Phil Ochs

‘I met Bob Dylan in 1961 when I was seventeen years old and he was twenty…’ Thus begins Suze Rotolo’s wonderfully romantic story of their sweet but sometimes wrenching love affair and its eventual collapse under the pressure of Dylan’s growing fame. It is Rotolo who is pictured with Dylan on the famous and iconic sleeve of his album The Freewheelin Bob Dylan. She has never written about her time with him, and this memoir is therefore very eagerly anticipated. Set during the time when Dylan was writing the soundtrack to the cultural revolution of the 1960s, this is a unique and remarkable narrative of a place and time when art, culture and politics all seemed to be conspiring to make America freer, better and more equitable. With a supporting cast that includes Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez and Andy Warhol, this is the book not only Dylan fans but also anyone fascinated by the sixties will have been waiting for.

Signed in 1979 to MCA, she cut the Emotion album, which was released early in 1980. Regarded by many of her fans to be her finest album, Emotion covers a lot of musical territory, from the Eagles’ “Wasted Time” to an ambitious Sly and the Family Stone medley. The album was produced by Steve Tyrell (way before he became a solo artist in his own right).