(Newser)
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Bob Dylan turns 70 today, but he confesses in a previously unheard interview that along the way he “kicked a heroin habit in New York City” in the early ‘60s. “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,” Dylan told his friend Robert Shelton while on a private plane during a 1966 concert tour. Though there have been rumors of Dylan’s involvement with heroin, he was never previously known to have confirmed them, the BBC reports.
Shelton, the music critic credited with discovering Dylan, had unparalleled access to the singer. The plane interview and another from the following day, in a motel, were discovered during research for a revised version of Shelton’s biography of Dylan; a film is now being developed around them. They paint a picture of a sometimes animated, sometimes despondent artist who was dismissive of his own work, saying he takes it “less seriously than anybody.” Click for more, including Dylan's talk of suicide. Or click for Sinead O'Connor's bizarre love letter for the birthday boy.
