Suze Rotolo
Appearances
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
of international students, and I had also found an art academy, a small art academy that I went to. It was just thrilling.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
Most of the songs that he's written, I hate to say, oh, this is written about me or this. But that's a good example of a song that is a fiction based on an experience he was going through.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
Yes. So that's a good example of how it becomes art, your life experience. You translate it into art. It serves a purpose for the music you're making or the art you're making.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
I think I had a pair, though, of boots of Spanish leather at some point.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
Well, I felt it was very... After all, I've always been a shy person, so to have this relationship kind of thrown right out there in public was very horrible. I thought it was terrible. I was very private. I didn't go broadcasting things around, and yet... People seemed to know how I had made him suffer. Publicly, he was letting that out.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
But I see that that was just his way of working through it, making it part of his art. But at the time, I just felt so exposed. It was awful.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
It was all this stuff that was going on around his fame, and there was so much pressure. I just felt that I no longer had a place in this world of this music and fame, and I more and more felt more and more insecure that I was just a string on his guitar, I was just this chick.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
I was losing confidence in who I was and the way I felt in Italy that I was still, I was my own self and could continue my life and not become this object that's next to Dylan. And also the more famous he got, there were more pressures on him. And of course, there's all these women that were running around. And so it became something that I didn't like being involved anymore.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
I saw it as a small, cloistered, specialized world that I just didn't belong in it.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
But I didn't want to be in that kind of a situation at all. I didn't feel there was a competition. I just felt there was just—he was leaving for another world and another place, and he would expect me to be there always, kind of as a safe haven. So he could come back from wherever he was and whoever he was with, but he'd always have this quiet space in New York. But I couldn't live that way.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
Well, there was a folk music club, Gertie's Folk City, in the village, and I used to go there. And he was performing with other people, or he'd play backup harmonica for other groups. And it was the kind of place where musicians played with other people. And then he gradually started playing with this one other folk singer, Mark Spolstra.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
I wanted my own life in my own way. And even with all this conflict, that tortured young love, you know, it's there. We were still attached to each other, even though we were both going in different directions. and needed to go in different directions, and it was harder for me to pull away. It was easier for him to lead several lives.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
Well, it doesn't have to get personal if we just keep it at this. To say that he was singing the songs that she needed to sing because she was just singing beautiful ballads with that beautiful voice of hers. And she knew that this wasn't what she could keep on singing and maintain a career. And she heard his music and knew this is what she wanted.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
wanted to sing about and what she wanted to sing and it was a natural it was natural that they be together because he was writing what she wanted to sing and she was extremely famous and without her help I mean she literally brought him into the folk firmament bringing him around with her on tour so um was that difficult for you to see him with another woman in such a public way
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
By then, it was pretty much I was detaching from him. It was difficult because it became so public. People could see, oh, God, there are definitely going to be a couple here, and what are you going to do? And it became very difficult then. And as I said, he could go off and be with whoever he wanted to be with and then expect me to be there when he came back to New York.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
Well, for those who notice those things, yes. I mean, otherwise, no. I mean, it's a funny kind of recognition. It's people who are Dylan-philes, you know, Dylan-o-philes or however I could say that. would know to recognize the name, but not everybody does. So it's kind of a funny, sometimes I'm surprised that someone recognizes me, and most of the time nobody does.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
This is going to change that a bit, I suppose.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
And so I would see him around and I enjoyed his harmonica playing. I thought he was really good in a funny kind of way. He'd sit in the back and really get into playing the harmonica. But we didn't actually talk to each other or see each other person to person until that folk concert at Riverside Church where he was playing by himself and he was playing also with Jack Elliott.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
And that's when we kind of got to know each other better.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
I think that's wonderful and generous and a lovely thing that he wrote. And he captured that sense of being young and meeting somebody and being overwhelmed by feelings for them. And that's what young love is. He did that well.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
At that time when I met him, I think it was the time when we all were, people were coming to the village to find or lose themselves. And you live very much in the present. So I don't think any of us really talked about where we came from and what we, what our parents were like.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
But there were rumors that that was his name because he had to get a cabaret card and then you had to have documentation. So rumors started flying that it wasn't his real name. I think a lot of people suspected it wasn't his real name, but it didn't make any difference. But for me, once we were a couple and we were together, I was hurt that he didn't tell me.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
Yes, he used to tell those stories. Well, everyone used to tell stories like that. Only his were wilder and funnier, and they would contradict each other, and people would wait around to see what the next installment would be that would contradict the other one that he had told a few days before.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
He was, we had come home, we were living by then together on West 4th Street, and we had come home one evening, and he was a bit in his cups, and he took his wallet out of his pants, and everything fell on the floor, and I saw his draft card. There were draft cards in those days. And I saw his name, and I was really, that's when I was hurt. I said, you never told me that this was your real name.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
I understand you didn't tell anybody else, but you could have at least told me
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
I didn't feel comfortable saying that. So that was why to give you an idea of how secrecy would make sense and something like that, I could understand people not wanting to talk about their story. And you didn't go around saying that your parents were communists because what was from the McCarthy era into the 60s certainly left its mark.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
Well, it was the image of being a rambling, gambling folk singer, so you couldn't look neatly pressed. After all, also, to give him a little credit, they all did that. You know, they all had to have their costume, how it looked, but... It was also, if you think back then, there were folk groups that were very mannered and like the Kingston Trio, impeccably dressed.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
So this, we were the, these new folk singers were the anti-Kingston Trio image, you know.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
It was all very casual. And the apartment was very small. And the photographer came and the publicity guy from Columbia came. So then they figured they'd start taking some pictures in the apartment of Bob's. sitting around, pick up your guitar, put it down, sing something. And then Don Hunstine said to me, get in some of the pictures. So I did, and he took more pictures.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
And then he said, let's go outside and walk. It was very casual, completely unplanned. And it was freezing outside. And then again, referring to Bob getting dressed, he just took this thin suede jacket that wasn't good for a New York cold winter day. And I had on a couple of sweaters. The last one was his, a big bulky knit sweater because the apartment was cold. And I threw on a coat on top.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
So I always look at that picture as I feel like an Italian sausage because I had so many layers on. And he was freezing and I was freezing and had more clothes on. It was very cold that day.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
Yes, it's true. Suffer for beauty, isn't it? How did that album cover change your life? I had no idea, and I don't think anyone who had anything to do with it thought it would have such an enormous impact. So it became something that was my identifier, but it wasn't my identity. So it became something that was separate from me.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
who I knew myself to be, which might sound odd, but I thought it was a great cover, a very unusual cover for the time. And the first time I saw it, he was playing at Carnegie Hall, I think, or Town Hall, and the cover was blown up and put on right outside. It was in black and white and blown up very big. And that really made an impression. It was almost embarrassing.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
There we were up on 57th Street. Huge, huge. So each time the album began more and more known, as the album became more what it is, it became an iconic album, the more I could detach from it and just look at it. Okay, that's what that is. But it was an odd feeling for many years.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
That's nice because it's true. We did. We were very curious, and we were both in search of poetry. And we fed each other's curiosities. And I was—well, because I was from New York City also, you know, and he was from Hibbing, Minnesota.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
So the fact that in New York you're exposed to a lot more, plus the family I came from, we were very—we didn't have much money, but we were very culturally—I always think of it as being culturally very, very wealthy because, you know, books we had—we didn't have a TV. Right. But the house was filled with books and phonograph records, and we listened to the radio.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
I was exposed to all different kinds of music from a very early age. My mother loved Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Edith Piaf. And they listened to opera, classical records we had. It was very, very rich. And when you grow up in that, you just assume everybody else knows all this. But I knew an awful lot about music just from listening and hearing and being exposed to it.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
Whereas with Bob, he was... He heard this music and knew this is what he wanted to investigate, but he had a harder time finding it and finding people. And there are stories now about when he was in Minnesota stealing people's records so he could learn the music on it. So he had a harder time finding things, whereas I was almost born into it.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
He didn't want me to go, but at the same time, he didn't want to put pressure on me. But I learned later from a friend that he was furious when she said, well, you should go because this is a wonderful opportunity. And then he was very angry with her for a long time. But to me, he didn't want to come down hard.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
He did say, don't go, but he didn't want to restrict me from considering going at the same time. And it was a difficult decision for me. I kept hemming and hawing on whether I should or shouldn't or whether I wanted to or not. It was difficult. Why did you go?
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
In the end, I think I went for many reasons, one being because I couldn't stand the arguments anymore that were going on in my own head of, should I or shouldn't I? And it did seem like a good thing to do, a real opportunity. And also the village was getting oppressive in many ways. Greenwich Village. Yes, Greenwich Village was getting oppressive. It was so much the folk music thing.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
And I wasn't a musician, and I couldn't keep on obsessing about folk music the way the musicians would. So it also seemed like a nice way to get away. And it was only going to be for three months maximum, but I ended up staying a good eight months. Because when I was there, I was no longer in this... I kind of see it as in these small, smoky taverns.
Fresh Air
Joan Baez / Suze Rotolo / Al Kooper On Dylan
I was out in the bright sunshine with people from all over the world my age, and I was hearing all this other kind of music and other poets, and I was trying to read. I remember trying to read Rimbaud in French and trying to just absorb. It was like a college experience. I hadn't gone to college, and this time that I spent in Perugia and this atmosphere was