Suze Rotolo has died

Susan Elizabeth Rotolo (1943- 2011), who has just died was best known as Suze Rotolo the woman walking with Bob Dylan on the cover of his album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. She was his Dylan's girlfriend between 1961 and 1964. In 2008 she published a memoir, A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties, describing her time with Dylan and other figures in the folk music scene in Greenwich Village, New York.

Rotolo became an artist specialising in artists' books and taught at the Parsons School of Design in New York City.

A number of Dylan's songs are regarded as having been written for or to Suze. Boots of Spanish Leather supposedly was written after she left New York to study in Italy. This song has been included in the Popular Ballads of the 20th Century section of the Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th edition.

The last time Bob played this song live was at the Echo Arena, Liverpool on May 1, 2009. I was there, that was the night he played George Harrison's Something to mark his first visit to the city since George's death.

I got a letter on a lonesome day
It was from her ship a-sailin’
Saying I don’t know when I’ll be comin’ back again
It depends on how I’m a-feelin’