Rockabye

Piano Man (Benji)

Career

Similar to JJ's journey to finding love, Benji's road to finding his purpose in the world was short. He was born to be playing music. It coursed through his veins. While he was first discovered to have an ear for music without any prior teaching when accompanying his father at the studio and getting the opportunity to play the piano, Benji was interested in all instruments. The piano was, of course, his favorite, with string instruments coming in at a second place. It was like Taylor, who had his favorite dinosaur but honestly, he loved all of them. He could rattle facts about all of them known to man if given 48 years to do so.

Benji started with the piano and it is where he made most of his career out of. There was a time as a youngling when he thought of switching to the violin but then he was so interested in playing like his idol, Elton John, and then got to play with the man, that he decided to mainly stick to the piano.

Aside from remaking some of his dad's old movies from when he was a child with his older brother, Taylor, Joe also loved to remake music videos with his mini Ben. Safe to say that by the time Benji was 10, he had done over 10 of Elton John's music videos and had more glamorous glasses of his than he'd be proud to admit.

His older brother JJ and Benji had a knack for the limelight, in different realms, of course. JJ focused on his dance numbers on TikTok while Benji made remakes of Elton John videos, had discussions about famous pianists, and rated instruments bought on the internet all on YouTube. He eventually made a TikTok too but that was only to show his audience how darn cute his baby sister, Ginny was when she was adopted into the Mazzello clan.

His fathers were loaded enough to send him to an academy where he can hone into his musical abilities. He thrived at that school, often coming home with a new symphony he created in less than two days. When it was time to graduate, Benji didn't want to be like his brother, JJ or sister, Clara and move away from home. He was just fine going to a university close to home. He wanted to go where the music was but there were lots of schools in CA that had music programs. Did he take a few trips to visit JJ and check out the NYC Philharmonic as well? Of course! But California also had the Philharmonic in Pasadena, so it was a no brainer.

As an adult, Benji didn't become the next Elton John. Even though he had his mannerisms down pat in all his remake videos, he didn't want to be a superstar. He loved playing the piano, but more classically. So when the Philharmonic offered him a full-time gig, he couldn't say no. It was a dream to be a part of the team - he could play alongside other talents as well as write some of his songs that one day can be heard by thousands to millions in theaters.

At the end of the day, Benji looked the most like his Papa but had no desire to reach the level of fame that his Papa did. Sure, when his sister finally cleaned up his nerdy look in his late teens did he receive a couple of more invitations from the ladies to go for a bite but aside from that, Benji was completely content with his music - his fingers - those beautiful black and white keys - speaking for him.

Love Life

Clara (Muma) would say that Benji looked like the biggest Goober (second to his brother, Taylor) until she got his hands on him and gave him a total makeover. It wasn't that Benji was horrid-looking. He looked the most like his Papa but he didn't have the fashion sense of his Papa. And he didn't care about it. He cared about his music, but his looks, so much so that he had these huge looking specs from the 70s (worse than the black-rimmed hipster glasses) and enough ugly sweaters and striped collar shirts to make the folks from Queer Eye cringe.

"What? Just because I told you about that one girl that looked me up and down and laughed in my face when I asked to grab a bite, now suddenly I needed to be made over from head to toe?"