International jazz star Kyle Eastwood returns to Birmingham next week. Graham Young talks to Clint's son about his early years and how his famous dad shaped his aspirations.

The last time Kyle Eastwood played in Birmingham it was at the Hare and Hounds pub in Kings Heath.

It was May, 2008 and tickets were priced at just... £6.

This summer, Madonna is coming to town with a £175 per ticket bounty on her head.

Now aged 43, Kyle laughs out loud at the disparity.

“Yes, £6 does seem to be a little bit low,” says the bass-playing band leader with modest understatement.

“All power to Madonna if she can get it, but I’m just happy to play whether it’s to an audience of 100 or up to nine or 10,000 which we’ve also done.”

Before I can even wonder if he’s being bankrolled by his father Clint Eastwood, Kyle is quick to point that he’s playing on his own terms.

“We’re making a living,” he says. “You can’t play every gig for that fee, £6. But, as a band, we’re doing pretty well.

“The last time we played Ronnie Scott’s (in London), we sold out for four nights in a row.”

With regular tours in Japan, the US and Europe now becoming a permanent feature of his life, Kyle has two bands – one for international dates, the other for North America.

When he arrives direct from California via London to play Birmingham’s Glee Club on Hurst Street on the first day of their Jazz FM UK tour next Tuesday night, he won’t have seen his European pals for a month. But after a couple of soundcheck numbers, Kyle says they’ll be good to go, particularly as they co-wrote a lot of tunes on his most recent album, Songs from the Chateau.

“Sometimes you benefit from having a break so that you can freshen up,” says Kyle.

How come the Chateau album had a couple of bonus tracks for the Japan market? “One was a live track recorded there, the other was an extra track which we recorded at the chateau and which we thought we’d just give to them,” says Kyle.

“If anyone is disappointed in Europe, I guess they can get it from iTunes!

The internet is a reminder of how the world has changed greatly in some ways.

Just like my late father introduced me to the movies by sitting down with me to watch Spaghetti westerns, so Clint used to put films on to share with Kyle, a practise I’m now carrying on with my own son, 11.

Crucially, Clint also took Kyle to Ronnie Scott’s in London where his star status meant nobody batted an eyelid when he arrived with the then 11-year-old by his side.

The eldest of two children by his father’s first wife, Maggie Johnson, he was born in 1968, the year when Clint was making Where Eagles Dare with Richard Burton and launching his own production company, Malpaso, too.

Although Kyle later went to film school, the real lesson he learned there was that music was his real passion.

“It doesn’t matter who your father is, you can’t practise bass for four, five or six hours per day without having a real love for your instrument.

“My dad was always supportive of what I wanted to do,” says Kyle.

“He told me: ‘Whatever you want to do, just work hard at it and stick to it. Follow your heart and your dream’.”

With a home in Paris as well as the ability to stay in Carmel, California, with model mum Maggie Johnson, Kyle enjoys the good life.

But he was in the Maldives and felt the edge of the Indian Ocean tsunami on Boxing Day, 2004, and had been in Tokyo just three weeks before last year’s tsunami struck Japan. In between, Clint had by coincidence filmed a tsunami scene at the beginning of his 2010 film Hereafter.

“What I experienced in the Maldives was nothing like that, but at the time I did keep wondering why the water was rising,” says Kyle.

“It was definitely a strange experience but we were far enough away for the damage to be not too bad, it just meant we had to stay there for a few extra days.”

Working on Clint’s Nelson Mandela biopic Invictus meant he also got to enjoy South Africa – where he was led astray by the film’s Oscar-nominated star, Matt Damon.

“He told he me he’d been in a cage with sharks on the outside and that he was going back and that I should try it,” says Kyle.

“That was quite an adrenalin rush, though I suppose you’d even get used to that if you did it more than once.”

Once upon a time, playing a jazz club would have meant being enveloped in a fug of smoke. But even though Kyle admits he has the odd cigarette, he’s pleased that most venues around the world are now non-smoking.

“I don’t like packing my clothes as if they’ve just wiped out an ash tray,” he laughs.

“I am surprised, though, how quickly it has happened in places like France where the ban was introduced around four years ago. It’s just nice to be able to taste your food.”

Kyle is all ears when I tell him about Birmingham’s own jazz star Andy Hamilton, still going strong on the sax at 95. It’s reminder that in jazz terms, he’s still a very young man.

“There’s always new things to learn, playing with different people and approaching music differently.

“There’s always room to grow and I’m always striving to do things better or to push myself more.”

Kyle has an 18-year-old daughter, Graylen, by former wife Laura Gomez. Is she getting to the age where boys are taking an interest?

“She’s just finishing up at high school,” he says in a manner which suggests he has full confidence in her to know her own mind, in true Eastwood fashion.

In the meantime, Kyle has a tour to do. If all goes to plan he’ll be back home in Paris in time for his birthday on May 19. “I’m going to have a week off,” he smiles. “To sleep in my own bed again.”

* The Kyle Eastwood Band will be at the Glee Club, Hurst St, Birmingham on Tuesday. Doors 7pm. Tickets: £20 (NUS, £9).