Booknote: A Freewheelin' Time

Hi, kids.

I just finished reading the latest Bob Dylan Book, A Freewheelin' Time, by Suze Rotolo (the girl from the Freewheelin' album cover, to you).

Suze, a visual artist, moved in with Bobby (as she calls him; too cute!) on a Fourth Street apartment when she was seventeen and he was twenty. They stayed together until 1964, when Bobby went to California and cheated on Suze with Joan Baez (sad face!). The artfully disjointed memoir follows Suze's adolescence and early twenties, spent in Greenwich Village with Bobby and in Europe with her family.

The general message of the memoir has definitely seen before in other '60s memoirs: in the midst of the chaos, it was a ultimately a simpler time with a youth culture who actually believed in something and were able to change the world despite their starry-eyed idealism. Yes, it's trite, but anyone even considering picking up this book should realize that it's to be expected (and young artists of later generations should be prepared to feel inferior and chastised). Still, I'm a romantic bohemian and a sucker for anything Dylan, and I must say that A Freewheelin' Time is not bad for its genre. Actually, you can get a lot more out of Rotolo's story, informationally and artistically, than you can get out of Dylan's own cryptic Chronicles, Volume I.

Suze repeats throughout the book that she never wanted to be "a string on Dylan's guitar", a legitimate concern for someone who could be considered up there with Pamela Des Barres in the "chick" hall of fame. She compensates for the purely Dylan-fueled appeal by adding snippets about her life growing up in Queens as a red-diaper baby; her career ventures as a jewelry designer, off-Broadway set designer, artist and East Village Other Slum Goddess; and other important, down-home people important in the early Village folk scene. Fabulous ladies and gents can get some rad home decor tips from Suze, too. Seriously!

The razzle-dazzle provided by Dylan, Edie Sedgwick, and Allen Ginsberg, to name a few, is still definitely pretty sweet. Especially the girlfriend stories, like going shopping with Bobby to pick out a jacket to wear on his first album cover. Come on. You wanna read it. You wanna be it.

It's definitely a good read for Dylan fans, but if you don't care about Bob, you may be a little confused as to why this woman is prattling on about herself so much.

My favorite song.

I always tell people that any of a hundred songs is my favorite song...but this one is my real favorite.

Desolation Row

They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad, they're restless,
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight from Desolation Row

Cinderella, she seems so easy
"It takes one to know one," she smiles,
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style.
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning
"You belong to me, I believe,"
And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend,
You'd better leave."
And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up on Desolation Row.

Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortune-telling lady
Has even taken all her things inside.
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing,
He's getting ready for the show.
He's going to the carnival tonight on Desolation Row.

Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window.
For her I feel so afraid:
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid
To her, death is quite romantic,
She wears an iron vest
Her profession's her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness.
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah's great rainbow
She spends her time peeking into Desolation Row.

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood,
With his memories in a trunk,
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk.
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet.
Now you would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin on Desolation Row.

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients,
They're trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser,
She's in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
"Have Mercy on His Soul".
They all play on the penny whistle,
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough from Desolation Row.

Across the street they've nailed the curtains.
They're getting ready for the feast.
The Phantom of the Opera
In the perfect image of a priest.
They're spoonfeeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured,
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words.
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls,
"Get out of here if you don't know,
Casanova is just being punished for going to Desolation Row."

Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do.
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping to Desolation Row.

Praise be to Nero's Neptune,
The Titanic sails at dawn.
And everybody's shouting,
"Which side are you on?"
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much about Desolation Row.

Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the door knob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame.
I had to rearrange their faces And give them all another name
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters, no,
Not unless you mail them from Desolation Row




Sincerely.