Suze Rotolo, 67, an artist who was Bob Dylan’s girlfriend and lyrical muse when he came to prominence in the early 1960s, died Friday. Rotolo, whose relationship with the singer lasted four years, died of lung cancer in New York City, said her agent, Sarah Lazin.
“Right from the start I couldn’t take my eyes off her,” Bob Dylan wrote in his memoir. “She was the most erotic thing I’d ever seen.”
He was 20 at the time, and she was 17.
So taken was Dylan that his 1963 album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” was fronted by the iconic photo of the artist and Rotolo walking arm in arm on a snowy Greenwich Village street.
“The fact is that from early on, Suze’s left-wing politics had an impact on Dylan’s early writing,” said Rolling Stone contributing editor Anthony DeCurtis. DeCurtis thinks their relationship waned when she became overwhelmed by the worldwide fame that cascaded down on him as an icon of his era.
A spokesman for Dylan said Dylan was unavailable for comment.
The Associated Press
