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Suze Rotolo

The death of Suze Rotolo is sad news; it almost seems symbolic of the passing of a certain kind of 60s innocence and idealism. But more than a symbol of an era, or a poet's muse, Rotolo seems to have been a talented artist and an interesting and thoughtful person. Her interviews in 'No Direction Home' Martin Scorsese's celebrated documentary on Dylan were illuminating and good-humoured, and she came across as very likeable. Her 2008 memoir of life in Greenwich Village, 'The Freewheelin' Years' bears this out. When reading the book, I found the sections where she described her upbringing, political awakening and youthful exploration of art and poetry more interesting than those describing her relationship with Dylan, which after all only took up four years of a full and varied life. I was struck by her descriptions of time spent studying in Perugia - her solitary excursions into the countryside to draw and write indicated a broad creative curiosity and need for solitude quite at odds with the intense, incestuous atmosphere of New York's folk scene. No wonder she felt compelled to leave, despite being subjected to a barrage of disapproval on her return for 'abandoning' Bob. I'm sure he, even in the midst of his bellyaching, recognised that her absence during that period was crucial to his artistic development, providing the creative fuel for some of his finest early songs. Judging by the book and the testimony of those who knew her, Suze was very much her own person, loyal to her principles and friends and stands out among the baby-boomer generation for remaining married to same person for 40 years! (film-maker Enzo Bartoliucci.)

In some of the interviews from the time her book came out she mentioned the lot of so-called 'red-diaper' children of Communist parents, who were obliged for years to keep quiet about their parents' political activities due to the insidious atmosphere of the McCarthy era, a necessary secrecy that she reckons contributed to the atmosphere of lively storytelling and self-mythologising of the early folk scene. Her account of growing up in what she described as a materially poor but 'culturally wealthy' family and her own love of poetry, art and literature growing up is very moving, as well as her commitment to civil rights and similar causes early on. In the memoir, she captured the essence of being young, idealistic and thrilled by art in the same way that Dylan captured the essence of being young and in love in his early songs inspired by her. It would have been good to know more of her art and writing during her lifetime, but ultimately it seems she preferred a private life above all, and would never sacrifice that for fame or wide renown. She speaks of reading Francoise Gilot's memoir of life with Picasso at the time of her trip to Perugia and feeling a strong sense of recognition at the plight of the talented woman forced to play second fiddle to her genius lover. There was no way she could fit herself into the reductive 60s role of a male singer’s ‘chick’, even if she had wanted to. Her wit is evident in this podcast, where she nicely skewered the essence of Dylan (and perhaps the essence of all geniuses who seek fame) when she described a song of his ('What Was It You Wanted' from the 80s album Oh Mercy) as 'very clever, very funny, with a big nasty streak!'. True, witty, and delivered with a wry smile and not a shred of bitterness. Both her natural sense of privacy and her strong sense of self could not continue in a relationship with Dylan as his fame began to spiral into the stratosphere, though by all accounts making the break was a long, painful process. One gets the feeling from her interviews of great love shared in those early days, but no regret now for how things panned out. Seeing how insane things got for Dylan in later years, I think the modern term for Suze’s experience is ‘bullet dodged’.

Though it's sad she's gone before her time (she had been suffering cancer for some years), it's still in keeping to raise a glass to a good person who lived her life well. RIP Suze.

'An empty theatre is a promise unfulfilled'

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How to write a historical novel

I recently read two books which could be handily placed on opposing sides of the ‘how to write historical fiction’ spectrum. They are The Map of Love by Adhaf Soueif and Brooklyn by Colm Toibín. One takes in the entire modern history of a particular country through the experiences of its characters, the other’s scope is limited to the point of provinicial. Yet, it is the small story, Toibín’s Brooklyn, that is infinitely more successful. Souief said of her leading male character, Sharif al-Baroudi, that she wanted to write a character one could fall in love with, using the appearance of a romantic hero in Egyptian cinema as her template. The story of the Map of Love is split across the 20th century, focusing on the romance and marriage between Lady Anna Winterbourne and al-Baroudi in Egypt in the 1900s and the discovery of her diaries by two of her female descendents, American Isabel and Egyptian Amal. Soueif had an admirable aim in the book – to tell the little-known story of the nascent Egyptian struggle for independence in the years before the First World War – and while the research is comprehensive and the historical details are fascinating, the characters utterly fail to convince, in my opinion. Lady Anna is too modern a woman to be believable as a character of her time, and her unquestioning, wholehearted adoption of her new husband’s family, culture and country come across as forced rather than romantic. From a secure position within conventional Victorian genteel society, she abruptly and without question pledges uncritical support for the cause of Egyptian independence. Even though she is portrayed as more thoughtful and historically aware than her peers, her decision just doesn’t feel believable. History shows us that the need for independence in former colonies was justified, but it seems implausible that someone like Lady Anna would take that position so quickly and easily in her place and time. The story isn’t helped by the fact that Lady Anna and her husband are too saintly to be true – apart from some minor cultural speedbumps they remain sickeningly in love, without any of the normal gripes and confusions that accompany even the happiest of marriages, let alone one across a cultural gulf. The two are like a cardboard cut-out couple, cloyingly devoted to each other and to the cause of independence with barely a question asked or a dissenting voice raised, and they are also implausibly modern in their attitudes to each other. Perhaps if they were not presented to the reader in the form of Anna’s diary entries a more convincing inner life might have arisen, but as it stands they don’t convince and it is hard to care about them. The modern Egyptian, Amal al-Ghamrawi, is more rounded, but again her edges seem to have been neatly rounded off to leave a character who, despite all her soul-searching, seems somewhat hollow. The main problem with The Map of Love is that the characters seem to have been designed to represent particular things and so perform a kind of wish-fulfilment for the author. Lady Anna is the contrite face of colonial Britain turning her back on her old life to embrace that of the people her nation is oppressing, Sharif al-Baroudi is an unusually enlightened 19th century man who disavows gender stereotypes and political violence and Amal’s brother Omar lives a successful, cosmopolitan life but remains loyal to his ethnic background. It is always obvious to the reader when a writer is using characters as a mouthpiece, and immediately interferes with any spontaneous enjoyment of the text. The Map of Love aims nobly to tell the story of modern Egypt, and does succeed to some extent, but it ultimately fails due to the lack of believable characters. Brooklyn, on the other hand, appears to be telling nothing more than the story of one unremarkable young woman, from an unremarkable town in Ireland, and her emigration to America. Eilis Lacey, the woman in question, is not even moving to New York as we know it from movies – the American sections of the book centre around a few streets of the Irish-American district of Brooklyn with its large Irish community, complete with an omnipresent parish priest. But prosaic though Eilis’ life and experiences may be, her inner world and small conflicts are rendered so thoughtfully and reverentially by Toibín they end up telling a larger story – that of the Irish emigrant experience. Eilis has never expected more than a life in Enniscorthy, working in an office until someone marries her and she devotes life to having his children, but events conspire to send her abroad to work in a department store and study bookkeeping. Initially Brooklyn is not much more exciting than Enniscorthy – Eilis lives in a Irish-run boarding house with a curfew, her days are spent wearily trekking across the shop floor and her free time taken up by evening classes and helping the priest with parish activities. But as time goes by the opportunities American life begin to open themselves up – from exposure to people of different races and cultures, to the excitement of the latest fashions. Toibín is a compassionate author who doesn’t sneer at the joy ordinary people find in ordinary things - in fact he accords these things the respect they deserve. Eilis even finds romance in America, but the slow tugs of obligation from the two sides of her life threaten to undo her when circumstances require to return home to Ireland. The premise of Brooklyn is the choice Eilis must take between her two worlds, and interestingly this choice is not presented as a clichéd split between home, obligation and repression and abroad, freedom and experimentation. On the contrary, Eilis faces potential nooses wherever she looks, and the ties that bind can take unexpected forms. Her mixture of engagement and passivity are wholly convincing as the experiences of an individual, yet also seem to encompass the thoughts and feelings of a whole generation that were put in her position. This novel has no overawed glimpses of the Manhattan skyline for the arriving immigrant, but a collection of moments – a parish hall dance, a trip to a bookshop, a day out in Coney island – to give us a truly authentic sense of the migrant experience. Brooklyn has been as carefully worked and polished as The Map of Love - the difference is the joins are not visible and the author has all but disappeared, and that is why it is the more successful work.

melody maker letters as the burn book from mean girls

So you think 'Imagine' ain't political? It's 'Working Class Hero' with sugar on it for conservatives like yourself!! You obviously didn't dig the words. Imagine! You took 'How Do You Sleep' so literally (read my own review of the album in Crawdaddy.) Your politics are very similar to Mary Whitehouse's -- 'Saying nothing is as loud as saying something.' Listen, my obsessive old pal, it was George's press conference -- not 'dat ole debbil Klein' -- He said what you said: 'I'd love to come but...' Anyway, we basically did it for the same reasons -- the Beatle bit -- they still called it a Beatle show, with just two of them! Join the Rock Liberation Front before it gets you. Wanna put your photo on the label like uncool John and Yoko, do ya? (Aint ya got no shame!) If we're not cool, WHAT DOES THAT MAKE YOU? No hard feelings to you either. I know basically we want the same, and as I said on the phone and in this letter, whenever you want to meet, all you have to do is call.

John Lennon's letter responding to Paul, published in its entirety in Melody Maker

literally the ramblings of an insane person I am GAGGED

it’s still so crazy to me that the guy who wrote this john and paul a love story book is a transphobe like ok dude if you showed up to mclennon monday we would kill you with hammers

Allan Williams & Rod Murray with friends at Flat 3, Hillary Mansions, Gambier Terrace in Liverpool, England | July 1960 © Harold Chapman (I) (II) (III)

currently 70 pages into Derek Taylor's book and I'm absolutely charmed, did everyone else know how funny he was and just not tell me!!?

The Threepenny Opera

Image: Dada Rundschau by Hannah Höch, 1919.

(A review from last year of the Threepenny Opera in the Gate Theatre. Trying to get this post to nestle into the correct chronological space, but Tumblr seems to have a problem with that kind of reverse-scheduling. Hence this introductory note - this review was written in October 2013.)

Seeing the show in the flesh, in the theatre, after years of exposure to the myth, is a slightly disorientating experience. The expected, stunning musical set-pieces are interspersed with narrative-prolonging longeurs, while the most famous songs (Mack The Knife and Pirate Jenny) pop up at rather incidental points in the story. The political message is less a message than an announcement, clunking the audience over the head with the complaints of the oppressed in rags.  The show itself, as presented by The Gate and directed by Wayne Jordan, is both less strange and more wonderful than I’d imagined it would be. This is a production that takes the source material seriously, as shown by the 18-piece orchestra that starts playing as soon as the curtain lifts. From then on the show dazzles with pitch-perfect (and refreshingly unamplified) singing, choreography that manages to be challenging without being confusing and costumes and set design that convey just the right amount of ragged decadence.

The lack of subtlety and nuance in the original storytelling persists through a game reimagining by Mark O’Rowe, but the music and aesthetic for which the name Threepenny Opera is synonymous more than compensates. Allusions to the present economic situation are kept mercifully subtle. This production is no exercise in superficial window-dressing – it is the very sincerity with which the cast and crew present this musical and visual feast that gives this production its extraordinary power.

Highlights include Hilda Fay as Jenny, Mark O’Regan as Mr Beecham and the aforementioned 18-piece orchestra.