
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… Meeting her was like stepping into the tales of 1001 Arabian Nights. She had a smile that could light up a street full of people and was extremely lively, had a kind of voluptuousness—a Rodin sculpture come to life.
Bob was charismatic: he was a beacon, a lighthouse, he was also a black hole. He required committed backup and protection I was unable to provide consistently, probably because I needed them myself. … I could no longer cope with all the pressure, gossip, truth and lies that living with Bob entailed. I was unable to find solid ground. I was on quicksand and very vulnerable.
Rotolo became pregnant in 1963 by Dylan and had an abortion. Their relationship failed to survive the abortion, Dylan’s affair with Joan Baez and the hostility of the Rotolo family. Suze moved into her sister’s apartment in August 1963. She and Dylan broke up in 1964, in circumstances which Dylan described in his “Ballad in Plain D”. Twenty years later, he apologized for the song, saying: “I must have been a real schmuck to write that. I look back at that particular one and say, of all the songs I’ve written, maybe I could have left that alone.”
These beautiful photos captured lovely moments of Bob Dylan and his girlfriend Suze Rotolo during their dating days, from 1961 to 1964.
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