Shot by Columbia Records photographer Don Hunstein, the cover of Dylan’s sophomore album features girlfriend Suze Rotolo clutching his arm against the bitter cold of New York City in February 1963. The photo shoot took place on Jones Street, not far from where Dylan lived at the time in the West Village. “Bob chose his rumbled clothes carefully,” Rotolo later wrote in her 2008 book, A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties, noting that Dylan’s thin suede jacket was an “image” choice “not remotely suited for the weather.” Rotolo also said she didn’t recall Dylan having control over what photo Columbia ultimately chose, but that he was happy with the result.
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Suze tells about it in her book, her autobiography, A Freewheelin Time, she tells about the excitement of making the album, especially Bob’s excitement, and how he had to do the photo for the cover, they lived together then, it was an extremely cold day, as it says here, it was February bob was extremely particular about what he should wear for the photo, he wanted to get the look he had in mind for his image, who he really is, he wanted to get that across, and as cold as it was, he liked the smaller light jacket for the vibe of him he wanted to picture to show. i don’t remember how it was decided Suze was going to be on it, i think she was hesitant but strongly supportive of him. So he chose the very light weight jacket which accentuated his posture and body frame, and a cultural style, and she wore two or three heavy thick warm jackets and was still cold, and he was cold too but his priority was on how people were going to see him before they started playing his record. As you can see, as she says, they are cold. it’s a good motivating reality for them to be leaning into each other affectionately. But the main thing i remember her saying and it wasn’t the only time during her book that she expressed this feeling, she hated how she looked. she said “I look like a sausage.” She generally felt that she was too fat or looked too fat and i remember thinking i had never seen her that way. Anyway, that was a memorable part of her book for me, and Bob’s creative sense of marketing himself just as he wanted it.
i got Freewheeling on christmas eve day in 1963 when i was 14, at Builders Emporium records department when me and my friend went to do our last minute xmas shopping with our small allowances, for our families the next day. i first heard of Bob in early summer of that year when the great folk trio Peter Paul and Mary came out with Blowing in the Wind, it was the best song i ever heard. Lots of us were playing guitar and singing folk songs and we learned a lot of great songs, but this was something else. PPM had some other popular hits but this one was a big hit on Top 40 AM radio. Who wrote this?? it was so good. the song was so right, it didn’t leave anything out and didn’t put anything extra in. it nailed the way those times were. I wondered why he didn’t record it himself and have a big hit instead of PPM. Most of all, i wondered where i could get MORE SONGS by him. Not just me, lots of kids felt that way. But we had no way to find out more about him. A coiuple of months later, PPM came out with Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright, and i felt the same way about that song as Blowing in the Wind, he goes right there to what it’s like. PPM had a number 1 hit radio song that time, their biggest hit of their career then. No idea how to get more songs by him but glad to have those two, wanting to hear him sing them himself.
that amazing year of all kinds of changes was winding down, and then it was Xmas eve day and i found that record, Freewheeling, in the Misc Folk section. i usually would never look in Misc Folk but only looked at my favorite artists but my friend was still looking at his favorites and i was done, so to kill time i looked in Misc Folk. and there was this beautiful album cover, not all flashy like so many album covers, which was all right, but this was really artistic, all the feel was in the album cover, really cute guy, just the way i would want a guy to look, and a girl beautiful beyond words seemingly without trying to be or knowing how beautiful she was, their two personalities blending genuinely in love, walking on a snowy street, so real, “Who’s this?” i looked at the words at the top, The Freewheelin Bob Dylan. !!!!!!!!!! “Danny, Danny, it’s HIM, IT’s HIM, it’s BOB DYLAN,,” he grabbed it out of my hands, scanning every detail of it. Just have to say, the album cover could not have been more perfect and his look — That was the first time i ever saw what he looked like, now i knew what Bob Dylan, who wrote those amazing songs, looked like. We didn’t have enough money to buy it but my friend said “we could just take it,” and YES, the store was so busy no one watching us, it’s not like i shoplifted very often, maybe 3 times in my life but–MORE BOB DYLAN SONGS ! it was a Christmas Miracle. i was older and much bigger than my friend who wore a light jacket, i had a huge army navy surplus store pea coat, so it was me who put it under my coat and we walked out of the store between the check stands, like the parting of the red sea, out the glass doors, across the huge parking lot, one of the best days of my life, a life changing day. Bob’s artistic sense of how he should look on the album, how to connect with those who woujld listen to it, despite near freezing temperatures, was typical of his inspired creativity, getting things so right for the times and the places.
It is February 1963. A New York cold winter day. “It was freezing outside”, recalled Suze, “I had on a couple of sweaters. The last one was his, a big bulky knit sweater because the apartment was cold and I threw on a coat on top. So I always look at that picture as I feel like an Italian sausage because I had so many layers on, and he was freezing and I was freezing and had more clothes on. It was very cold that day.”
She adds: “In some out-takes it’s obvious that we were freezing; certainly Bob was, in that thin jacket. But image was all.”
Jones Street
Jones Street is a street located in Greenwich Village in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Bleecker Street and West 4th Street. Jones Street is sometimes confused with Great Jones Street in NoHo, located a little more than a half-mile to the east.
Don Hunstein
Donald Robert Hunstein (November 19, 1928 – March 18, 2017) was an American photographer.
One of his best-known images is of Bob Dylan walking with Suze Rotolo: it was used for the cover of Dylan’s album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
