His book, first published in 1986, was hailed as the definitive biography of this moody, passionate genius. He became Dylan's friend, champion, and critic.

Robert Shelton met Bob Dylan when the young singer arrived in New York in 1961. None of this proves that Dylan was lying about his heroin addiction, but the worst source of info about Dylan’s past is often Dylan himself.'No journalist has covered Dylan's career longer or with more respect than Robert Shelton.' “I enjoy Chronicles as a work of literature, but it has a much basis in reality as Masked And Anonymous, and why shouldn’t it? He’s not the first guy to write a biography that’s a pack of lies.” “Jesus Christ, as far as I can tell almost everything in the Oh Mercy section of Chronicles is a work of fiction,” Dylan biographer Clinton Helyin recently said. Some Dylan experts feel that many of the fascinating details in his 2004 memoir Chronicles: Volume One are completely made up. I used to be on the main line, on the Ferris wheel, uh, do just run rides. “I was with the carnival off and on for about six years,” he told Cynthia Gooding in 1962. In many interviews he gave in the early Sixties, Dylan claimed to have dropped out of school at a young age to work in a traveling carnival.

Nobody knew that I had been hustling uptown.” And we would do anything you wanted, as long as it was paid…I almost got killed…I didn’t come down to the Village until two months later. “Cats would pick us up and chicks would pick us up. “Sometimes we would make one hundred a night, really, from four in the afternoon until three or four in the morning,” he said. In another 1966 interview with Shelton, Dylan claimed to have worked as a prostitute when he first arrived in New York. He was particularly prone to fabricating stories in the mid-Sixties. This may sound like a huge revelation, but Dylan has been telling journalists wild lies about his past since the earliest days of his career. I had a $25 a day habit and I kicked it.” He was speaking to New York Times writer Robert Shelton on a plane from Lincoln, Nebraska to Denver while on his legendary 1966 electric tour.Ĭhoose Rolling Stone’s Cover: The Sheepdogs vs. “I got very, very strung out for a while,” he says in excerpts released by the BBC.

In newly released audio from a March 1966 interview, Bob Dylan claims he kicked a heroin habit after moving to New York City.

Robert shelton dylan