Timothee Chalamet Says Bob Dylan is ‘A Fantastic Singer’

Is Bob Dylan a good singer? Timothée Chalamet, who plays him in A Complete Unknown, opening Dec. 25, didn’t hesitate to give his opinion in a previously unpublished segment of his interviews for our recent cover story on the film. “I think he’s a fantastic singer,” he said, citing Dylan’s recordings of “Blind Willie McTell” and “Mama, You’ve Been on My Mind” as evidence. “Music is subjective and art is subjective. To me, he’s got one of the most beautiful voices of all time.”

To learn to sound like Dylan, Chalamet enlisted Eric Vetro, who’s become Hollywood’s go-to vocal coach. Among many others, he worked with Austin Butler for Elvis and with Jeremy Allen White for the in-production Springsteen biopic Deliver Me From Nowhere, as well as with Monica Barbaro, who plays Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown. In our in-depth interview Vetro, who also shares some of his coaching secrets in a new BBC Maestro master class, explained how he helped Chalamet transform — and why he had to ignore some of his own instincts in the process.

Bob Dylan has a very distinct voice. He’s a great singer, though perhaps not on a technical level. He must present a fascinating challenge for a vocal coach — it’s not like trying to get someone ready to play Céline Dion. It’s something very specific.
I’ve done it quite a few times. I worked with Renée Zellweger when she did [the Judy Garland biopic] Judy, Austin Butler when he did Elvis, and Hugh Jackman when he did Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz on Broadway. What I do is wrap my head around, “What is the essence of this person? What makes their voice stand out?” The tone, the way they pronounce words, all of that. We try to work on the essence of the person, not be an impersonation. There’s such a big difference.

In Timothée Chalamet’s case, he’s probably the definition of charismatic. I swear he has some kind of energy field around him. When he walks in the room, everything just changes. It’s so amazing. I guess you would say it’s that elusive It factor that everyone always talks about, but his wattage is just off the charts.

You had worked with Timothée on Wonka first, but that also overlapped with his preparation to play Dylan. Did you keep the projects completely separate?
When it was Wonka, we were very clear about that distinction, because the voices are so different. We were lucky to have more time to work on Dylan than we had on Wonka. We talked about, “OK, the next thing I’ll be working on is Dylan,” but we didn’t start it till he was done with Wonka.

With Wonka, it was just about making it as natural as possible so it didn’t sound like all of a sudden he’s on Broadway. He’s actually communicating and talking and his feelings are coming through.

How did you prepare yourself to understand Dylan’s voice?
I just started listening to him, but with a different ear. When I listen to people nowadays, I can’t help but start thinking, “Oh, if they were working with me, what would I do?” When I was much younger, I didn’t do that as much. When I listened to Bob Dylan years ago, I just saw that he has a very unique voice, not what would be considered a classically beautiful voice. It was more about listening to the words and the music and the message.

When Timmy said he wanted to work with me on the Dylan movie, I started listening with a completely different ear. Some of it obviously is the nasality of his voice, some of it is the way he pronounces his words. I find it so interesting that he sounds young and simultaneously old at the same time. Even when he was young, he has that energy of an old soul.

What kind of exercises would you give Timothée to help him get to where he needed to go?
We would do normal exercises that I would give to anyone just to strengthen their voice, widen their range. That’s how we would start. Then we would start bringing him into probably a little bit more what you would call front-nasal exercises. And then as we would continue, I’d start to try to get him to think, “How would Bob do this exercise? If he was going to take a voice lesson, how would he do it? How would he feel about it? Would he want to do it? Would he be into it?”

Can you explain those nasal exercises specifically?
Say “me, me, may, may.” Think of it nice and forward, up front in your face, in what would be considered the mask of your face, and go “me, yay yay.” “Me, yay yay, yay.” You see where that is very nasal, it’s very forward. You could also do “me, yee, yee, yee, yee.”

I was always about finding the right balance of getting enough of that sound to sound like Bob Dylan, but not let it get into the realm of being a caricature of him. 

Did Timmy ever show up in character?
I would see Timmy morphing into Bob more and more. Then he started, when he would come in, he would just start talking like Bob and there was no need to acknowledge it — it would just happen very naturally. I remember the first day he walked in with a guitar and he had the harmonica holder around his neck. And I was struck by how natural it all looked. It looked like he had been doing this forever. Like it would with Bob Dylan. 

I’ll tell you a story. I have an assistant/handyman, Josh. One day Timmy was early, and he was waiting outside. Josh went over and said, “What are you working on?” And Timmy told him he was working on the Bob Dylan movie, and he asked him his favorite Bob Dylan song. And Timmy just started singing and playing it, standing on the driveway. When Josh told me that story, at first I was so touched that Timmy was so kind and generous and that he would be so friendly. But I also was like, “There you go. He’s really becoming Bob Dylan,” because you could see where Bob Dylan would do the same thing.  I thought, “This movie is going to be fucking awesome because he really does his homework and he knows what he’s doing.”

You also worked with Monica Barbaro on her portrayal of Joan Baez, which was a wildly different challenge.
It was, because Joan Baez not only has a very distinctive voice, but it’s not easy to sing like that. She has that high soprano and also a very distinctive vibrato. That can be difficult for someone to get in general, especially for someone who’s never sung before. But Monica is similar to Timmy in the sense that she’s very diligent. She would always bring a book with her to take notes on everything I told her.

We would listen together, and pick out, where is the vibrato stronger or heavier? Where is it a little bit less? Where is her voice a little stronger? Joan Baez does have a pretty strong and aggressive attack on the music. It’s not a soft or demure delivery.

The difference between their approaches to folk singing was quite stark.
Oh my God, completely. Bob’s came across as more natural, more like speaking, more like talking, more like telling a story than Joan’s. Especially in today’s world, when you listen to them — at that time, I don’t think people thought of it quite as different as they would listening today. Because Joan’s voice is so different in today’s world. How many pop singers do you know who sound like that? Joan has a little bit of that operatic quality, not just the tone or vibrato but also the delivery, the strength of the delivery, the breath support. Whereas with Bob, he didn’t take big, huge breaths. It wasn’t like, “I’m going to hit the back row with my voice.”

With Dylan smoking so many cigarettes, I imagine that affected his breathing capacity?
Yes, and that came up recently on another movie where someone said, “Oh, you should smoke a lot of cigarettes so your voice is raspy.” And I was like, “No, that’s not a healthy way to achieve it. We can achieve this sound without hurting your voice.” Because by the way, Bob smoking cigarettes is going to affect his voice differently than me smoking cigarettes or you smoking cigarettes. So just because we’re doing the same thing doesn’t mean we’re going to sound the same. We have different vocal cords.

Did you look into Dylan’s influences, like Woody Guthrie, as well?
I did, because I didn’t remember Woody Guthrie as much. When I listened, I thought, OK, I get this. You can hear it in [Bob’s] voice that he adopts some of his mannerisms, the way they talk, the way they don’t give it as much air support. It’s a little in the back of their throat and then it’s a little bit up. So you can hear how it would have morphed into his own voice.

My understanding is that there’s a lot more knowledge now of how to get raspy vocal sounds in healthy ways, without hurting your voice.
Everything is different now. I’m so old — I have seen so many styles and lifestyles come and go. People are much more aware of their physical health, their mental health. I worked with a singer many years ago who would shake a bottle of pills, not even looking, shake a bunch into his hand, pop it into his mouth, and then down it with Patrón. In those days, it was more the norm that you did smoke and drink, and sang with a rasp and screamed and yelled and then went to the doctor and got cortisone shots when you had a big concert and your voice was gone.

I understand you’re now working with Jeremy Allen White on his portrayal of Bruce Springsteen?
Yes, I’ve worked several months with him already. It’s going absolutely great. He’s fantastic. I love working with him and he’s really capturing it beautifully. That’s another case where we have to work on getting a safe rasp — you don’t want to actually damage your voice to get that sound.

Through the process with Timothée, did you gain new appreciation for what Dylan was doing vocally?
I feel like there was a yearning to express what he was thinking or felt and that’s where I think his magic came from. He wasn’t doing it out of ego. He was doing it out of this real, genuine compulsion to express certain thoughts and ideas. His intensity drew you in. You felt that sincerity.

I think Timmy captures that, because Timmy is that type of person, too. There were so many times when I got chills, because I would think to myself, “Wow, I’m really getting the essence of Bob Dylan” — not a caricature of him, not an impersonation, but I’m really feeling like I’m in the presence of Bob. When [Timmy] would sing the songs, somehow I went, “Oh, I understand them better.”

That’s probably a good sign, because I think that part of what the movie is meant to do is to introduce young audiences to Bob Dylan.
I think it’s going to work, because I had to override my quest to make people sound better all the time. That’s my entire life, making someone sound like they have a better voice, a beautiful voice. But this experience working with Timmy overrode that. So if it won me over, I think it’s going to win over a lot of people who are now going to want to listen to Bob Dylan.