Timothée Chalamet has been nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, a movie in which he disappears into character via an array of jaw-dropping, period-correct Gibson acoustic guitars – but should he take home the Oscar on 2 March, he might want to thank Yamaha too, because he learned to play on one of its entry-level models.
Speaking to MusicRadar, Larry Saltzman, the session ace who taught Chalamet to play, recalls the actor didn’t even have a guitar when he first approached him for lessons. “I told him, ‘Show up without a guitar. I have a couple of guitars for us,’” says Saltzman.
Both were eager to get started. Time was of the essence. Saltzman says Chalamet knew a couple of chords but was otherwise a complete beginner, and when he turned up at his door in November 2019, the pair had just four months to prepare for the shoot.
Chalamet needed a guitar of his own. By this point in his career he had already been nominated for an Oscar for his role in Call Me By Your Name. He was hot property. Chalamet could have chosen any guitar in the store, but hot or not, a beginner player needs a beginner guitar.
“He went to Guitar Center here in New York, on [West] 14th Street, and he did an incredibly humble thing,” says Saltzman. “And again, this was pre-Covid, November or December of 2019. He did the most humble thing, he went in there and he bought a $200 Yamaha acoustic guitar. 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.”
Behind the scenes, the production reached out to Gibson to supply the acoustics for the shoot. Gibson made a pair of custom J-50s to match Dylan’s original 1946 model.
Chalamet would also get the run of the more player-friendly Nick Lucas Special – a smaller-bodied 13th fret acoustic – and a number of J-45s, which were kept in a variety of different tunings. The production team even aged the acoustic guitar strings to make them play just like Dylan's.
Chalamet had his work cut out. There were a lot of songs to learn. He had a list of 30 to 40, not all would make the movie but his thinking was that the more he knew, the more of Dylan he knew. His choice of instrument, however, raised some eyebrows.
“I spoke to Jim Mangold, the director, about that,” says Saltzman. “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.’
“Well, he showed up with a $200 Yamaha guitar and you know what? It was very playable and sounded good. It was fine! 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.”
There are many ways you can measure the efficacy of a beginner guitar but ultimately it comes down to two things. Did it help the player learn, developing them into a player? And is the player still playing?
He’s a musician. He’s a really good singer. He knows all about music intuitively and he’ll keep playing
Well, Bob Dylan has an idiosyncratic, squirrelly playing style that’s hard to get under your fingers. Nothing about the Covid era was lucky but when the production for A Complete Unknown was shut down, four months' preparation became four years, and Chalamet used that time to truly nail Dylan’s style. You have thousands of Dylanologists the world over waiting to pounce and the only complaint that got any traction online was an anachronistic microphone choice? Mission Accomplished. Also, Chalamet is still playing.
“He does and he will,” says Saltzman. “He got so into it and he got really good. He’s a musician. He’s a really good singer. He knows all about music intuitively and he’ll keep playing.”
A Complete Unknown is showing now in the UK. See here for screening details. A Complete Unknown: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack features Chalamet’s performance of Bob Dylan classics and is out on 28 February, available for pre-order now via Columbia.
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