Elvis Costello

He was actually, he was an orphan.

So he was, at some point between 1906 and 1912, he was given a bugle.

and he played you know bugle and trumpet in the sort of marching band of the i guess the school band and was good at it so he was sent to the military school of music and then when war came seconded into the royal irish regiment so he was in an irish regiment albeit in the british army

It's even stranger than that, Brendan.

So my grandfather was without a job and all he'd ever known was institutions.

And so he signed up for another job that involved uniforms and playing the trumpet, which was as a ship's musician.

And so he was actually the first person in my family to come to America.

But he didn't stay.

He just would go back and forward on the White Star Line.

So he never really played jazz.

It was my dad that came home from his service in the RAF in 1947.

And he wanted to play jazz.

I think I was definitely not going to be a musician really yeah at one point I think when I was a teenager I was uh you know my folks split up when I was quite young so and I think I saw the the life of music not the music itself but the life of a musician traveling as being part of that and my so you know my feeling was well maybe that's not for me you know and uh I kept

music in a very special place and and like you often are when you're a teenager you're pretty a little bit earnest even a little bit pious you know about it so precious to me that i didn't want to do anything

I remember being in school and being a careers teacher, asking me what I was going to do.

Was I going to go and train to be a teacher or something or join the army?

And I said, well, I'm definitely not doing the latter.

So I sort of toyed with the idea of being a teacher, but I had no idea or aptitude for it.

And I told him I wanted to write songs and he just laughed at me.

He just thought it was a fantasist idea, that it was something he'd only do as a pastime.