So I suppose you've caught on by now – I'm a musician. I mainly play the bass guitar in a band called Harlem and Crawford. I'm sure you've heard of us. We were huge starting around 1964. We toured all over the world right along side the Rolling Stones and- Maybe I should start from the beginning. That might be easier to comprehend.
My name is Jasper Frederic Tagglioffaro and I am twenty seven years old. I'm English and a bit of Italian. My dad's great-great grandmother was Italian. She moved to England in 1895. She married an Englishman then they got divorced so she used her maiden name. So her son got married to an English bird and so on and so on. And then they had me. I was born in Central London in 1949. I lived with my parents Nathan and Claudia and when I was nine they had another kid, my baby sister Sophia. We were a pretty average family. My dad was a lawyer and my mum didn't work. She stayed at home with us. I was an ok student in elementary school. I got average grades and didn't get in trouble much. I never really paid much attention to music until middle school. In the eighth grade was the first time I heard rock music. The Beatles had just released 'Love Me Do' and it was playing on the radio like crazy. I was only fourteen and at the time I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. I didn't know it, but I was beginning my 'rebel' phase. I started cutting class and talking back to my parents – all that stuff you never want your kids to do. And I grew my hair, which was sacrilege in 1962. Music at the time was the ultimate form of rebellion, so I went to the music shop and tried to buy a guitar. No cigar. So I tried to steal one. I got caught. Finally, my neighbor, who heard about me nearly being sent to jail for lifting a Fender, offered me his old bass guitar.
I taught myself to play. I didn't think I was very good, but I bought a book and taught myself. I worked every day until my mother eventually told me I had to practice outside. And after about a year, I got a job and bought a tiny amp. I was all set. My neighbors, including the one who gave me the guitar, all hated me. That bass was the downfall on the neighborhood. No one wanted to move there anymore. I felt oddly alone in the world. About a month after I bought my amplifier, I was walking to work when I saw this kid carrying a guitar. I stopped him, asked if it was indeed a guitar and he started going on and on about how it was a 1958 Fender Telecaster with a black finish…blah blah blah. I could tell he was a total show off, but it didn't matter. I finally had someone to share my love of music with. I asked him if he would jam with me. His name was Benjamin Caller. Because my mum wouldn't let me play in the house, we played we played for hours and hours in the basement of his mum's house – mostly covers of old blues tunes. By March we decided we wanted to seriously start a band. We found a drummer, Carl Mannie, and started practicing and playing clubs and stuff. We had one particular show at the Beat Club. I'll never forget it because that's where I met Charlie.
Charles Randall Benich is one of the scariest people you will ever meet. He's five feet and ten inches of red hair, freckles, and a nasty attitude. I was more forced to be in his band then asked to be. He said he "liked my bass playing" and he was "going to make me so famous my mother would shit chickens". Nice guy right? So he told me his plan that night at the bar – we were going to start a band and audition for Decca records. Decca had recently signed the Animals and the Four Aces and you know, for a fifteen year old kid, I was ready to believe anything. I ditched Ben and Carl and jumped right on board with Charlie.
The kid was weird. Well…he wasn't much of a kid anymore. He was twenty one and living with his girlfriend, Marianne, in southern Liverpool. He had moved there from Virginia in America a few years back. He had no direction for his life, no schooling, no nothing – accept his love for music. It was an obsession. All he ever wanted was to start the perfect band and go on the road. After all the famous bands started coming from England, he and his girl moved here and began searching. He didn't seem to care that I was so young. His only concert was that I could play, and I could play. I could play real good. So his next mission was a drummer.
Charlie was a guitarist. He also sang lead. That's what he declared, and I never questioned it. Not once. Eventually, he would give up guitar in the band. I didn't question that either. Charlie was a mad man. It was better to leave him alone when he made a personal decision. It was better to leave him alone when he made any decision. Charlie was good at winning fights (and starting them), weather they be verbal or physical. They were usually physical. He was also very good at completing a mission. Charlie could to anything he set his mind to – or his fist. Within a month of us jamming together he found us a brilliant drummer – Samuel Deaton.
Sammy was, and still is, the complete opposite of Charlie and me. He's small, whiny, and slightly pathetic. But he's a hell of a drummer. Sam's about five foot ten inches of pure rainbows and sunshine. You can't help but go "awwwwww" every time you see him. He's three years older than me, but I feel a lot of times he's like my younger brother. He had a pretty tough life at home, so he's a lot like family to me and Charlie. After we found Sam, we started practicing like crazy. By my sixteenth birthday we were playing in local clubs every night and making almost no money with it. After a show in Soho one night, Charlie decided the next morning we'd try out at Decca.
Dick Rowe, an A&R and Decca at the time, met us at seven o'clock the next morning. Turns out he'd gotten word from a couple of his friends that we had a good sound. When we got there, we met two young guys that were in a band already signed to Decca named Mick and Brian. We soon found out they were in a band called the Rolling Stones. Brian didn't seem to like me much at first, seeing as I looked a quite bit like him, but Mick was a nice enough guy – they both walked around like they owned the place. That's what surprised us. We had been so respectful the whole day, not wanting to screw anything up or upset anyone. These guys were loud, obnoxious, played horrible rock and roll, and drank and smoked as much as they want. We could barely believe it. Dick told us they were worth the trouble though. I could never see why – maybe because we behaved just like them back then.
Our audition took a little over an hour. We played about fifteen songs, including three by Muddy Waters and one from the Beatles. After our audition, our new friends, and possible record mates, took us out to lunch.
I'd never seen such madness in my life up to that point. They drank, a lot. The quietest of the group was Charlie Watts. He barely said a word all night, and the little he did say made him sound like a brain surgeon next to his band mates. Brian Jones was very sophisticated too though. His outlook on life was very unique. He studied very usual things with extreme depth. I found it very confusing at the time, but now I realize just how intriguing Brian really was. Mick and Keith were animals. They were loud, commanding, destructive, and very amusing. They scared the shit out of poor Sam though. Bill Wyman was an awkward fellow. I never really talked to him much, and he seemed to like to keep with his people. Z
So the day and night went on. We got drunk, barely ate, and ended up being kicked out by the owner of the restaurant because, apparently, everyone could hear us from our private room in the back. I woke up next morning with the nastiest headache I'd ever had to the phone ringing in my face. I picked it up before mum could. It was Charlie saying we'd passed the audition. Our first record was due in a month.
