The Ballad of Bob and Susan (quite long)

[Espen Aas]

This should have been posted earlier, but I'm afraid I never came around to
do so. What I'm going to share with you is a three-page article from the
Daily Mail (right-wing middle-class tabloid) about Susan Ross who claims to
have been Bob Dylan's girlfriend for the last 12 years. I can not recall to
have seen anything about this on R.M.D. earlier, although it bears parallels
to the three Carol's which The Times wrote about some time ago.
I'm afraid I can not transcribe the whole article, it would be too long to
post (and write!), but I will summarise her arguments. Let me stress that
this is a "cheesy" piece of journalism, with a lot of tabloid-stuff, but I
reckon some of you will like to read it, at least for rejecting her story:
The "headline" is: 'I thought we'd be like John and Yoko, Paul and Linda.
But Dylan doesn't *need* a companion - that's the tragedy. 46 year old Susan
Ross, a legal assistant from a Jewish family, is now publishing a book about
her life with Dylan, as some kind of revenge on him for not publicly
acknowledging her as his girlfriend. She tell tales about all his "bad"
sides, such as his obsession with his private life: "His life, she soon
learned, was rigidly compartmentalised, and he was a control freak, who kept
each compartment hermetically sealed". She was apparently not invited to his
Malibu home until they had been together for five years, "When she got
there, he backtracked, unable to handle this invasion of his private space
(...snip...) Ross describes it (the home) as a whimsical cross between the
Taj Mahal, a ski chalet and an American summer camp. She arrived there and
then, says Ross, Dylan showed her to the guest bedroom. He made the excuse
that he couldn't sleep in his own bed. Ross was not to be allowed to sleep
in the legend's bedroom" (much of the article is built around the big brass
bed, featured in Lay Lady Lay. The article both opens with this bed and jump
back to it a couple of times". She claims to have got pregnant with Dylan
quite early, but took an abortion, she claims that when he was drinking
heavily, he had gotten impotent and that he kissed like a tenth grader and
so on (lot of crap if you ask me). She never came to hospital when he was
ill last year, but is at the same disappointed that she had to learn from
the media that he had recovered. It was at that point she decided to go
public about their relationship. She wrote him a note saying "It is my way
of becoming visible, instead of being another secret in your life. I am
tired of having people think I am delusional when I remark casually that
I've been with Bob Dylan for ten years" (even though the article says it's
12...).
Finally, there is only one piece of "evidence" for this relationship, a
photo taken of them when they met in 1985, she in a $10 blue cocktail dress
(bought in a charity shop) and hi in an oversized white jacket.
It could be argued that this is a woman who want to make money out of
meeting Dylan once, or maybe she is true, who knows? For my own account,
after reading the article a couple of times, it doesn't make sense to me.
If they really were so close as she claims for 12 long years, wouldn't it be
natural that there was more evidence to this relationship than an old photo?
And why does she have to write to many ugly things about the man if it only
to make this relationship publicly known?
Other details in the article, Ross says that Dylan have been married
secretly two times after Sara; to his backing singers Clydie King and Carol
Woods, by whom he has a total of three children, the youngest a 12-year old
daughter, which means that she must have been born close to when Dylan met
Ross. She also calculates that he had two children with the Broadway star
and gospel singer Carolyn Dennis.
Lastly, let me quote a final thing which apparently comes from Ronnie Wood
about Dylan's relationship with Clydie King. He recalled them as 'chalk and
cheese... her a black, outrageous, hamburger-eating soul singer and Bob all
quiet and white, nibbling off the side of her hamburger. I always remember
him trying to share her hamburger, and she was bossing him around and stuff.
He needed it at the time.'

Apologise if I'm repeating old news now, but it has certainly never showed
up in my newsreader before. The article is from Saturday 16th of May, and is
probably copyright the Daily Mail.
--
Espen
E....@btinternet.com
Trade page: http://www.btinternet.com/~aas.longva/dylan.htm