“I had a Volkswagen van when I first started taking trips by myself around the country. And the VW van did become a cultural symbol for that time,” says Lucinda Williams, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter and self-described “fan and student of Bob Dylan”, on the phone from Nashville.
“The whole photograph speaks volumes about the vibe of things back then. Years after the album’s release, Dylan fans have made the pilgrimage to Jones Street to recreate that pose for their own photos, and Cameron Crowe even had Tom Cruise and Penélope Cruz mimic the Freewheelin’ cover, including a blue VW van, in his 2001 film Vanilla Sky. It has since become one of the great iconic vehicles in popular culture. Photograph: Courtesy of the Ubaldi family The 1963 VW van for which Jack Ubaldi traded the Dylan cover van, manufactured in 1961.
On the left side of the image is a parked blue Volkswagen van – a model nicknamed a “splitty” back then for the two-piece front windshield. The cover shows the singer with then-girlfriend Suze Rotolo holding tight to his arm as they walk along a snowy Jones Street just outside their apartment. In 1963, one of those types was Bob Dylan, a kid from Minnesota who had felt the pull of the Village and its cafes and nightclubs where young guitar players would plan their lives – alongside the old-school butcher’s shops, bakeries and other Village staples – as a new, anything-goes counterculture bubbled up.ĭylan was 21 years old when Don Hunstein, the great photographer for Columbia Records, dropped by his third-floor walkup at 161 West 4th Street one cold February day that year to shoot some pictures for The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, his second album, which turns 60 years old in May. N ew York City’s Greenwich Village has always been a magnet for outsiders, artists and poets.
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