A Freewheelin' Time

‘ I met Bob Dylan in 1961 when I was seventeen years old and he was twenty… ’

So begins the acclaimed memoir of Suze Rotolo, the woman who was Bob Dylan’ s girlfriend in the early sixties. She reveals the romantic story of their sweet but sometimes wrenching love affair and its eventual collapse under the pressure of Dylan’ s growing fame.

Despite having never previously raised her head above the parapet to write about her time with him, people are probably more familiar with Rotolo than they might think: it is she who is pictured arm in arm with Dylan on the iconic sleeve of his 1963 sophomore album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.

Set during the time when Dylan was writing the soundtrack to the cultural revolution of the 1960s, this is a unique and remarkable narrative of a place and time when art, culture and politics all seemed to be conspiring to make America a freer, more equitable place. With a supporting cast that includes Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez and Andy Warhol, this is essential reading for Dylan fans and anyone fascinated by the Sixties.