Carla Rotolo (born March 5, 1941) is the older sister of Suze Rotolo, one of Bob Dylan's early girlfriends in New York City.
Carla was the first child of Joachim Rotolo and Mary Pezzati Rotolo who were union activists. She and her sister Suze befriended Dylan shortly after he arrived in New York in 1961 and they became two of his biggest fans and supporters.
Carla helped Dylan with his research into folk tunes. At the time she was the secretary of the eminent musicologist Alan Lomax and had a large collection of folk music at her apartment. Dylan would spend hours during the day listening to and examining her vast collection.
Their friendship broke up when she and Dylan argued with each other as her sister Suze broke up with Dylan. Dylan retaliated with his song Ballad in Plain D in which he labeled Carla, "her parasite sister". In the mid 1980s Dylan said of the song, "I look back and I say, 'I must have been a real schmuck to write that.' I look back at that particular one and say, 'of all the songs I’ve written, maybe I could have left that alone'."[1]
When interviewed by Howard Sounes for his 2001 Dylan biography, Down the Highway The Life Of Bob Dylan, Carla Rotolo stated: "I remember it being a terrible experience". Informing Sounes that when she heard the song, she had no doubt that she was meant to be the "parasite".
Carla Rotolo says that she resented the term, pointing out that she worked to pay the rent. She also rejects the implication that she was interfering in Dylan's and her sister's business. "I got dragged into something that, frankly by then I didn't give a fuck about, because Suze was going to choose whoever she liked, I couldn't keep sitting in my no-door room with screaming and yelling going on". Rotolo says that on the night in question she had asked Dylan to leave, but he refused to go. Rotolo claims that Dylan pushed her, so she pushed him back and that a physical fight almost ensued, adding that friends had to be called and Dylan forcibly removed. Carla Rotolo says she was left with a very negative view of Dylan, considering him selfish, manipulative, and emotionally immature.
According to Carla, the months between the Newport Folk Festival the previous summer (1963) had been miserable for Suze. Dylan was conducting a flagrant affair with Joan Baez and was expecting to continue his relationship with Suze. An already difficult situation took a desperate turn when, at some stage during this period Suze became pregnant with Dylan's child.
According to Carla Rotolo, Suze had the pregnancy terminated. "At the time abortions were illegal", says Carla, who nursed her sister afterward. "There were some bad things between them". The abortion precipitated the final breakup of the relationship.
She and her sister Suze were sometimes credited with helping to form Dylan's liberal leanings during his development period in the early sixties.
Rotolo was briefly married to actor Rolondo Salvador Pena-Diaz. They were married in New York on December 27, 1969. Rotolo is currently living in Europe.