Timothée Chalamet’s 'A Complete Unknown' Harmonica Coach Had Never Seen a Timothée Chalamet Movie

When professional harmonica player Rob Paparozzi was tapped to help Timothée Chalamet play Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, he wasn’t exactly familiar with the 28-year-old sensation.

“Never heard of him,” 72-year-old Paparozzi told GQ. “I had mentioned it to my son and he said, ‘You don't know who he is?! That's the guy from Dune.’ And then my grandkids, they're eight and 10, they're going, ‘No, that's Willy Wonka.’ And I'm going, ‘Who?’”

Chalamet had already spent five years working with another harmonica coach (plus a vocal coach and a guitar coach) to portray the Dylan of the 1960s in James Mangold’s biopic, out on December 25th. The New Jersey-based Paparozzi came in to get the actor comfortable going full Dylan on the harmonica onscreen. Here, he tells GQ everything about the experience.

Rob Paparozzi: I got into the harmonica in 1966. My older brother, who just left us about a couple of months ago, was a big Bob Dylan fan. He had a harmonica that he got because he was into Bob Dylan. I have two older brothers, Mario and Louis, and they threatened me. They both had guitars: “Do not touch our guitars when we go out because they're very expensive. We know you're trying to get into the music thing too.” But there was a harmonica on the shelf and I figured, “Who's going to know? I’ll just wipe it off when I'm done with it.” So I had this little love affair with the harmonica at age 14 and I never put it down.

Yeah, being in the New York area, I got into the music thing. My band would open up for B.B. King or Sly and the Family Stone, and I was quite young. I was 17, 18 years old. I met Bruce Springsteen when he was a young pup too. He was a little bit older than, but I would go down to Asbury Park, the Sunshine Inn, and my band would play with his band. I'll show you in a minute how I taught Timmy with the harmonica rack, which is a thing that Bob Dylan made popular.

Bruce Springsteen saw me playing guitar with the rack one night and he said, “Man, Rob, you should come down to the Student Prince. I do a blues jam every Tuesday night.” And I'm thinking, “I'm an hour north in New Jersey, I'm not going to go down.” I never went. And two years later I saw him on the cover of Time and Newsweek and I said, “Maybe I should have went to that jam he was telling me about.”

I got lucky. I learned how to read music on the harmonica, which a lot of harmonica players don't know how to read music. So I started getting called for some movie soundtracks and Tom and Huck, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and that kind of stuff. I would go in and play the harmonica, but I never worked with actors before. This was my first time, with A Complete Unknown, working with an actor, coaching them to play, and it was a very interesting experience and I enjoyed it.

It's funny. While I was getting ready to start this project, I had to go to Japan with a band that I've worked with for years. The flight to Japan, it's 13 hours. So I'm looking at the [in-flight movie] screen and it said Dune, Willy Wonka. I said, “I'm going to watch two of this guy's films and see who he is.”

I met him for the first time at his place in New York and he had about five or six harmonicas, so I could see that he was already playing. And when we put on some of the tracks, I said, “Who's singing?” And he goes, “That's me. I'm singing my own parts.” And I'm going, “Man, it sounds really good.” He had some chops on the harmonica. And when we were listening to the pre-recorded tracks that they were making for the soundtracks, I heard harmonica on that. And I said, “Is that you?” He goes, “Well, that's the guy from the studio, Ross Garren.” I know Ross. The harmonica world is small. So Ross is a wonderful player who kind of took over for an old friend of mine, Tommy Morgan, who used to play on all the movies in California. And when he died two years ago, Ross kind of stepped in and became the guy in Burbank because he is a great player and he reads music and he's just wonderful.

I had to teach Timmy a lot of those parts that Ross had put down on the soundtrack stuff. But he had already done a lot of coaching with Ross and some lessons based on the stuff that was played. And my job was, Timmy wants to get these parts right with his guitar and make sure he's doing the right thing, but he really wanted to learn the parts. He didn't want to fudge his way through it. He wanted me to show him how each riff went.

I didn't have to go to the set. Me and Larry [Salzman, the guitar coach], we met at Timmy's place. We were doing some jamming. Timmy really wanted to get into this. He loved even Dylan stuff that wasn't in the movies. He wanted to start playing it and show us that he knew these tunes.

Bob Dylan, as a singer and as a guitar player and as a harmonica player, as a musician, he was never a polished, trained musician. And that went to his harmonica as well. It was very quirky. It would go along with the songs and fit them perfectly. If you just took those harmonica parts and analyzed it musically, it's not a whole lot. But then when you try to start copying that, that's where it gets very difficult. The harmonica is an instrument where you blow in and out. So it becomes very personal. It sounds like the person that's playing it.

Bob had it in a rack, and I'll show you with a rack. [Paparozzi pulls out his harmonica rack] So now you can grab the guitar and the harmonica goes in here. We had to get Timmy going and it’s like, “Where is he on the harmonica? Is he in the middle of the harmonica with this riff? Is he down on the left side or is he on the right side?” We did a lot of FaceTime lessons too. I would sit here with the guitar and he would look at me and watch me, and I could kind of guide him that way too.

I got called to do a Judy Collins sings Bob Dylan record back in the nineties. And Judy Collins came up to me and she said, “Rob, I know that you've done a lot of stuff and you can play like Paul Butterfield and all these great harmonica players. But, for Like a Rolling Stone, can you just give me Bob Dylan?” I'm saying, sure, I’m a studio harmonica player. I can play anything. And when I went to try and sound like Dylan, it was probably the hardest thing I ever had to do because I'm playing very meticulous and neat, and Dylan's just playing and he's quirky, and it was a hard thing to do.

He was advanced on the guitar because he had studied that for four years. He wanted to actually play guitar and the harmonica with the rack as I showed you. And he was having a hard time coordinating between the two. So he worked on that a lot until he really felt comfortable with it.

Probably when we got together with Larry, the guitar player, at Timmy's place. He really just wanted me to tell some stories. I never met Bob Dylan, but I saw him once in a bathroom. I was telling Timmy this story and he got a real kick out of it. I went to see Muddy Waters at The Bottom Line. In between the sets, I went to the bathroom and I turned to my right and Bob Dylan's going into the stall. I froze up. I'm not going to say anything to Bob Dylan, he's going to the bathroom! And I came back out, we sat waiting for the show to begin, and Muddy Waters came out. And sure enough, he called up Bob Dylan on stage. And Timmy thought that was the coolest thing. He loved hearing about these stories.

The last meeting I had with Timmy, I was at a rehearsal studio and he was doing a piano lesson. At the end of the session, I said, “Look, I don't want to bother you, but my two grandkids are really giant Willy Wonka fans. I got these two little posters.” He goes, “Let's sign ‘em.” And he writes, “What's it like having the coolest Poppy in the world?” He’s just a wonderful guy. Haven't seen the movie yet. I can't wait to see his acting in it.

It's funny because Larry, the guitar player, he just started working on the Bruce Springsteen movie. And Bruce does play a little harmonica, but I never got a call to do that one. I'm just doing my thing here at home now. And I gig occasionally. I travel a little bit and it's all good.