Here's hoping that the approach of his 70th birthday finds Bob Dylan in a better mood than the weeks preceding his 25th. In an interview from 1966, conducted by the critic and journalist Robert Shelton and recently posted by BBC News, Mr. Dylan, then 24, talks about having overcome a heroin habit and shares some grim thoughts on death and what he calls "this suicidal thing."
Mr. Shelton, who covered folk and pop music for The New York Times and wrote several reviews of Mr. Dylan's performances that proved crucial at the start of that singer-songwriter's career, held the interview while Mr. Dylan was traveling in a private plane to Lincoln, Neb.
The BBC said that the interview tape was rediscovered amid research for an anniversary edition of Mr. Shelton's 1986 biography, "No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan." (Mr. Shelton died in 1995.)
In an audio clip from the interview posted on the BBC News Web site, Mr. Dylan is heard saying: "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 a habit, about a $25-a-day habit, and I kicked it. Yeah, I kicked it then."
In another section of the interview BBC News quotes Mr. Dylan as saying: "Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast. Many times I've known I could have been able to die fast, and I could have easily gone over and done it." He adds, "I'll admit to having this suicidal thing ... but I came through this time."
The conversation, which finds Mr. Dylan in a mood as morbid as the lyrics to, say, "Masters of War" or "All Along the Watchtower," preceded by just a few months one of the murkier periods in his career. On July 29, 1966, he was involved in a motorcycle accident in Woodstock, N.Y., and went into a long period of seclusion. He did not release another studio album until "John Wesley Harding," a minimal and elliptical record, came out in 1967, and refrained from touring for several years.
Mr. Dylan tells Mr. Shelton in the interview that he does not take his songwriting seriously, adding that it's "not going to get me out of the fiery furnace" and it's "certainly not going to extend my life any and it's not going to make me happy."
He goes on to say: "I'm not the kind of cat that's going to cut off an ear if I can't do something. I'm the kind of cat that would just commit suicide." He adds: "I'd shoot myself in the brain if things got bad. I'd jump from a window... man, I would shoot myself. You know I can think about death, man, openly."
Mercifully, things seem to have brightened up considerably for Mr. Dylan in the intervening 45 years: he will turn 70 on Tuesday.
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