Suze Rotolo

The song dramatises with great effectiveness the overwhelming power of the emotions of love on the minds of young lovers who may well fail to understand the nature of their feelings for another person.

Dylan biographers and commentators have often associated the song with the departure of his girlfriend Susie Rotolo to Italy for an indefinite period to study art.

This event clearly did influence the young Dylan and inspired a number of his other early songs and in Boots he may well be giving vent to his own very genuine feelings of despair.

Yet as a poetic songwriter he has the skill to detach himself from these feelings and to present them in a way that is never purely one-sided.