The Freewheelin' Suze Rotolo Dies At 67

Suze Rotolo may be best recognized from the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, but there was more to her relationship with the musician than the snapshot of linked arms on a snowy Jones Street. Rotolo went more in-depth in her 2008 book, A Freewheeling Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties; to narrow it down to modern cyber-speak, their relationship was "complicated." Now, at age 67—fifty years after first meeting Dylan—Rotolo has died.

According to the NY Times, she passed away in her Manhattan home last Thursday from lung cancer, with her husband of 40 years, Enzo Bartoccioli, by her side. She is also survived by a son.

Rotolo was a "red diaper baby," aka the daughter of card-carrying communists, raised in Jackson Heights, Queens. She was a major force in introducing Dylan to political activism. In his 2004 memoir, Dylan wrote, “Right from the start I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was the most erotic thing I’d ever seen. She was fair skinned and golden haired, full-blood Italian. The air was suddenly filled with banana leaves. We started talking and my head started to spin. Cupid’s arrow had whistled past my ears before, but this time it hit me in the heart and the weight of it dragged me overboard.” For the most part Rotolo herself avoided talking about their 4-year relationship prior to this. Later, in her own memoir, she wrote that Dylan was “oddly old-time looking, charming in a scraggly way.” (She also eventually appeared in No Direction Home.)

Dylan's song "Ballad in Plain D" details the night of their break-up; in 1985, when asked if he regretted the song, he said, "I look back at that particular one and say... maybe I could have left that alone."

More on Rotolo's life at the Guardian, where they note she even joined the satirical street theatre troupe Billionaires for Bush in 2004!