Vuelan & Deslizan

 

Dylan's Pride Anthem or a sad love song?

by Veronica Martinez

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

          Marcus Mumford and Justin Young covered Bob Dylan’s ‘Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright’ for another edition of the ‘Gentlemen of the Road Sessions’. Marcus and Justin are both the lead singers of their respective bands Mumford and Sons and The Vaccines and gathered to sing one of Dylan’s most recognized songs. While Mumford and Sons is a band with folk influence, The Vaccines heads more into the direction of post-punk revival.

 

Bob Dylan is known as one of the greatest lyricist in rock music.

At the beginning of his career, his lyrics turned into anthems

for the Civil Rights 1954-1968 movement and granted him the

title of the ‘King of Folk Music.’ However, this song is far from

being an activist song. ‘Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright’ is a song

about a heartbreak from one of Dylan’s early girlfriends, Suze

Rotolo (1961-1964), the girl on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob

Dylan.

 

           Aside from being the girl on the cover of The Freewheelin’

Bob Dylan (1963) album, Suze was a culturally sophisticated girl.

Influenced by her Italian heritage and communist parents, she

was what the sixties would call, a ‘red diaper baby.’  British 

biographer and journalist, Howard Sounes, described Suze in his

book Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan (2001) as ‘…one of a crowd of people who congregated around the fountain in Washington Square Park to listen to musicians playing folk, blues, and hillbilly music. She also began to attend hootenannies at Gerde’s Folk City and elsewhere, first seeing Bob perform with Mark Spoelstra.’ During Bob’s and Spoelstra’s performance in Folk City, Suze was sitting with her friend Pete Karman, who was telling her about the nice set of legs of a woman across the bar. She pointed at Spoelstra and commented on his nice set of shoulders. Next thing, Pete called out ‘Hey Mark Shoulders, come meet Suze. She say’s you’re cute!’ She wrote on her memoir A Freewheelin’ Time.

 

         Along with describing New York in the sixties, (when it was more affordable to live in NY), with this memoir Rotolo broke a silence of 45 years when she talks about her relationship with Dylan. She wrote the following about Dylan:

 

‘I felt good around him and I liked him sticking close by me or watching me from across a room. But I also liked that he could go inside himself so thoroughly and so completely that there was nothing else around but the music he was hearing in his head or the thoughts crossing his mind.’

 

‘Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright’ goes on and on about how this girl (Rotolo), should leave and mind no more for Dylan because he is already gone and moved on.

 

‘Look out your window, and I'll be gone, you're the reason I'm a-traveling on’

 

sounds like Dylan was the one who’s leaving Suze right? Well, it was the other way around actually. Suze was there for him when he was still a Greenwhich village boy who played at Gerde’s Folk City Bar and also when he made it big at the folk scene around 1962. By 1963, fame changed Bob and Suze’s relationship. They were no longer the couple walking arm to arm around New York on a cold day, and although Suze blended into the 1960’s Folk music scene, she couldn’t handle the new Dylan nor the rumors, one of them being: If Dylan was the king of folk, there had been a queen right? Joan Baez, also a voice for the activist movement, was often seen singing with Dylan at the folk festivals. Dylan and Baez became quite good friends and suddenly rumors of a romance flourished—rumors that were in part true. So, did a shy Italian girl from Queens stood a chance against a folk legend like Joan Baez? Of course, Rotolo was heartbroken; designing flyers and menus for the bars at The Village and Dylan’s infidelities wasn’t, clearly, what Rotolo was looking for. However, she didn’t give Bobby many chances. The next thing Dylan heard from Suze, was that she was on her way to the University of Perugia in Italy to study art. In 1964, Suze finally left behind a very lonely Dylan, who later on wrote postcards to Italy and would sing: 

 

‘I ain't a-saying you treated me unkind, you could have done better but I don't mind, you just kinda wasted my precious time, but don't think twice, it's all right.’

 

          Dylan commented later on that ‘Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright’ was not a love song. ‘It’s a statement that maybe you can say to make yourself feel better. It’s as if you were talking to yourself.’ Bob was pining for Suze and missed her terribly, and all he was left with was a song. Their relationship was doomed by Dylan’s growing fame, but it didn’t mean it was disingenuous. Each one took what they could from each other and made with what they had, there is no use in sitting around and wondering why. It’ll never do somehow.

 

 

 

 

 

Article written by:

 

                          Verónica Martínez

                           

 

 

 

 

 

Sources:

 

        Dylan, Bob. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Sleeve notes. Columbia. 2003.

       

        Rotolo, Suze. A Freewheelin’ Time. A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties. Random House. New York. 2008. Pg. 15, 94.

 

        Sounes, Howard. Down the Highway. The Life of Bob Dylan. Doubleday. Great Brittain. 2011. Pg. 101.