary, of Mr. Dylan’s performance at Gerde’s Folk
City. The rave, which ran on Sept. 29, 1961, led to Mr. Dylan’s record
contract with Columbia Records.
Ms. Rotolo still lives nearby, in the East Village, where she bought a
loft, she said, “when they were giving them away.” She has been
married many years, and her son, Luca, is a musician and guitar maker
who also lives in the city. She has been an illustrator and a painter,
and now calls herself a “book artist,” work she described in an e-mail
message as reinterpreting “the book as an art object” and combining
“drawing, painting, collage, and found objects.” “Reliquaries,” an
exhibition of her work, will be on display through mid-July at the
Medialia Gallery in Manhattan.
At the Italian restaurant Ms. Rotolo explained how “No Direction
Home,” the 2005 documentary that Martin Scorsese directed about Mr.
Dylan, inspired her to tell her own story. She is in occasional, if
infrequent, touch with Mr. Dylan, and is extremely respectful of his
privacy. That he would sanction Mr. Scorsese’s film, in which she
appears, and publish his own memoir made her feel more secure about
coming forward.
“The feeling I had was, sure, it’s about Dylan, he’s the focal point,
but it was my life,” she said about “No Direction Home.” “This is what
we all lived through, and what an exciting and pivotal time it was. I
came to grips with the fact that this is important, and I should stop
being so private.”
Still, she is not nostalgic. “All this indulgence of the ’60s, ay-yi-
yi, get over it,” she said. Every era and place hold magic for people
willing to live intently in them, she believes. “Everything occurs
again, just differently,” she said. “There will always be creative
people who feel that they’re different and create a community of some
kind. Whether it’s a physical neighborhood or an Internet
neighborhood, in Bushwick or in Greenwich Village, it’s not over."
really real
Babs
> Wow! Great review! Suze sounds like a very wise, thoughtful person.
I agree. But what do you make of this paragraph?
"With her long light-brown hair, Ms. Rotolo became a model to emulate
for young women and an object of desire for men at the time. She does
not recall it that way, however. “It was freezing out,” she said. “He
wore a very thin jacket, because image was all. Our apartment was
always cold, so I had a sweater on, plus I borrowed one of his big,
bulky sweaters. On top of that I put a coat. So I felt like an
Italian
sausage. Every time I look at that picture, I think I look fat.” "
Speaking as a woman, I can tell you that I never saw Suze as a model
to emulate. For me and my girlfriends, Suze inspired vicious jealousy.
We didn't want to be like her. We wanted what she had -- a prominent
place in Bob's life.
I would be surprised to learn that Suze served as an object of desire
for men at the time. For one thing, you can't see enough of her to be
aroused. She has nothing to be embarrassed about concerning the photo,
and she certainly doesn't look fat like an Italian sausage, but we
don't get a good enough image of her to want to look like her or be
with her.
really real
>
> "With her long light-brown hair, Ms. Rotolo became a model to emulate
> for young women and an object of desire for men at the time. She does
> not recall it that way, however. “It was freezing out,” she said. “He
> wore a very thin jacket, because image was all. Our apartment was
> always cold, so I had a sweater on, plus I borrowed one of his big,
> bulky sweaters. On top of that I put a coat. So I felt like an
> Italian sausage. Every time I look at that picture, I think I look fat.” "
You know, I never noticed that she did look a bit fat. She looked
awfully cute. As a guy, I didn't have to worry about being jealous of
her position and her place. I just saw her as a very pretty long haired
beautiful girl-woman.
She's got this great smile in the photo. I was instantly smitten.
daysof48
> She's got this great smile in the photo. I was instantly smitten.
How "Blood Sweat and Tears" of you.
"I don't ask for much..."
tcozzolino
- Tom
really real
> It's sad to know that their child was never given a chance..
I'm also sad about all the foetus's that were never given a chance to be
conceived because of contraception.
Jumbo
> It's sad to know that their child was never given a chance..
>
> - Tom
But brave and honest of her to write about it.
Jumbo
Heartless.
St. Annie
Oy vey. Brave, honest, yes. Also selling books. Talk about someone
famous long ago for playing the electric violin on Desolation Row.
Sorry, don't mean to sound as cynical as I do, and certainly not
jealous (though as Babs said didn't we all wanna be the girl in the
puffy coat on the front of Freewheelin) -- but for someone who's
reeling toward 70 to get critical and literary attention because when
she was 17 she shagged a 20-year-old genius .... I always respected
her for keeping quiet about her life, herself, and getting on with
whatever it was she was doing. But first came the Sotheby's, or was
it Christie's, sale, and now this book, capitalizing with its title
and its cover photo and everything else on a few early years of her
life. If she'd written about her painting, her politics, and so
forth, great for her. However, would that sort of prospectus have
gotten her a book contract? Dylan. I created his "look." Abortion.
Cover of Freewheelin. These are the sound bites pulled by every
review so far, and every review to come. Seems a shame to me --
because she does indeed seem like a cool woman who's done, and is, a
lot else. Hope it sells well, because this all smells to me like
there's a need or want for cash -- so good luck with it. I reckon
I'll get a few copies of this as a birthday present in the next week
-- but only from people who don't know me all that well....
daysof48
> I'll get a few copies of this as a birthday present in the next week
> -- but only from people who don't know me all that well....
Wish I got birthday presents from people who don't know me well!
St. Annie
You're right, I didn't mean to sound like I was complaining! Bad me.
I just meant that if they knew me well, they wouldn't be getting me
THIS. They'd be making me supper, or hiring someone to clean my
house, or getting a tank of gas for the car, or sticking flowers in
the screen door, or buying me books I might actually want -- useful,
happy-making stuff like that.
If I DO get a copy of Suze's book, it's all yours. Happy to mail it
to ya!
best best, Annie
really real
>> I'm also sad about all the foetus's that were never given a chance to be
>> conceived because of contraception.
>
> Heartless.
I'm especially sad about all the women who wouldn't sleep with me.
daysof48
> You're right, I didn't mean to sound like I was complaining! Bad me.
> I just meant that if they knew me well, they wouldn't be getting me
> THIS. They'd be making me supper, or hiring someone to clean my
> house, or getting a tank of gas for the car, or sticking flowers in
> the screen door, or buying me books I might actually want -- useful,
> happy-making stuff like that.
> If I DO get a copy of Suze's book, it's all yours. Happy to mail it
> to ya!
> best best, Annie
I know what you meant. I was being a tool. No one had been a tool for
a few days.
The Hysterical Bride
WRONG! I WOULD NEVER WANT TO BE SEEN WITH HIM.
I WANT HIM ALL FOR MYSELF, PRIVATELY, HIDDEN AWAY, AND FOR EVERYBODY
TO LEAVE US ALONE.
lowg...@ao1.com
>It's sad to know that their child was never given a chance..
It could have been the New Dylan.
J Buck
sleep with me.>
I always thought that was a rather strange euphemism.
M. Rick
But nice to know she wasn't harmed by an illegal abortion, and nice to know
women have the right to an abortion today. Also nice to know the world
isn't burdened with millions more unwanted babies.
The Hysterical Bride
I just feel so bad for all the children who are lost due to reckless
abandonment during masturbatory emissions. :(
The Hysterical Bride
I have to say this, because I like being original (as far as I know),
and I wasn't trying to pass this off as my own idea, I got it from the
movie, Legally Blonde.
M. Rick
emulate. For me and my girlfriends, Suze inspired vicious jealousy. We
didn't want to be like her. We wanted what she had -- a prominent place in
Bob's life.
And yet I don't see much vicious jealousy directed at Patti Boyd. Nor at
Linda McCartney or Cynthia Lennon (Yoko is more complicated). Were women
seething with envy at Priscilla for getting a prominent place in Elvis'
life? Bianca Jagger? How about Anna Karina (Godard), Elizabeth Taylor
(Burton), Jackie Kennedy? Why does a sweet, romantic shot of Suze and Dylan
inspire so much vicious jealousy where the other examples do not?
The Hysterical Bride
This is reminding me of the girl in Dont Look Back, who said, "Come
down, come down" and "pinch me, pinch me, me dream's come true!"
I don't mean to be obnoxious here, but I thought that was SO STUPID.
I was like, THAT'S YOUR FRICKEN DREAM? TO CATCH A GLIMPSE OF BOB
DYLAN?
MY DREAM IS TO HAVE HIM ALL FOR MY VERY VERY OWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AND I WILL SETTLE FOR NOTHING LESS!!!!!!!!!
Now I am the Hysterical Bride, and everything else, and it's all
bullshit, it's never going to happen, I want to live with Bob Dylan in
a house and sleep with him in a bed, and snuggle with him, and cuddle
with him, and play with him, and love him, and maybe maybe maybe
possibly be good enough to be his wife and GULP, I wish I could write
in tiny tiny tiny letters, have a little family.
But I guess he's too great.
LESS IS MORE, MR. DYLAN.
GIVE IT ALL UP AND COME BE WITH ME, AND ME ALONE.
PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
haha.
But please, I'm serious, I want you to look good.
I want you to look healthy.
I don't care if you are ugly, you are not ugly, you could never be
ugly, unless you have on some kind of weird hat and a dark mustache or
something, or are totally wacked out on drugs, and look deranged or
sick. (sometime when you look deranged, it's still cool, but only in
the context of being a rock star, not my healthy happy boyfriend/
husband.)
really real
> really real wrote: <I'm especially sad about all the women who wouldn't
> sleep with me.>
>
> I always thought that was a rather strange euphemism.
>
How should I have worded it? How would you have said this sentence?
really real
>
> And yet I don't see much vicious jealousy directed at Patti Boyd. Nor at
> Linda McCartney or Cynthia Lennon (Yoko is more complicated). Were women
> seething with envy at Priscilla for getting a prominent place in Elvis'
> life? Bianca Jagger? How about Anna Karina (Godard), Elizabeth Taylor
> (Burton), Jackie Kennedy? Why does a sweet, romantic shot of Suze and Dylan
> inspire so much vicious jealousy where the other examples do not?
>
>
I hated it when Tom Cruise got to marry Nichol Kidman
frinjdwelr
"M. Rick" <richar...@paris.com> wrote in message
news:7J5Wj.7110$Uz2.7018@trnddc06...
friends would beg to differ with you. Linda was especially savaged.
J Buck
sleep with me.>
J Buck wrote: <I always thought that was a rather strange euphemism.>
really real wrote: <Most euphemisms are strange. How should I have
worded it? How would you have said this sentence?>
I'm too much of a gentleman to say it.
J Buck
Kidman>
Why?
really real
>
> J Buck wrote: <I always thought that was a rather strange euphemism.>
>
> really real wrote: <Most euphemisms are strange. How should I have
> worded it? How would you have said this sentence?>
>
> I'm too much of a gentleman to say it.
Then what was the point of your post?
Babs
For the simple reason we did not want a prominent place in the lives
of any of those other men. Bob had touched us deeply. He made us
think; he made us feel. He made an individual personal connection with
each of us. And finally, we thought he was adorable.
We had friends who went for Jagger, but that was mostly about sex
appeal. These girls would throw their underwear up on the stage at
concerts. They didn’t much care what Mick sang. But for us, Bob was
the whole package – brains, beauty, depth and compassion.
We were New Yorkers. We were aspiring writers. We romanticized The
Village. We thought we were worldly. In truth, we were delusional
teenyboppers in love with the idea of Bob Dylan.
And in that sweet photo, he looked so accessible, on a street we knew
well. The shot epitomized a young girl’s fantasy. The two looked so in
love, yet there was something wrong with the picture. Why Suze and not
us? Hadn't he spoken to us directly and personally in a way no one
ever had before? Didn't he realize we had heard him?
The Hysterical Bride
> Babs <bambiemo...@aol.com> wrote:
> > We had friends who went for Jagger, but that was mostly about sex
> > appeal. These girls would throw their underwear up on the stage at
> > concerts. They didn¹t much care what Mick sang. But for us, Bob was
> > the whole package brains, beauty, depth and compassion.
>
If I were going to a Bob Dylan concert to throw something up on stage,
I would throw a flesh colored christ that glows in the dark with a
yarmulke on its head.
This could be an interesting thread all by itself.
If you were going to throw something up on stage at a Bob Dylan
concert, what would it be?
Challah and bra have already been taken.
Hmm, let's see.
Brown rice, seaweed and a dirty hot dog
I can't think of anything else.
String beans?
TV dinners?
I'd have to go looking through the songs.
If you say a cigarette, you are an asshole.
G-d
I would throw Rachel Ben-Levi on stage. (and I did.)
Bob Dylan deserves her!
G-d and The Hysterical Bride
>
> - Show quoted text -
Please forgive us for interrupting your private conversation.
J Buck
That it was a rather strange euphemism. I didn't see the point in
stating the obvious option(s).
M. Rick
These girls would throw their underwear up on the stage at concerts. They
brains, beauty, depth and compassion.
Signed, sealed and delivered to Jealousy St. NY NY.
>And in that sweet photo, he looked so accessible, on a street we knew well.
The shot epitomized a young girl's fantasy. The two looked so in love, yet
there was something wrong with the picture. Why Suze and not us?
In the Gospel of Philip the disciples are jealous of Mary for making out
with Jesus. Jesus was the whole package, wasn't he?
And he made a most graceful exit. Stage north.
M. Rick
friends would beg to differ with you. Linda was especially savaged.
Well you might be right, but to me it's not the same type of jealousy. Suze
is only a "role model and sex object" because she's with Dylan. The envy is
that she occupies a prominent place in Dylan's life. It has very little to
do with her personality, her looks, her effect on Dylan or her own artistic
abilities. You can put Bozo the Clown on Dylan's arm and the faithful will
be yearning to stand in Bozo's shoes.
really real
>
> <Then what was the point of your post?>
>
> That it was a rather strange euphemism. I didn't see the point in
> stating the obvious option(s).
>
I make as statement. You call it a strange euphemism. I ask you how I
should have worded it. You tell me you can't, implying that it needs a
euphemism.
Something is strange here and you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Buck?
J Buck
euphemism. I ask you how I should have worded it. You tell me you can't,
implying that it needs a euphemism. Something is strange here and you
don't know what it is, do you Mr. Buck?>
Yeah...I think the term is 'baiting'. :)
Babs
You seem to be confusing fantasy-filled young teenage girls with your
idea of the faithful.
Babs
> >We had friends who went for Jagger, but that was mostly about sex appeal.
>
> These girls would throw their underwear up on the stage at concerts. They
> didn't much care what Mick sang. But for us, Bob was the whole package -
> brains, beauty, depth and compassion.
>
> Signed, sealed and delivered to Jealousy St. NY NY.
I prefer Tim Buckley's Pleasant Street, thank you very much.
> >And in that sweet photo, he looked so accessible, on a street we knew well.
>
> The shot epitomized a young girl's fantasy. The two looked so in love, yet
> there was something wrong with the picture. Why Suze and not us?
>
> In the Gospel of Philip the disciples are jealous of Mary for making out
> with Jesus. Jesus was the whole package, wasn't he?
> And he made a most graceful exit. Stage north.
At your invitation, I shared a memory in which I laughed at the
foolishness of myself and my friends in our early teenage years. What
is the point of making fun of someone who has already made fun of
herself? A bit redundant, my dear M. Rick.
really real
That would explain why you jumped into the thread to attack my
euphemism. I guess you aren't getting enough jollies from my latest
rounds with poisoned rose.
Jumbo
I've always been quite jealous of the white fuzzy area on the Down in
the Groove cover.
Just Walkin'
>
> Speaking as a woman, I can tell you that I never saw Suze as a model
> to emulate. For me and my girlfriends, Suze inspired vicious jealousy.
> We didn't want to be like her. We wanted what she had -- a prominent
> place in Bob's life.
>
> for men at the time. For one thing, you can't see enough of her to be
> aroused. She has nothing to be embarrassed about concerning the photo,
> and she certainly doesn't look fat like an Italian sausage, but we
> don't get a good enough image of her to want to look like her or be
> with her.
I don't know Babs. The image of a young woman clutching the arm of a
rebel poet is a pretty romantic image, especially to those of both
sexes eschewing the commercial vision of beauty. I mean, that was the
spirit of the age, caught between the emerging fashion sense of the
time and rejection of the market as its arbiter.
Not that Bob did, mind you. He did, after all, have a thing for
Bridgette Bardot, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Anita Eckberg.
But many of his devotees recognize the irony here, an irony that later
turned into a confident aspiration with his subsequent marriage. Many
of us guys out here in the post-freewheelin' world ended up with
someone clutching our arms fulfilling an imprinted romantic fantasy
while he ended up with a Playboy bunny!
PrivateCitizen_dudley
this past Mother's Day, 11may08, there was a bit on Charles Kuralt's
"Sunday Morning"; the transcript here (no video as of this juncture):
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/11/sunday/main4086047.shtml
That said, What's this all about (Suze, The Cough Song)?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl-PONEzBjU
There're those who posit that bob ripped off this song for "Nashville
Skyline Rag".
That furthur said, i'm betting bob doesn't begrudge her. Likely there
was communication along the line.
If i were a betting man, i'd examine the tip sheet more closely.
dudley
crazytimes
> On May 11, 6:56 pm, Babs <bambiemo...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Speaking as a woman, I can tell you that I never saw Suze as a model
> > to emulate. For me and my girlfriends, Suze inspired vicious jealousy.
> > We didn't want to be like her. We wanted what she had -- a prominent
> > place in Bob's life.
>
> > I would be surprised to learn that Suze served as an object of desire
> > for men at the time. For one thing, you can't see enough of her to be
> > aroused. She has nothing to be embarrassed about concerning the photo,
> > and she certainly doesn't look fat like an Italian sausage, but we
> > don't get a good enough image of her to want to look like her or be
> > with her.
>
> I don't know Babs. The image of a young woman clutching the arm of a
> rebel poet is a pretty romantic image, especially to those of both
> sexes eschewing the commercial vision of beauty.
I'm jealous of the New York City winters of then... but only in this
age of greenhouse-gas mild winters... The VW van in it is pretty
cool... but it's probably just a broke-down engine at this point...
Babs
> Not that Bob did, mind you. He did, after all, have a thing for
> Bridgette Bardot, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Anita Eckberg.
> But many of his devotees recognize the irony here, an irony that later
> turned into a confident aspiration with his subsequent marriage. Many
> of us guys out here in the post-freewheelin' world ended up with
> someone clutching our arms fulfilling an imprinted romantic fantasy
> while he ended up with a Playboy bunny!
Classic irony, eh?
And a far cry from this situation:
.. Now they asked me to read a poem At the sorority sister's home I
got knocked down
and my head was swimmin' I wound up with the Dean of Women Yippee! ...
All in good fun. Bob seems to have a soft spot for many different
kinds of women.
Babs
>
> I'm jealous of the New York City winters of then... but only in this
> age of greenhouse-gas mild winters... The VW van in it is pretty
> cool... but it's probably just a broke-down engine at this point...
Nostalgia attack! I'm having a major one myself. Pretty potent
photograph.
M. Rick
someone clutching our arms fulfilling an imprinted romantic fantasy while he
ended up with a Playboy bunny!
I'm not getting your point. His "Playboy bunny" wife was not your romantic
fantasy?
M. Rick
Groove cover.
That's the spirit.
Jumbo
Thanks. I was wondering how to explain it.
Just Walkin'
I dunno; does your idea of romance have more to do with love or with
lust?
Rhoda Rotini
So if a girl works as Playboy bunny, you (or me or Dylan) can't fall in love
with her? Something particularly "ironic" about that?
M. Rick
with this story.
J Buck
euphemism. I ask you how I should have worded it. You tell me you can't,
implying that it needs a euphemism. Something is strange here and you
don't know what it is, do you Mr. Buck?>
J Buck wrote: <Yeah...I think the term is 'baiting'. :)>
<That would explain why you jumped into the thread to attack my
euphemism.>
Attack? Given our storied history of battling, I would hardly call what
I wrote an 'attack'. Sorry if it came off that way.
<I guess you aren't getting enough jollies from my latest rounds with
poisoned rose.>
Au contraire. I am enjoying those immensely.
Just Walkin'
Romantic love is possible with anyone. But it is based on who the
person is, not on the archetype.
M. Rick
is, not on the archetype.
Then there shouldn't be any irony. Aren't you contrasting the romantic
ideal (or archetype) of the rebel-poet with the commercialized ideal of
Playboy?
M. Rick
least one job) connects to a lustful, commercialized view of love, as
opposed to marrying a bohemian-artist type who is (allegedly) more pure and
romantic.
On my irony meter that registers about 0.002.
The Hysterical Bride
> On May 12, 5:39 pm, The Hysterical Bride <rache...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > On May 12, 5:33 pm, "M. Rick" <richardbla...@paris.com> wrote:
>
> > > >It's sad to know that their child was never given a chance..
>
> > > But nice to know she wasn't harmed by an illegal abortion, and nice to know
> > > women have the right to an abortion today. Also nice to know the world
> > > isn't burdened with millions more unwanted babies.
>
> > I just feel so bad for all the children who are lost due to reckless
> > abandonment during masturbatory emissions. :(
>
> I have to say this, because I like being original (as far as I know),
> and I wasn't trying to pass this off as my own idea, I got it from the
> movie, Legally Blonde.
Somebody sent this to me:
http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=eab8c7b40d&attid=0.1&disp=inline&view=att&th=119e37bb4091b29d
St. Annie
Ha ha ha. Awright, if we're picking album covers I want to be the
guitar on Nashville Skyline: Bob holding me by the neck while I
balance on/near his lap. Or more like the gal on the cover of Knocked
Out Loaded, about to break a jar over some brawler's thick head!
Always wanted to be on a Roxy Music lp cover, of course, when I was a
girl....
really real
>
> Ha ha ha. Awright, if we're picking album covers I want to be the
> guitar on Nashville Skyline: Bob holding me by the neck while I
> balance on/near his lap. Or more like the gal on the cover of Knocked
> Out Loaded, about to break a jar over some brawler's thick head!
> Always wanted to be on a Roxy Music lp cover, of course, when I was a
> girl....
>
I always wanted to be Sean Connery's left arm on the Dr. No album cover
Just Walkin'
Given the way the market works, it's probably even less than that. The
market was bound to commercialize even the most fiercely independent
bohemian lifestyle in time.
Tif -Taf
Can't fight the enslaving market but there may be no need to at this
point : it seems to me that it is being in the process of being co-
opted by many humans for Highlands' ultimate purpose. This still
tenderly evolving phenomena calls for a leadership of entrepreneurs
with good instinct ( a good sniff for righteous and just directions )
and for their reliance on a strong desire to live in integrity. Since
noblesse oblige, higher guidance has become more readily available to
those who seek such now, available on a grander mass scale. Higher
guidance has never been easier for the individual to access it now, It
is not reserved for mystics. One has to ask for it ... and be
prepared to receive .. or it will shy away. For spirit guidance does
not coerce, it only suggest and then only to those who lend their
mind~heart to it.
Attune to your heart... ask for the info... listen... keep ears and
eyes open...allow mind and heart to rest... closer and closer inside
ground of being now. Cultivate lightness of being, seriously have
fun.
tif.