Still Freewheelin’ After All These Years

by | Jun 4, 2007

Steve Earle and his wife Allison Moorer have a garden apartment in Manhattan’s West Village. Their place is on the same block depicted on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.

Earle told The New Yorker’s John Seabrook:

“This is where they invented what I do,” he said. “And it happened only because there were these three groups–the folksingers, the musicologists, and the writers–who happened to be living in this several-block radius. If that scene doesn’t happen, then rock and roll never becomes literature. It just stays pop.”

Seabrook refers to Earle as an historian of the early folk scene in the Village and describes his present-day work at Electric Lady, the studio that Jimi Hendrix built to record his own music. He also ponders aloud if Earle isn’t 45 years late to the scene.

“No way,” he said emphatically. “It’s still a neighborhood. And Suze Rotolo’s still here. And she looks so great!”

Rotolo was Dylan’s girlfriend. She appeared alongside the legendary performer on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.