and the silent night will shatter from the sounds inside my mind, for i’m one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind

This is a terribly depressing trend of posts, but in addition to Jane Russell, we've lost another inspiring woman: Suze Rotolo. Suze (pronounced like 'Susie') passed away on February 24th after suffering a from lung cancer. She was 67 years old.

Born and raised in Queens, Suze was the daughter of liberal Italian-Americans who flirted with Communism and left-winged political activism, describing herself as a "red diaper" baby (a term for the children of radicals during the age of McCarthyism). She was just seventeen years old when she met Bob Dylan in the summer of 1961 at a folk concert (some say it was at Riverside Church, others state that the meeting occurred at Gerde's Folk City in the West Village), just shortly after Dylan moved to New York City. Of meeting her, Dylan wrote in Chronicles, "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." Far less romantically, Rotolo described her first impression of him as "oddly old-time looking, charming in a scraggly way."
Over the course of the three-year relationship that ensued, the young couple continued to inspire one another, though what Suze inspired in Bob was what has earned her the title of "muse" over the last half-century. The leftist political leanings of herself and her family is credited as a huge influence in Dylan's "political awakening" in his songwriting. Rotolo was heavily involved in the civil rights movement, having participated in the Youth March for Integrated Schools in 1958 led by Harry Belafonte in DC, and the protests of the travel ban against Cuba, a mission that brought her (along with a group of other students) to the country in 1964, where they were welcomed by Che Guevara. In addition to his leftist leanings, Dylan's interest in Bertolt Brecht, Artaud, Verlaine, and Rimbaud, painting and sketching can be traced, at least in part, back to Rotolo.
In June 1962, Suze left Bob - who had been her boyfriend and living companion for over a year - and traveled to the University of Perugia in Italy with her mother, to study for six months there. In her absence, Dylan wrote many of his best songs - channeling his feelings of sadness, longing, love, and restlessness into his music, coming up with such tunes as "Boots of Spanish Leather," "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," "One Too Many Mornings," and "Tomorrow is a Long Time."
Upon her return to New York, their relationship resumed, though Dylan had already begun seeing Joan Baez before Rotolo came back stateside. This, coupled with Suze's disapproving family (her sister Carla had a major fallout with Dylan) and Dylan's growing fame, put stress on the already-strained relationship. In her memoir, she wrote, "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."
Despite this, the duo were photographed together for the now-famous cover of his 1963 album, "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan." The couple is captured walking down snowy Jones Street in Greenwich Village, arm-in-arm, wandering in the middle of the abandoned road. Despite the symbolic nature the photo has garnered over the years as a perfect encapsulate of a certain moment in music history of the 1960s, Suze had her own very different feelings about the picture that has stayed in the pop consciousness for over forty years. Of Dylan in his light suede jacket, Suze has said, "He wore a very thin jacket - because image was all." Of her own part in the picture, Rotolo explained it as this: "Our apartment was always cold, so I had a sweater on, plus I borrowed one of his big, bulky sweaters. On top of that I put on a coat ... I felt like a sausage. Every time I look at that picture, I think I look fat."
By that point, Dylan's affair with Baez was public knowledge, and - with the encouragement of her sister and mother - Suze moved out of the apartment she shared with Bob. The relationship was coming to its breaking point when Suze learned she was pregnant with Bob's child, opting for a secret abortion, which she revealed in her 2008 memoir.
Still processing her split from Dylan, Rotolo left for Italy again, and, in 1970, married Enzo Bartoccioli, a film editor whom she first met when studying at Perugia several years before. Together, they settled in the East Village of New York, a safe distance from the haunts she and Dylan visited together during the folk scene. In their forty years of marriage, Enzo worked for the UN and Suze continued on as an artist, moving from illustrating to painting to jewelry-making, before focusing on creating book art while incorporated found art. In 1980, they welcomed a son, Luca, who has followed a similar path into the music industry, making guitars.
Though Suze created a fulfilling life for herself beyond her time with Bob Dylan, he still remained a significant part of her life. He helped her out when, several years ago, she lost all of her possessions - including her famous green coat from the Freewheelin' cover - to an apartment fire. After refusing to speak of their relationship for years, she finally consented when asked by Martin Scorcese to appear in his documentary No Direction Home, discussing Dylan's career from 1961 (when they met) to 1966. Encouraged by the reception of the film, Rotolo published her memoir A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties in 2008, to great response.
Reflecting on the songs Dylan wrote about her, Suze admitted, "I can recognize things. It's like looking at a diary. It brings it all back. And what's hard it that your remember being unsure of how life was going to go - his, mine, anybody's. So, from the perspective of an older person looking back, you enjoy them, but also think of them as the pain of youth, the loneliness and struggle that youth is, or can be."

Title: from "One Too Many Mornings" (Bob Dylan)

How to be like Edie Sedgwick

With a life as quick and bright as a shooting star, Edie Sedgwick has become an icon of the sixties underground for her style, beauty, warmth, and her troubled personal life. Quite arguably Warhol's most famous superstar, Edie was the subject of numerous songs, books, and a biopic with a cult-like following (she also inadvertently was a central part of the lawsuit Bob Dylan filed as a result of Factory Girl's implication of his role in her death). In addition to the legions of girls who copied "her fog, her amphetamine, and her pearls" during the 1960s, Edie has inspired many modern-day gals. Taking style cues from Sedgwick is not just Factory Girl star Sienna Miller, but also the likes of Nicole Richie, Mary-Kate Olsen, Samaire Armstrong, Lindsay Lohan, the late Brittany Murphy (I wrote a post about Edie and Brittany a few months ago), and many other young girls who look smashing wearing black tights en lieu of pants. I myself have been a devoted fan of Edie for many years, and I offer my abbreviated guide to Sedgwick-dom to any (and every) one fascinated with the first "poor little rich girl":

Edie's Wardrobe:

• Black opaque tights
• Fur coats (in a variety of different kinds: mink, leopard, monkey, fox, etc.)
• Black leotards (to wear to dance class)
• Black-and-white striped anything - tee shirts, sweaters, tank tops
• Boatneck shirts (especially black-and-white striped boatnecks!)
• Sleeveless shift dresses in metallics, monochrome prints, and a variety of different materials (Edie had a Betsey Johnson-designed shift dress made out of vinyl when Edie was the spokesmodel for Betsey's line Paraphernalia)
• White v-neck tee shirts
• Black mohair turtleneck with long sleeves
• Tight, short miniskirts

Her Accessories:

• Shoulder-duster earrings (Check out Steve Sasco Designs for exact replicas of Edie's earrings. Sasco was jewelry designer for Factory Girl - I can vouch for his designs; I own several pairs and they are exquisite)
• Black undergarments (rocked onscreen by Edie during Poor Little Rich Girl and Beauty No. 2)
• Black ballet flats
• Black high heels (slingbacks, etc.)
• Fishnet tights
• Long chain necklaces to layer with one another
• Black rosary necklace
• Brown leather rhino from Abercrombie and Fitch
• Hats (newsboy caps, wide-brimmed felt hats, fur cloche hats)
• Her two perfumes of choice were by fashion house Rochas: Fracas, and Femme (seen in Poor Little Rich Girl)

Pastimes:

• Sketching portraits of horses
• Listening to the Everly Brothers while ordering orange juice and coffee, applying makeup, getting dressed, and explaining how she spent her entire inheritance in six months (a la Poor Little Rich Girl)
• Posing for the pages of Vogue
• Hanging out at the Factory
• Burning down rooms in the Chelsea
• Dancing, dancing, dancing

Acquaintances:

• Betsey Johnson
• Bob Dylan and Bob Neuwirth
• Andy Warhol
• Brigid Berlin
• Baby Jane Holzer
• The Velvet Underground
• Mick Jagger
• Ultra Violet
• Chuck Wein
• Sally Kirkland
• Bibbe Hansen
• Salvador Dali
• Judy Garland
• Diana Vreeland

Hangouts:

• The silver Factory
• Santa Barbara ranch
• Silver Hill Hospital
• The Chelsea Hotel
• Max's Kansas City

Pearls of Wisdom:

• "I think drugs are like strawberries and peaches."
• "I'd like to turn the whole world on just for a moment. Just for a moment."
• "I'll have to put more earrings on. I bet that someone could analyze me and tell my condition by my earrings."
• "I know a lot of rich people and they're all pigs."
• "I really like good, beautiful clothes. I love the space, Courreges things. I love Rudi Gernreich. I hate to go through seventeen buttons. I'm nervous enough going someplace."
• "Speed is the ultimate, all-time high. That first rush - wow! Just that burning, searing, soaring sense of perfection. There's no way to explain it unless you've been through it."
• "I'm greedy. I'd like to keep most of it for myself and a few others, a few of my friends. Keep that superlative high just on the cusp of each day so that I radiate sunshine."
• "Wherever I've gone I've been quite notorious. And quite innocently so."
• "I lived a very isolated life. When you start at twenty, you have a lot of nonsense to work out of your system."
• "I had fun, but I really didn't have anyone I particularly loved. And I still don't, except for loving friends, but I mean I haven't been in love with anyone in years and years. But I have a certain amount of faith that it'll come."
• "I made a mask out of my face because I didn't realize I was quite beautiful. God blessed me so. I practically destroyed it. I had to wear heavy black eyelashes like bat wings, and dark lines under my eyes, and cut all my hair off, my long dark hair. Cut it off and stripped it silver and blonde. All those little maneuvers I did out of things that were happening in my life that upset me."
• "You care enough, that you want your life to be fulfilled in a living way. Not in a painting way, not in a writing way ... You really do want it to be involved in living, corresponding with other living objects, moving, changing, that kind of thing."
• "They say use it, channel it. Do it, like there will be a sign, be an artist, you're so creative, do anything, you've got to do it, use it. Then, things like, and you've got to collect yourself too. I mean, you know, make your hair more about yourself, self-respect. But I mean, ridiculous."
• [About a dream she had] "It's like my having to walk down thousands and thousands of white marble stairs ... and nothing but a very very blue sky, very blue, like ... Yes, and I'd have to walk down them forever. I never thought about going up ... I don't know, don't you think that must mean something? It never occurred to me to turn around, I mean, why didn't I think that way? This was after I had the car accident."
• "It's sort of like a mockery, in a way of reality because they think everything is smiles and sweetness and flowers where there is something bitter to taste. And to pretend there isn't is foolish. I mean the ones that wander around and know, at the same time, and yet wear flowers, and they deserve to wear flowers. And they've earned their smile. You can tell by people's eyes."

Boy Meets Girl

I've always been a fan of fashion that is both masculine and feminine. A certain level of androgyny is gorgeous on anyone. Whether adding subtle touches to your look, like a pair of Oxfords or a tailored vest, or going all out in a suit and tie (and suspenders, vest, hat, dress shoes, and cane), the tomboy look is a go-to alternative that everyone should have in their closet. The sharp menswear look is not just a passing trend, but a timeless style that has had major moments for the last seven or so decades.

Here's some inspiration:

Woody Allen's then-flame Diane Keaton in her most famous role Annie Hall, wearing a mix of Ralph Lauren menswear and her own boyish pieces.

Audrey Tatou looks contemplative in a still from Coco Before Chanel, outfitted in own of Chanel's signature tailored tuxes.

A Brian Jones-era Anita Pallenberg is seen running through the streets in her pinstriped suit.

Cate Blanchett is shown getting into her role as a young Bob Dylan in I'm Not There.

Another famous figure that Blanchett once portrayed, Katharine Hepburn, is seen smoking a cigarette on set of Woman of the Year in her trademark tailored trousers and blazer.

Marianne Faithfull outside of a London courthouse following the Redlands bust.

Kristen Stewart pals around with her Twilight castmates Kellan Lutz and Robert Pattinson, while wearing a white suit.

Wonder Woman Lynda Carter with date Ron Samuels in his-and-hers tuxedoes at the Golden Globes in 1977.

Bird of Britain Pattie Boyd wears a baggy suit and tie (borrowed from George, perhaps?)

The lovely Kirsten Dunst looks every bit a fashion icon in her androgynous look, adding a feminine flare with her Louboutin heels.

Patti Smith, long known for her music and her tomboyish style, on the cover of her debut album Horses, from 1975.

Studio 54 regular and rock star wife Bianca Jagger swaggers along in her white tux, bowler hat, and cane.

Yé-yé darling Francoise Hardy is shown out and about in the mid-60s in a menswear-inspired look.

Milla Jovovich matches her boyish suit with a cropped 'do and minimal makeup.

Yves Saint Laurent's famous Le Smoking tuxedo suit for women.

Kate Hepburn, again shown in her classic menswear: a bowler hat, tailored vest, and slouchy trousers.

Pattie Boyd, in an Ossie Clark ensemble, gives hubby George Harrison a run for his (sartorial) money in her white suit, while traveling to the Cannes Film Festival in 1968 for the premiere of Wonderwall.

An early fan of the feminine tux, Marlene Dietrich topped off her look with patent oxford dress shoes and a top hat.

For Twiggy, all she needed was a fashion-forward tie, worn with a minidress and button down, to complete her androgynous style.

Anita Pallenberg dresses like just one of the boys in the airport with Mick, Keith, and baby Marlon in the early 1970s.

Alexa Chung, shown on the city streets, in several tomboyish pieces.

In 2009, Rihanna, Twiggy, and Lake Bell all adopted the tuxedo look for the Met Ball.

she might think that i've forgotten her, don't tell her it isn't so

Their marriage has been called one of rock’s greatest romances. The relationship of Sara and Bob Dylan, married from 1965 to 1977, spawned several of Dylan’s greatest songs. The duo, both incredibly weary of the public eye, has never offered a lot of comments about one another in the press, even during their twelve-year relationship, and it’s Bob’s songs about Sara that have remained the lasting testament of their relationship.
Bob and Sara allegedly met in Greenwich Village in 1962, though this is unfounded. At the time, Sara was known as Shirley Noznisky and was working as a model and bunny at the Playboy Club in New York City. While modeling, she met her first husband photographer Hans Lowndes, who she married in 1960 and by whom was convinced to change her named because he “couldn’t be married to a girl named Shirley.” She had a daughter Maria in 1961, but their marriage was quickly crumbling. In 1964, Sara attended the wedding of one of her good friends Sally to Albert Grossman, who was Bob Dylan’s manager. The wedding was most likely the first time that Sara and Bob met. The two became involved very quickly and seriously throughout 1964, Sara noting how Bob had seemed to adopt Maria as his own daughter. Together, they moved to the Chelsea Hotel, albeit in separate but near rooms, but even though they were seriously involved, Dylan continued his relationships with several women, including Joan Baez and Edie Sedgwick.
In November 1965, Bob and Sara were married in a very private ceremony – nobody was to find out about the wedding for several months, not even Dylan’s parents, until an article published February in the New York Post titled “Hush! Bob Dylan Is Wed.” Together, the newlyweds moved into a house in Woodstock New York, and welcomed a son, Jesse Byron, in January 1966. Later that year, Dylan was in a motorcycle accident that led him to withdraw extensively from the public, rarely making appearances for the next eight years. Of the crash, he said “when I had that motorcycle accident…I woke up and caught my senses… I had a family and I just wanted to see my kids.” With Dylan not touring or doing appearances, he took care of his growing family: Maria, Jesse, Anna, Sam, and Jakob; the role of dad fit him so well that friends would say that they’d never seen Bob happier than during that time.
By the mid-1970s, with Bob back to touring and apparent having affairs with Sally Kirkland, Ellen Bernstein, and reconnecting with Joan Baez, the marriage was put under undue stress and the couple became rather estranged. But still, together they filmed “Renaldo and Clara,” a movie written and directed by Dylan during the Rolling Thunder Revue tour during 1975-1976, with Bob also playing the role of Renaldo, and Sara playing Clara. That wasn’t all – Joan Baez plays the part of the Woman in White. The film had the three in a love triangle eerily similar to what was happening off-screen as Sara encouraged her husband to return to Woodstock more to be with their family, and Joan encouraging Bob to return to writing his political songs.
Apparently it was during this tour that Sara confronted Dylan about his infidelities and increasingly odd behavior. According to Baez, Sara showed up backstage one night “looking like a madwoman, carrying baskets of wrinkled clothes, her hair wild and dark rings around her eyes,” and she began to verbally attack Dylan over his drinking, cheating, and drug use. From this point on the marriage became increasingly distant, until Sara finally filed for divorce in early 1977, claiming that Bob’s bizarre behavior has made her and their five children greatly worried. She said, “I can’t go home without fear for my safety. I was in such fear of him that I locked doors in the home to protect myself from his violent outbursts and temper tantrums…He has struck me in the face injuring my jaw.” The proceeding divorce was bitter, and the following custody battle was worse. Bob and Sara remained on unfriendly terms for the next few years before reconciling their relationship in the early 1980s, even considering remarriage in 1983. Today, they are friends, with Sara occasionally attending his shows and Bob referring to Sara in “Chronicles: Volume One” as “one of the loveliest creatures in the world of women.”
The only time Bob ever spoke about his marriage openly with the press was in 1978 when he was doing a lot publicity for “Renaldo and Clara.” Still in the wake of his divorce and custody battle, Dylan reflected on his marriage, saying, “Marriage was a failure. Husband and wife was a failure, but father and mother wasn’t a failure. I wasn’t a very good husband…I don’t know what a good husband is. I was good in some ways…and not so good in other ways… There aren’t really any mistakes in life. They might seem to knock you out of proportion at the time, but if you have the courage and the ability and the confidence to go on, well, then… you can’t look at it as a failure, you just have to look at it as a blessing in a way…”
Of his marriage with Sara, Dylan would say that he “figured it would last forever… Most people…keep some contact, which is great for the kids. But in my case, I first got really married, and then got really divorced. I believe in marriage. I know I don’t believe in open marriage. Sexual freedom just leads to other kinds of freedom. I think there should be a sanction against divorce. Why should people be allowed to get married and divorced so easily?”
Sara is believed to have inspired some of Dylan’s most emotional songs, including: “Isis,” “We Better Talk This Over,” “Abandoned Love,” “Down Along the Cove,” “If You See Her, Say Hello,” “Wedding Song,” “On a Night Like This,” “Something There is About You,” “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,” “To Be Alone With You,” “If Not For You,” “Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat),” “Love Minus Zero/No Limit.” One song that is known to be about Sara is “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” which was confirmed by Dylan’s other song about her, appropriately titled “Sara,” with the lyrics I can still hear the sound of the Methodist bells/ I had taken the sure and had just gotten through/ staying up for days in the Chelsea Hotel/ writing Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands for you. The albums following the estrangement and breakup of the marriage – 1975’s “Blood on the Tracks” and 1976’s “Desire” – are said to be largely inspired by Sara.

i'm not bob dylan but i never miss a beat

Bob Dylan (a.k.a Robert Allen Zimmerman in certain walks of life) is considered to not only be one of the most important artists of the 1960s, (some say one of the best ever) but also one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. He was able to bridge the large gaps between music and cultural awareness, folk and rock, politics and poetry. Time Magazine called him a "master poet, caustic social critic and intrepid, guiding spirit of the counterculture generation." Someone once said of Dylan, "there are giant figures in art who are sublimely good - Mozart, Picasso, Frank Lloyd Wright, Shakespeare, Dickens. Dylan ranks alongside these artists." Granted that 'someone' was a Dylan biographer. But whatever.

Early in his career he became the figurehead of social change, a position he felt uncomfortable with, before he became known as a recluse, then a born-again, then cryptic mastermind. In the early 60s, Dylan modelled himself after Woody Guthrie (of whom Dylan said, "you could listen to his songs and actually learn how to live") and became a dominant part of the folk scene with his compositions like "Blowin' in the Wind" and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," from his Freewheelin' Bob Dylan album, and his politically acerbic album The Times They Are a-Changin'. By the mid-sixties, Dylan was moving away from his folk roots and began experimenting with sound and writing songs that were more vague and less overtly protest. His fourth album, appropriately titled Another Side of Bob Dylan, was acclaimed by some and denounced by others for Dylan "somehow losing touch with people." This reception was only a taste of what was about to come for Dylan. With the releases of Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde, Dylan had managing to define -- and then redefine -- an entire generation. His move from acoustic to electric was considered sacrilege to his devout folkie fans, but many admired and were inspired by Dylan's ability to blend his folk roots underneath his fascination with modernism and Beats (he was hanging out with Allen Ginsberg all the time at this point...), Dadaism, methedrine, rock and roll, amphetamines, and general poetic vagueness. And despite Dylan's many claims to the contrary, his work is poetry in and of itself.

The truth is that even if you don't like Bob Dylan's music, his influence is seen everywhere in music, so you inevitably are liking something about him even if you don't realize it. He made it possible for a singer to not have to have some slick routine or clean, glossy image, or even a voice that was like anyone else's. Sam Cooke said that after Dylan came out, the persona of the rock and roll star changed: "From now on, it's not going to be about how pretty the voice is. It's going to be about believing that the voice is telling the truth." Dylan was and is always entirely himself, it's just a matter of which self he is at that moment.

The thing I like about Dylan -- especially during this period of his career, where Marianne Faithfull addressed him as 'God Himself' -- is that despite how popular, celebrated, worshipped and adulated he was by fans, press, groupies, folkies, poets, and rock stars, he still had people and artists that he equally admired. In his autobiography, "Chronicles: Volume One," Dylan admits to being a fan of Tony Bennett, Ice-T, Public Enemy, The Beatles (he was a particular fan of "Do You Want to Know a Secret?", which he called "a perfect '50s sappy love song and nobody but them could do it"), and Peter, Paul, and Mary (even saying that if they had asked him to join the group, he would've changed his name to Paul).