A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties
by: Suze Rotolo
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A Freewheelin’ Time is Suze Rotolo’s firsthand, eyewitness, participant-observer account of the immensely creative and fertile years of the 1960s, just before the circus was in full swing and Bob Dylan became the anointed ringmaster. It chronicles the back-story of Greenwich Village in the early days of the folk music explosion, when Dylan was honing his skills and she was in the ring with him.
A shy girl from Queens, Suze Rotolo was the daughter of Italian working-class Communists. Growing up at the start of the Cold War and during McCarthyism, she inevitably became an outsider in her neighborhood and at school. Her childhood was turbulent, but Suze found solace in poetry, art, and music. In Washington Square Park, in Greenwich Village, she encountered like-minded friends who were also politically active. Then one hot day in July 1961, Suze met Bob Dylan, a rising young musician, at a folk concert at Riverside Church. She was seventeen, he was twenty; they were young, curious, and inseparable. During the years they were together, Dylan was transformed from an obscure folk singer into an uneasy spokesperson for a generation.
Suze Rotolo’s story is rich in character and setting, filled with vivid memories of those tumultuous years of dramatic change and poignantly rising expectations when art, culture, and politics all seemed to be conspiring to bring our country a better, freer, richer, and more equitable life. She writes of her involvement with the civil rights movement and describes the sometimes frustrating experience of being a woman in a male-dominated culture, before women’s liberation changed the rules for the better. And she tells the wonderfully romantic story of her sweet but sometimes wrenching love affair and its eventual collapse under the pressures of growing fame.
A Freewheelin’ Time is a vibrant, moving memoir of a hopeful time and place and of a vital subculture at its most creative. It communicates the excitement of youth, the heartbreak of young love, and the struggles for a brighter future.
A Freewheelin’ Time is Suze Rotolo’s firsthand, eyewitness, participant-observer account of the immensely creative and fertile years of the 1960s, just before the circus was in full swing and Bob Dylan became the anointed ringmaster. It chronicles the back-story of Greenwich Village in the early days of the folk music explosion, when Dylan was honing his skills and she was in the ring with him.
A shy girl from Queens, Suze Rotolo was the daughter of Italian working-class Communists. Growing up at the start of the Cold War and during McCarthyism, she inevitably became an outsider in her neighborhood and at school. Her childhood was turbulent, but Suze found solace in poetry, art, and music. In Washington Square Park, in Greenwich Village, she encountered like-minded friends who were also politically active. Then one hot day in July 1961, Suze met Bob Dylan, a rising young musician, at a folk concert at Riverside Church. She was seventeen, he was twenty; they were young, curious, and inseparable. During the years they were together, Dylan was transformed from an obscure folk singer into an uneasy spokesperson for a generation.
Suze Rotolo’s story is rich in character and setting, filled with vivid memories of those tumultuous years of dramatic change and poignantly rising expectations when art, culture, and politics all seemed to be conspiring to bring our country a better, freer, richer, and more equitable life. She writes of her involvement with the civil rights movement and describes the sometimes frustrating experience of being a woman in a male-dominated culture, before women’s liberation changed the rules for the better. And she tells the wonderfully romantic story of her sweet but sometimes wrenching love affair and its eventual collapse under the pressures of growing fame.
A Freewheelin’ Time is a vibrant, moving memoir of a hopeful time and place and of a vital subculture at its most creative. It communicates the excitement of youth, the heartbreak of young love, and the struggles for a brighter future.
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: 
- There was music in the cafés at night and revolution in the air
Dylan's lyric from "Tangled up in Blue" came immediately to mind as I read Suze Rotolo's gentle meandering memoir of those heady days in the first years of the 60s when life and Dylan were young and folk and music were pure.It now seems a brief intermission of peace and purity between the sanitized and sedated nirvana of the 50s and the drugged and violent explosion of the rest of the 60's.Dylan tells how he responded, as "Tangled up in Blue" continues:
And when finally the bottom ... Read More
Rating: 
- Thank you Suze.
Rotolo's memoir of her life in the Village is honest, vulerable, and astonishingly clear-sighted.It is perhaps most compelling as she quietly carries the question that we all know the answer to now.Yes, you just stumbled onto history, Suze!Bobby will change music!Dylan Thomas will become Bob Dylan's footnote not vice-versa!
But she doesn't seem to need that.The grace of friendship, the crumpled Dylan letter in her pocket, the warmth of the folk community carry Suze and the ... Read More
Rating: - Freewheelin' 60's!
I really enjoyed this book!It was a excellent memoir about the early 60's and I thought Suze's decription of the time period to be vivid and very realistic!However, if you read this book as a bio on Dylan, you will be disappointed, as she does not go into great depth about him.If you read it as life lived in early 60's NYC and the folk music scene, you will enjoy it!
Rating: - Good book but not about Dylan.
Dylan may be on the cover photo of this book, and obviously the title alludes to him, but very little is said about him in this book, just so you know. The book is written by his early girlfriend (before he got rich but around the time he got famous). I wanted WAY more behind-the-scenes info on life in the fast lane of the Sixties, but the author demures. There is no sex and very little drugs in this rock-n-roll book (surprisingly). That said, I did like the author who is very artistic and worked during ... Read More
Rating: - She's got everything she needs, she's an artist and at last she looks back
When I saw Suze Rotolo in No Direction Home it sent shivers down my back. You may talk of Patty Boyd, Jane Asher, and Anita Pallenberg, but Suze Rotolo inspired Boots of Spanish Leather, One Too Many Mornings, It Ain't Me Babe, Ballad in Plain D, She Belongs to Me, If You See Her Say Hello, and numerous others of Dylan's most passionate, thought provoking and beautiful love songs. In Chronicles, Dylan himself, credits her with introducing him to ideas that would spin his art in it's most fascinating directions. ... Read More
- There was music in the cafés at night and revolution in the airDylan's lyric from "Tangled up in Blue" came immediately to mind as I read Suze Rotolo's gentle meandering memoir of those heady days in the first years of the 60s when life and Dylan were young and folk and music were pure.It now seems a brief intermission of peace and purity between the sanitized and sedated nirvana of the 50s and the drugged and violent explosion of the rest of the 60's.Dylan tells how he responded, as "Tangled up in Blue" continues:
And when finally the bottom ... Read More
- Thank you Suze.Rotolo's memoir of her life in the Village is honest, vulerable, and astonishingly clear-sighted.It is perhaps most compelling as she quietly carries the question that we all know the answer to now.Yes, you just stumbled onto history, Suze!Bobby will change music!Dylan Thomas will become Bob Dylan's footnote not vice-versa!
But she doesn't seem to need that.The grace of friendship, the crumpled Dylan letter in her pocket, the warmth of the folk community carry Suze and the ... Read More
- Freewheelin' 60's!I really enjoyed this book!It was a excellent memoir about the early 60's and I thought Suze's decription of the time period to be vivid and very realistic!However, if you read this book as a bio on Dylan, you will be disappointed, as she does not go into great depth about him.If you read it as life lived in early 60's NYC and the folk music scene, you will enjoy it!
- Good book but not about Dylan.Dylan may be on the cover photo of this book, and obviously the title alludes to him, but very little is said about him in this book, just so you know. The book is written by his early girlfriend (before he got rich but around the time he got famous). I wanted WAY more behind-the-scenes info on life in the fast lane of the Sixties, but the author demures. There is no sex and very little drugs in this rock-n-roll book (surprisingly). That said, I did like the author who is very artistic and worked during ... Read More
- She's got everything she needs, she's an artist and at last she looks backWhen I saw Suze Rotolo in No Direction Home it sent shivers down my back. You may talk of Patty Boyd, Jane Asher, and Anita Pallenberg, but Suze Rotolo inspired Boots of Spanish Leather, One Too Many Mornings, It Ain't Me Babe, Ballad in Plain D, She Belongs to Me, If You See Her Say Hello, and numerous others of Dylan's most passionate, thought provoking and beautiful love songs. In Chronicles, Dylan himself, credits her with introducing him to ideas that would spin his art in it's most fascinating directions. ... Read More
