One of the most impressive elements of Timothée Chalamet's Oscar-nominated performance in A Complete Unknown is his ability to channel Bob Dylan through his guitar playing. And, just to prove that he was doing it for real, Chalamet took to the stage this weekend to perform three lesser-known Dylan songs on Saturday Night Live.
It turns out that the man responsible for teaching Chalamet the musical ropes for the film was session musician and guitar teacher to the stars Larry Saltzman. He previously tutored Meryl Streep prior to her performance in 2015’s Ricki and the Flash.
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Saltzman reveals that he first started schooling Chalamet way back in 2019. A Complete Unknown had been scheduled to shoot in 2020, but the pandemic and then Chalamet’s other commitments - notably the Dune films - got in the way.
“They didn’t tell me who it was,” says Saltzman on getting the call. “With these non-disclosure agreements, they don’t want people blabbing about it. I’m not on Facebook, you know what I mean? I have none of that kind of stuff. After three or four or five phone calls, they finally said ‘it’s Timothée Chalamet’. I really didn’t know who Timothée was. They said ‘it’s Bob Dylan music.’”
After looking at the script, Saltzman set about arranging the songs in their order of difficulty, so that Chalamet could learn the easier stuff first, starting with Masters of War. Director James Mangold also indicated that, if the actor wanted to learn a Dylan song that wasn’t in the script, he should teach him that, too, as it could still help to add value to his performance.
“When [Chalamet] got to my place and we had our guitars in our hands, I asked if he’d played, and he said just a little,” says Saltzman. “He kind of knew one or two chords and formed a couple of chords, and that’s what he did. I could tell he was just very musical right away.”
How did he actually go about teaching the songs, though? “My Dropbox file on this is ridiculous,” says Saltzman. “My Timothée/Dylan Dropbox folder is intense. For each song, I would obviously have an MP3, and then I had this program called Transcribe where you could play it and you could slow it down. That was really helpful. You could zero in on whatever you needed to focus on. For each song, I had a Read Me document with different YouTube videos that I wanted to watch, and then I would have lyrics with chords, like a folk way to do it. I wrote things out with probably a few little words of encouragement here and there. Each song had its own thing.”
How about Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright, then, which requires some tricksy fingerpicking skills? “It blew my mind to revisit it,” says Saltzman. “And it’s a really fast tempo. I was intimidated by teaching it to him. I was intimidated from playing it myself. He wasn’t intimidated by it. He just did it.”
A Complete Unknown is in cinemas now.
“It was too dark, too personal, too risky, not commercial. It wasn’t pop until it was on the radio”: How Lana Del Rey’s breakthrough hit transformed the contemporary pop landscape
“I always say, especially when working with a lot of male producers, I always say ‘it needs more…’”: FKA Twigs has a very specific way of describing the “feminine touch” she wants her music to have
