DANNY McELHINNEY: What Glen Hansard did after meeting a young Traveller girl busking in Galway - and how he became close to Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder - prove that his greatest legacy may not be his music

Published: 13:28, 4 August 2026 | Updated: 13:32, 4 August 2026 Music fans and the Irish music industry are still coming to terms with the untimely passing at 56 of Glen Hansard.  The death of The Frames frontman in the early hours of Wednesday last in a motorbike accident in west Dublin shocked the entire nation.  President Connolly led tributes to the Ballymun-born musician saying he would be remembered as ‘as one of Ireland’s great singer-songwriters’.  Former president Michael D Higgins described him as a ‘wonderful musician and performer, a troubadour whose gift for storytelling brought so much joy to audiences across the world’. In a statement on behalf of himself and his band Bruce Springsteen said, ‘Here on E Street, we are heartbroken over the death of Glen Hansard The sentiments shared by our two most recent heads of state were echoed by two generations of musical superstars. In a statement on behalf of himself and his band Bruce Springsteen said, ‘Here on E Street, we are heartbroken over the death of Glen Hansard.  'We met in Ireland many years ago and he was always nothing but a great musician, a good friend and a generous and gracious man.  'Always positive, smiling and ready to sing.’ A small section from an extensive tribute by Bono read: ‘Sometimes I would wonder if Glen Hansard really existed…. seriously, he was such an angelic presence… not otherworldly… in fact, very present this presence…  'A smiling rascal if you needed him to be… this most musical and mischievous archangel of Ballymun… no airs, plenty of graces... to be utterly yourself by being more interested in others – a clue for any of us trying out different personas.  'He really was who you thought he was.’ Ed Sheeran said he was ‘heartbroken to hear the news about Glen.   'He was such an incredible human, an incredible force.  'I am grateful for the times we shared together’. Time will tell how deep and wide Glen Hansard’s legacy becomes in Irish cultural history.  But a cursory glance at his career places his achievements in a category that are unique.  He is the only Irish musician to have won an Oscar.  Doing so in the guise of The Swell Season with Markéta Irglová in the Best Original Song category at the 2007 Academy Awards for the song Falling Slowly from Once.  A small section from an extensive tribute by Bono read: ‘Sometimes I would wonder if Glen Hansard really existed…. seriously, he was such an angelic presence… not otherworldly… in fact, very present this presence He also acted in the film which was directed by John Carney who, before becoming a filmmaker, was formerly the bass player in The Frames. Many musicians have become actors to varying degrees of success.  Playing the role of Outspan ‘Fender Bender’ Foster in Alan Parker’s film version of the Roddy Doyle book The Commitments, the band’s less than self-aware guitarist, showed he could play against type.  Metaphorically speaking, Glen wasn’t one to draw back then pull his punches in real life.  People still love The Commitments 35 years after its release.  In 35 more years audiences in Ireland and all over the world will still love the story of the northside Dublin band singing soul, loud and proud and bleedin’ rapid… If acting was something that Glen flirted with and The Swell Season very much a part-time project, then it is The Frames that was his passion.  Their 1995 single Revelate, was an instant classic and is the song for which the band will be surely most remembered.  It managed to combine the loud-quiet-loud dynamics of the Pixies and Nirvana with an innate Irish sensibility.  Glen knew how to dial up the drama with a vocal style that oozed passion, serving the lyric but not showy, just telling his truth. The Frames’ live shows were like revivalist meetings at times.  Glen’s intensity onstage was only matched by the musical prowess of violinist Colm Mac Con Iomaire, also a successful solo artist, who founded the group with Glen.  Then there was Paul ‘Binzer’ Brennan, still a sought-after session drummer and guitarist Dave Odlum who went on to produce albums by Josh Ritter, Mundy and Ham Sandwich. If The Frames was the musical vehicle that drove Glen, then internationally The Swell Season may have had a lengthier reach.  He and Markéta Irglová, friends first, then musical equals, partners, then friends again.  After both married other people they reunited to release last year’s album, Forward.  A gem of a record, and a rare enough example of people honestly appraising a relationship after the dust settled and that seemed to the public at large almost inseparable from their artistry. A tragic event at a concert by The Swell Season brought Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder into Glen’s orbit. In 2010 at an outdoor show in Saratoga, California, a man jumped from the roof covering the stage and landed just feet from where he and Marketá were performing.  Glen recalled later in an interview with the Track Star podcast that the man ended his life ‘because he was trying to make a point to his girlfriend’. The countless tributes to Glen showed that now just as many of us seem to have a story about that other celebrated Dublin musician Eddie Vedder contacted Glen afterwards.  ‘For five days, he called me, and at the end of the five days he said “This is my number, if you’re ever in Seattle, I’d love to hang out with you.  'I’m really sorry for what happened,”’ Glen said.  Glen met him in the grunge icon’s home city of Seattle when The Frames were on tour in the US later in 2010.  So began an enduring friendship that saw the two tour together on numerous occasions.  He even temporarily joined a supergroup that Vedder put together for his 2022 album Earthling.  As well as the Dubliner, the band featured Josh Klinghoffer, guitarist with the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and producer and multi-instrument Andrew Watt who in recent years has produced albums by the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney that took both back to the top of the charts. It is often said that every Irish person has a Bono Story.  The countless tributes to Glen showed that now just as many of us seem to have a story about that other celebrated Dublin musician.  Yes, Glen was a Best Song Oscar winner, a member of the cast of the Commitments and frontman of The Frames, one of Ireland’s most loved bands of the past four decades but many of the stories reflected his compassion, generosity of spirit and his activism. Sometimes his acts of generosity were low-key others made national news. I first encountered Glen when I came to study in Dublin in 1991.  To make the rent for my Rathmines bedsit I used to busk on Grafton Street.  I played a mix of covers of songs by the Waterboys, REM and The Jam.  I would take my break in the much-missed Coffee Inn on South Anne Street.  I would treat myself to a feed that would stick to the ribs while belting out songs in the hours ahead. One day Glen came in to the little café, complimented me on my efforts that he had observed just then on the street and paid for my Burger in Bolognese Sauce and Chips.  I had never met him before, and apart from a few more encouraging words, he was gone.  I’m sure he didn’t dine out on that story but the £3.95 he paid was no trifling amount in the early nineties.  I met Glen on a few occasions over the years and reminded him of his generosity.  He didn’t recall the event and made a joke that he would never have been so flaithiúlach [generous] with his cash.  My friend, Jim ‘Farmer’ Harte, a musician from Lifford, Co. Donegal and brother of Mickey Joe, Ireland’s 2003 Eurovision entrant, told me a story of busking in Galway, and being asked by a girl from the local Traveller Community if she could join in.  Farmer asked her about the beautiful handmade Lowden guitar she played. The ‘Home Sweet Home’ coalition group of artists, trade unionists and activists spearheaded by Glen, film director Jim Sheridan, singer Hozier and members of Kodaline and other musicians gained access to the empty nine storey office building She said that after meeting Glen Hansard one day while she was busking in Dublin, he asked her to a show he was playing that evening.  He also invited her to come to the after show party, where a session soon got into full swing. Glen asked the girl to play a few songs on the valuable Irish-made guitar.  As she was going, he said, ‘here, take the guitar with you’. Dundalk singer-songwriter David Keenan, an artist in whom you can certainly hear Glen’s influence, recounts that he too was gifted a guitar by the artist, who first hit the Irish charts as far back as 1991 with The Frames’ first single The Dancer, one year after they had formed. If those are micro tales then there are many others who have benefitted on a larger scale from the acts of generosity and public spiritedness of the singer-songwriter. In 2016 there were 5,009 homeless people in Dublin alone.  Glen and others decided to ‘occupy’ the vacant Apollo House on Dublin’s Tara Street in 2016 to shine a light on the homeless crisis in the city.  Many a Dubliner had in the past queued outside and within its beige bricked gloom to sign on and get dole payments when it was a hub of the old Department of Social Welfare.  The ‘Home Sweet Home’ coalition group of artists, trade unionists and activists spearheaded by Glen, film director Jim Sheridan, singer Hozier and members of Kodaline and other musicians gained access to the empty nine storey office building.  Over the course of a month from December 2016 to mid-January the group played songs outside for contributions and took in up to 200 people, offering them food and a roof over their heads out of the winter wind, rain and sleet.  Glen spoke eloquently on The Late Late Show later about it to Ryan Tubridy calling it ‘a necessary act of civil disobedience’.  Sometimes governments act out of necessity, that one acted out of embarrassment.  They housed many of the people in Apollo House temporarily at least.  Glen and his associates took a hands-on approach to a problem rather than wringing their hands. Another meaningful intervention was The Christmas Eve Busk on Dublin’s Grafton Street. Glen started that in 2010 as a direct means of raising money for Dublin Simon.  A decade and a half later it is now one of the pre-Christmas highlights every year in the capital. It is slightly more regulated now.  A small stage was erected for last year’s event outside the Gaiety Theatre on South King Street meaning less of a swollen crowd on Christmas Eve on Grafton Street but a more impactful affair on the quieter side street, allowing more money to be raised. Bono said of it: ‘When the crowds got bigger and for safety’s sake Glen had to agree to move the busk to a stage kindly provided outside The Gaiety Theatre, he would say “we’ll give it our best but it’s not a busk if we’re not on the street!” …because that’s who he was – a performer at eye level in any situation.  Glen and Markéta Irglová won the Best Original Song category at the 2007 Academy Awards for the song Falling Slowly from Once The stage was a separation he wouldn’t recognize.  Of all the grand and gigantic venues he and The Frames played, you sensed the street was his most favoured place to perform.  And street people, his favourite audience.’  But these acts don’t resonate unless the aim of the protagonist is true and there was no doubting Glen’s integrity in this regard.  No one told Glen Hansard or indeed Bono, Imelda May and others to do it. Cynics dismissed it as a publicity stunt, missing the point that it is exactly what it was.  The money raised, often considerable though it was, mattered less than the light it shone on a shameful situation that successive administrations appear incapable of properly addressing.  In 2016, there were The 5,009 in emergency accommodation in Dublin alone in 2016 has shot up to 12,475 this year – a rise of 149 per cent in ten years. Starting as a busker as a teenager in the late eighties, Glen would have seen that although the country seemed to be in a perma-recession, there was much less evidence of homelessness then, than in a country these days with a roaring economy and with consistently stuffed State coffers.  He was as direct as his songs.  A lot less conversation, a little more action, more benefit to those in need. But anyone who knew him, knows he was not po-faced.  He liked a laugh, a late session in a pub, when the guitars would come out and people’s guard would come down, everyone singing along.  Glen the ringleader, but letting everyone have their moment and everyone else’s time and attention.  I can recall after having been evicted from my Dublin city bedsit in 1993, two actor friends put me up in their flat on Lower Rathmines Road.  David and Michael were friends with Glen.  He was a regular visitor and he often led a motley crew back to the flat for songs, drinks and smokes.  Those sessions could last until the morning when regular people were walking to their jobs over Portobello Bridge into Dublin 2.  This was during my own less than stellar days as an actor.  If you have seen the film Withnail & I, this was like an Irish version of that cult classic with a marked lack of tragedy and much more comedy. Victoria Mary Clarke spoke on the evening of Glen’s death about what a central role Glen took in her late partner Shane MacGowan’s funeral in December 2023 Didn’t he ramble… as the title of Glen’s Grammy-nominated 2015 solo album put it.  Not with his words but in the sense that he was a troubadour taking his music to the four corners of the earth, his humanity to the darkest corners of the streets.  Victoria Mary Clarke spoke on the evening of Glen’s death about what a central role Glen took in her late partner Shane MacGowan’s funeral in December 2023.  Glen sang that day as if his passion would raise his spirits, ours and Shane’s soul into musical heaven.  Now gone, like Shane, Sinead O’Connor and Dolores O’Riordain before him, we contemplate the rituals that will mark another musical giant taken much more quickly than even our worst fears might have anticipated.  Bono said about Glen ‘he will always be everywhere I see a coin spinning into an open guitar case’.  It’s a touching evocation of Glen’s musical origins and also the Christmas Eve Busk that will now never be the same if it happens at all this year.  But also it reminds me that the dropping of a coin in a guitar case is a mark of instant recognition, appreciation for a song, a little bit of direct action to get someone from where they are to a slightly better place.  It’s very hard to say so early in our collective grief that Glen has gone to a better place.  But if we remember him by singing with as much passion as we can muster, throwing as many coins as we can afford when a busker is performing and say with a loud and unified voice that the causes of the societal problems that he campaigned to banish are eminently solvable and we are all tarnished until they are.  Ireland is not full but is full of people and places that could lift up the most vulnerable people in our society.  ‘Sometimes I need a revelation.’  Glen sang, at other times all people need is the will.  That would be a fitting legacy. 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