28 LIFE BOB DYLAN
huge Sunday night audience that would, the next year, help
launch the Beatles’ invasion of America, he gained massive
credibility with the left-leaning folkie crowd.
Then came Newport at Baez’s side, where Dylan was rap-
turously received. He was the new folk prince, and she was
his patroness. Suze Rotolo accompanied Dylan to Newport,
not knowing (or not quite sure) that he and Joan were
lovers. Once she was there and once she was certain, she
left the relationship, only to learn that she was pregnant.
She and Dylan arranged for an illegal abortion “through
friends,” according to Rotolo in her memoir, with what they
considered “a good doctor.”
Dylan, meanwhile, in his constantly calculating way,
realized that his audience was largely New York and now
Newport, while Baez’s was national and potentially global.
He was happy to agree to be her “special guest” on her now-
starting tour. On August 28, Dylan and Baez were together
at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. They
sang; Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream
Speech”; and suddenly Dylan was being talked of as one of
the seminal voices of his generation. This perception was
solidified with the release of his third album, The Times
They Are A-ChanginÕ, which, with the exception of two love
songs remaining from his bygone relationship with Suze
Rotolo, was political top to bottom. Civil rights, economic
inequity, the travails of mine workers: You name it, Bob
took it on.
So now we knew for sure exactly who Bob Dylan was: a
socially conscious folksinger ready to fight for the working
man, the oppressed, all that was wrong with the world.DYLAN DID CARE, CERTAINLY; IT SIMPLY
cannot have been otherwise. Just after
the Fourth of July in 1963, he and fellow
star folk singers Pete Seeger (below) and
Theodore Bikel make their way, at personal
danger, to Greenwood, Mississippi, for a
voter registration rally. Dylan sings in an
open field (left) and on the back porch of
the local Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee office (opposite). He performs
“Only a Pawn in Their Game,” about the
murder of the Mississippi NAACP leader
Medgar Evers—one of the new songs he is
assembling for that next, different album.
Bernice Johnson is working for the cause at
the time, and she will later tell biographer
Robert Shelton, “ ‘Pawn’ was the very first
song that showed the poor white was as
victimized by discrimination as the poor
black. The Greenwood people didn’t know
that Pete, Theo and Bobby were well known.
They were just happy to be getting support.
But they really like Dylan down there in the
cotton country.”08-35 LIFE_Bob Dylan 2020 Folksinger.indd 28 FINAL 1/13/20 4:16 PM