Bob Dylan was hooked on heroin, tapes reveal

Bob Dylan was addicted to heroin and even contemplated suicide in the early 1960s according to an interview unearthed by the BBC on the eve of his 70th birthday.

The confessions come in the previously unheard tape-recording of the folk singer, made by critic and biographer Robert Shelton during a private plane journey between Nebraska and Denver in March 1966.

In the recording Dylan confesses that he had been hooked on drugs, and told Shelton: "I kicked a heroin habit in New York City. I got very, very strung out for a while. I mean really, very strung out. And I kicked the habit. I had about a $25-a-day habit and I kicked it. Yeah."

It had long been rumoured that Dylan had a drugs problem in the 1960s, and the tapes, which were broadcast on the Today programme this morning, appear to confirm for the first time that he did.

Music critic Nick Brown said of the recording: "It's extraordinary to hear Dylan actually confessing that... [and] that he should be talking about it quite so candidly."

Dylan also boasted that death meant "nothing" to him and that he had contemplated suicide. "I came through this time," he says.

"I'm not the kind of cat that's going to cut off an ear if I can't do something," he explained. "I'm the kind of cat that would commit suicide. I'd shoot myself in the brain if things got bad."

He also admitted, with a typical 1960s flourish, that his work did not make him happy, telling Shelton: "You can't be happy by doing something groovy."

Shelton helped launch Dylan's career in the early 60s and after the pair became friends he interviewed him many times. The tapes of the 1966 interview were discovered as Shelton worked on a revised edition of his biography No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan, which has been released to coincide with the singer's birthday. ·