Larry Saltzman, the man who taught actor Timothée Chalamet how to play the guitar, has spoken about teaching him to play like Bob Dylan for the biopic 'A Complete Unknown'.
Chalamet starred in this movie, which earned eight nominations at the upcoming Grammy Awards. The film explored the early days of Bob Dylan's career, until his switch to electric instruments at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. More on this here.
Timothée Chalamet had to learn how to play the guitar almost exactly like Dylan, as well as his mannerisms and voice.
This is where Larry Saltzman comes in, having taught Chalamet how to play the guitar in the style of Bob Dylan, including his idiosyncratic ways, under his tutelege.
“It happened organically", the guitarist said. “First, I had a script, which was essential. I was able to read the script of the movie and I made a list of all the songs that were in the film, and then I started to think about the songs. I was familiar – very familiar – with a lot of them but I have to say I wasn’t specifically familiar with the exact guitar parts and the capo positions, and so many other things".
Elsewhere, Saltzman noted that he ranked Bob Dylan's songs from easiest to most difficult when teaching Chalamet, showing him each song one by one. Overall, the pair worked on almost 30 to 40 songs together.
“I probably started with [‘Masters Of War’] because maybe it had two chords, E minor and D", Saltzman said. “He knew one or two chords, one guitar before we started, so you show him the shapes and you show him the strumming patterns. We listened to the record very carefully and we try to be as accurate as we could", he explained.
Saltzman explained that Chalamet had to learn all of Dylan's guitar-playing ways, which he described as “idiosyncratic and surprising”.
“Dylan had to be, in this era, until he went electric at the very end of the film, he had to be his own one-man band", Saltzman explained. “and you know what would happen, some new concept would get introduced, and then that concept would appear again two songs later".
“So I would be able to say to Tim, ‘Remember that thing that we did with the C chord? Hit a C bass note and strum and then we descend into B then an A? He picked out the bassline and strummed along — he’s doing the same thing here but he’s just doing it with G, F#, E minor.’ So it was a cumulative process that built that way", he added.
Elsewhere, Larry Saltzman also recalled how Chalamet bought cheap guitar to practice on, ahead of his first recording sessions together.
Saltzman revealed: “When he first came over we used my guitar. I told him, ‘Show up without a guitar. I have a couple of guitars for us.’ Then he went to Guitar Center here in New York, on [West] 14th Street, and he did an incredibly humble thing… He went in there and he bought a $200 Yamaha acoustic guitar".
“I spoke to Jim Mangold, the director, about that. Jim was asking, ‘Does he have a guitar?’ I said, ‘Yeah, he went and bought a $200 Yamaha guitar. And Jim goes, ‘That’s interesting.’ I said, ‘Look, if he shows up with it and I think it’s not appropriate we’ll go shopping and I’ll return it", he added.
“Well, he showed up with a $200 Yamaha guitar and you know what? It was very playable and sounded good. And the other thing that was good about it was that you don’t really have to worry about an instrument like that and if it falls over it’s not the end of the world — rather than going out and getting the proper vintage J-45".
Saltzman concluded: “I loved that he showed up with a $200 guitar. He didn’t show up with a $2,000 guitar and he could have. I just loved that he did that. It’s humble".
