Larry Saltzman – Timothée Chalamet’s guitar instructor – has opened up about teaching the actor how to play like Bob Dylan.
- READ MORE: ‘A Complete Unknown’ review: don’t think twice about seeing this brilliant Bob Dylan biopic
Chalamet starred as the iconic singer-songwriter in the 2024 film A Complete Unknown, which portrays Dylan through his early days as a folk musician until his renowned switch to electrical instruments at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
For the role, the Oscar-nominated actor – who earned his nod in the Best Actor category at this year’s ceremony – not only had to learn the folk legend’s voice and mannerisms, but also had to learn Dylan’s intricate, idiosyncratic guitar style.
In an interview with MusicRadar, seasoned guitarist Larry Saltzman opened up about how he taught Chalamet how to play the guitar just like Dylan, breaking down his complex playing techniques.
“It happened organically,” Saltzman told the outlet. “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.”
He explained that he ranked Dylan’s songs from easiest to most difficult and taught Chalamet each song one by one. The pair worked through around 30 or 40 tracks together.
“I probably started with [‘Masters Of War’] because maybe it had two chords, E minor and D,” he shared. “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.”
Saltzman also explained that it was crucial for Chalamet to learn all of Dylan’s guitar-playing quirks due to his notoriously unconventional style which Saltzman 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,” he said. “and you know what would happen, some new concept would get introduced, and then that concept would appear again two songs later.”
He continued: “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.”
Saltzman went on to recall the first session with Chalamet and how the actor went on to purchase a cheap guitar to learn on.
“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,” he said.
He continued: “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.’
“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 added: “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.”
Following the release of the film, Chalamet showed off his new shredding abilities by taking on double duty as host and musical guest on Saturday Night Live. The night saw him perform renditions of Dylan’s ‘Outlaw Blues’, ‘Three Angels’ and ‘Tomorrow Is A Long Time’.
Elsewhere, A Complete Unknown was nominated for Best Picture at the 2025 Oscars alongside the science-fiction sequel Dune: Part Two, which also stars Chalamet in the leading role.
In other news, it was recently revealed that the women’s jeans Kendrick Lamar wore at the Super Bowl were actually intended for Chalamet.