In A Freewheelin’ Time Rotolo uses her relationship with Dylan as the focal point for everything else happening around them. And in that sense Bob Dylan plays a central role. But—to her credit—Rotolo never exploits the relationship for her own purpose. And she doesn’t waste entire chapters obsessing over Dylan’s every whim. She describes him as someone who was immensely talented, and often difficult.

“I loved him and he loved me,” Rotolo writes. “But I had doubts about him, his honesty, and the way life would be.”

Moments like that strip away the Dylan mystique, painting him in more vulnerable terms than any other book has (with the possible exception of Dylan’s own memoir, Chronicles). Particularly revealing are letters Dylan wrote while Rotolo was traveling abroad—letters in which he describes mundane things like missing her and how he wishes she hadn’t cut her hair.

“We were young and living our lives,” Rotolo explains. “There was no way I could think of it as ‘history in the making.’ Nor could I see Bob Dylan as an icon. He was my boyfriend and we were both in search of the poets… in those early years he was one of several performers who were better than average. What set him apart was something many thought was a negative, his voice—you either liked it or you didn’t. His ability to write songs that were good right off the bat—outshining others whose work was fine but more pedestrian—made it obvious he was headed somewhere.”

Dylan was headed somewhere, and he got there rather quickly. By the time he performed at the Newport Folk Festival in July of 1963, Dylan was already the undisputed belle of the ball. His newfound celebrity, and the overwhelming swell of publicity surrounding it, began to affect his relationship with Rotolo—most notably when rumors of an ongoing affair with Joan Baez began to surface.

Shortly after Newport, Rotolo began to distance herself from Dylan, first moving out of their West 4th Street apartment in August of ’63, and later parting ways with him for good on the street one night, Rotolo saying little more than “I have to go,” and Dylan offering nothing but a slight wave in return.

For a short while after, Dylan tried to rekindle their relationship, sometimes asking Rotolo to marry him, despite rampant rumors of his other relationships. As the world outside began to demand more and more of Bob Dylan, it seemed a part of him still wanted to be that no-name kid, slushing down Jones Street with his girl—carefree, confident, two grains against the tide.

But neither one could go back. Too much had come to pass.

It was the beginning of a whole new era for Dylan, one of several reinventions that would keep him in the public eye for years to come. But it was the end of something as well. It was the end of the childlike innocence and blind ambition that brought Dylan and Rotolo to Greenwich Village in the first place. Bob Dylan has become an international phenomenon. And that meant there would always be expectations—expectations and classifications he’d spend the rest of his career railing against.

Bob Dylan went off to conquer the world and Suze Rotolo remained in the Village, becoming an advocate for civil rights both here and abroad. In the years that followed she would fall in love again, get married, raise a family, and build a career of her own.

“I live very much in the present,” Rotolo says. “And consequently, I tend to not see the past when I walk around the Village today. What I am aware of, however, is the sad reality that most people can no longer afford to live in the East Village or West Village. In addition, stores that serve neighborhoods—shoe repair shops, cleaners, laundromats—have to close due to high commercial rents, and that kills the essence of community, not to mention the soul of the city. The same stores selling the same merchandise everywhere means there is no variety or character to a neighborhood. Eventually, Manhattan becomes homogenized.”

But “living in the present” doesn’t necessarily mean Rotolo forgets about that couple in the photograph, or the lasting significance of some of those early songs Dylan wrote about her (“Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”, “Tomorrow Is a Long Time”, “Boots of Spanish Leather”, to name a few).

“The old songs, from the early time in his life in which I participated, are so recognizable, so naked, that I cannot listen to them easily,” she writes. “They bring back everything. There is nothing mysterious or shrouded with hidden meaning for me. They are raw, intense and clear.”

Suze Rotolo is 64 years old now.

Bob Dylan is 67.

They both grew old in very different ways.

She grew roots and he grew wings.

And that young couple in the photograph? Well, they just grew apart.

Watch: “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright” [myspace.com]

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