Free Stealin’?

When Gerrit Terstiege, editor of Form, sent me the above “homage” of Bob Dylan’s 1963 Freewheelin’ album cover, I thought he had nailed another brazen free-stealin’ piece of graphic design. Instead, he told me, “I wrote to the CEO of Jack Wolfskin [a European outerwear company], and he was happy someone had gotten the message–it turned out he is a great Dylan fan!” Being a great fan myself, I can appreciate the impulse to celebrate those early years when Dylan’s influential protest music was at its peak. The Freewheelin’ cover (below), photographed by Don Hunstein on West 4th street and featuring Dylan’s then-girlfriend and muse Suze Rotolo, was something of a recruitment poster for many who came to Greenwich Village from all over the U.S. to be part of the emerging youth culture. Incidentally, for those who want to read more about that time and place, Rotolo, an artist living in New York, has just published her own memoir, A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties.