Gibson’s acoustic guitar luthiers worked closely with the producers of the upcoming Bob Dylan biopic to supply handcrafted guitars for the filming and recording sessions.
Timothée Chalamet stars and sings as Bob Dylan in James Mangold’s three-time Golden Globe-nominated movie, A Complete Unknown, the electrifying true story behind Dylan’s meteoric rise from hard-scrabbling vagabond to rock-and-roll icon.
Gibson worked with the film’s production team, including Executive Music Producer Nick Baxter, striving for pinpoint historical accuracy regarding instruments, sonics, and recording signal chains. Most of the Gibson and Epiphone guitars throughout the film remain handcrafted at the Gibson acoustic craftory in Bozeman, Montana.
“As many Gibson acoustic guitars played a timely role in American music history our supportive mission was to carefully select the Gibson acoustics that Bob Dylan chose to play during his powerful presence in the 1960s,” Robi Johns, senior product development manager at Gibson Acoustic Guitars, said. “To achieve this with historical accuracy, we also recreated a few of Bob’s acoustic guitars for the timeframe depicted in the movie.”
In celebration of the film’s release, music fans can visit the Gibson Garage Nashville, Gibson’s flagship store in downtown Nashville, from Dec. 19 through January to see some of the Gibson guitars created for A Complete Unknown on display.
“We were very grateful to Gibson for giving us a whole bevy of guitars,” Baxter said. “There were two custom Gibson J-50s built for the movie to match Dylan’s original guitar, a 1947 model. Those guitars were great, and they got even better over time. We had those two on set and used them for a lot of the recordings. We really did try to follow the progression of his guitars; we wanted to honor that.”