Rick Beato has offered his take on the scandal engulfing the disgraced Instagram guitar star Giacomo Turra, admitting that he filmed a video for his YouTube channel with Turra but ultimately decided against publishing it because his playing was not good enough.
Turra had enjoyed a meteoric rise in recent years, amassing a huge following on social media – primarily on Instagram, where more than 723,000 people follow him. His profile as a neo-funk guitar influencer saw him attract a number of endorsements, including a signature guitar from D’Angelico.
But since April, he has been at the centre of a social media storm after YouTuber Danny Sapko released a video accusing Turra of multiple instances of using other players’ arrangements for his own Instagram videos without crediting them, or hiding credits in the small print, and also of selling tabs of their work.
D’Angelico then pulled Turra’s signature model off its website. Other commercial partners nixed content with him, including UK retailer Andertons. At present, the official Giacomo Turra website is offline. Beato reveals he shot a video with Turra but decided against publishing it because Turra's playing was not good enough.
Beato, who has 4.96 million subscribers to his YouTube channel, says he has been inundated with requests for comment about the Turra controversy.
“People are like, when are you gonna say something about this, Rick?" said Beato. “Okay, I’m saying it. I didn’t post the video because Giacomo couldn’t play well enough to be on my channel. I have standards.”
“Giacomo Turra I had in my studio a few months ago. I had him on because in his Instagram videos he presents himself as a great player,” explained Beato. “This is before I figured out from Danny Sapko’s video that he had stolen other people’s – some friends of mine’s – music.
“When he came in here and played, I realised he couldn’t play well enough to put the video out, and then I was like, ‘Oh well, obviously all his videos were fake.’”
This was something Sapko had also complained about. It was obvious that Turra was miming to a backing track (the preposterous whammy bar dive-bombs on a guitar with the fixed bridge, etc).
But then isn’t this part of the artificiality of social media, the presentation of this idealised version of the self? Beato argues that it incentivises a certain fakery.
But far as musicians miming goes, Beato argues that this is no big deal. The half-time show at the Super Bowl is prerecorded. Even Wes Montgomery did it back in the day to promote his album.
Then again, that was Wes Montgomery, and he was promoting his album on TV before a live audience – emphasis on his – and there is plenty of documentary evidence of Montgomery's genius as.
Turra, however, is not Wes Montgomery, and furthermore, he was using other people’s music, and that, argues Beato, is the “really egregious” behaviour at the heart of the scandal. “The faking, okay, that’s one thing, but the stealing other people’s music is completely not cool,” he said.
Turra released an apology video on YouTube in the immediate aftermath of Sapko’s video, though you might say it fell into the sorry-not-sorry category, with the Italian guitarist denying that he sold tab of other artist’s work and sharing a link to a DropBox folder with screenshots of credits.
Turra's apology video has subsequently been taken down from YouTube. Beato argues that it was insufficient, and didn't address the accusations directly. Plus it should have been on Instagram because that is where all Turra's followers are.
Can Turra make a comeback? Beato does not rule it out. But he has some advice. Come clean and apologise fully, and come back as a better player with some great music. “Everybody likes a great redemption story,” says Beato.
