Bob Dylan recording his first album between November 1961 and March 1962 at Columbia Studio, New York City. Photograph: Frank Driggs Collection/Getty Images
From Moscow to Madrid, Norway to Northampton and Malaysia to his home state of Minnesota, self-confessed "Bobcats" will gather today to celebrate the 70th birthday of a giant of popular music. Bob Dylan will celebrate with tribute bands, original works, intellectual debates and simple singalongs to applaud a man born as Robert Allen Zimmerman in St Mary's hospital, Duluth on 24 May 1941.
In New York, the BB King Blues Club hosts tribute band Highway 61 Revisited, with guests including Rolling Thunder Revue violinist Scarlet Rivera and Never Ending Tour drummer Winston Watson, recreating Dylan's greatest hits.
In Hibbing, Minnesota, the town where he was raised, the annual Dylan Days festival at the weekend, with music, art and literature, will showcase the place that "spurred" the young Zimmerman. "With Bob Dylan turning 70 we are taking a year to honour not just his accomplishments but the creativity he continues to inspire," said Aaron Brown, Dylan Days spokesman.
At the University of Bristol, "The Seven Ages of Dylan" promises to bring forth "the UK's foremost Dylan scholars" to assess his continuing capacity to inspire and infuriate. "No one since Kipling has given the English language as many memorable phrases as Dylan," said Craig Savage, one organiser of the academic conference.
As fans prepare their celebrations, fresh details of Dylan's turbulent life at the height of his fame in the 1960s have emerged. Interviews found by the BBC reveal the singer had been addicted to heroin and contemplated suicide. Opening up to critic Robert Shelton on a private plane after a concert in March 1966 in Lincoln, Nebraska, Dylan said he kicked a heroin habit in New York. "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," he said.
Shelton first wrote about Dylan in 1961, publishing the definitive biography No Direction Home, The Life and Music of Bob Dylan, in 1986. The tapes of the previously unheard recordings were found during work on a new edition published for the singer's birthday.
The recordings show that weeks before his 25th birthday Dylan admitted experiencing "this suicidal thing". He said: "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 added: "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."
Dylan held no hope that his songwriting would "get me out of the fiery furnace", adding that it was "certainly not going to extend my life any and it's not going to make me happy." But parties around the globe on Tuesday will pay testimony to the happiness he has brought others.
John Butt, a former broadcaster, is hosting the only event listed in India, at his home in Delhi. "Bob Dylan has been a constant figure in my life since I heard The Times They Are a-Changin' in 1964, and the more I listen to his music, the more it means to me," he said.
Having put his living-room event on Google's map of celebrations around the world, there was a danger that half of Delhi could turn up. Butt was not worried. "If they do I'll welcome them in," he said. Dylan's message had particular resonance in India, he added. "Dylan was always able to express his spirituality in a profound but very idiosyncratic way and I think that is in line with the way India celebrates the diversity of its spirituality." In Norway, fans are holding a Bobfest with quasi-religious fervour. "Slow Train – the gospel according to Bob Dylan" is being held at the cathedral in Toensberg, 60 miles south of Oslo. Thousands of miles away at the Chatkhara restaurant in Lahore, Pakistan, "local Bobsessives" will come together to "share mixtapes and listen to Dylan".
In Tel Aviv, Israeli artists including Yuval Banai, Yali Sobol and Noam Rotem will play Dylan hits in English and Hebrew on Tuesday night at the Barby Club. Dylan plays the city in June, his first concert in Israel since 1993. Event organiser Dror Nahun said: "Most of the songwriters in Israel have been influenced by Dylan, he has a huge following. Dylan is celebrated wherever there are human beings, from China to America – he knows how to touch people all over the world."
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