{"id":575059,"date":"2026-07-30T07:10:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T07:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/575059\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T07:10:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T07:10:11","slug":"glen-hansard-was-irelands-band-leader-something-bono-or-geldof-couldnt-be-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/575059\/","title":{"rendered":"Glen Hansard was Ireland\u2019s band leader, something Bono or Geldof couldn\u2019t be \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the 1990s, I wasn\u2019t convinced by The Frames.<\/a> They felt a bit mainstream. A bit major label. I was a young idiot. Later, a friend convinced me that I was missing out and to give them a chance. She was sure that, if I went to a gig, I\u2019d get it. So I went to a gig and \u2026 I got it.<\/p>\n

It was all because of Glen Hansard.<\/a> He wrote beautiful songs, but he was also the still-yet-chaotic centre of an indie-folk storm. His job was to hold it all together, and he projected his charisma around everyone else like a shield.<\/p>\n

He was a frontman, but he was also a band leader. A lot of singers are, in fact, terrible band leaders and need sidemen to perform that task. Nick Cave had Mick Harvey. Morrissey had Johnny Marr. Liam Gallagher had Noel. Glen Hansard had a great band, but he didn\u2019t need a foil.<\/p>\n

His ability as a frontman was linked directly to his ability to pull the people around him into a functioning musical outfit, whoever those people are. It went back, I assume, to his days as a busker. It takes a special kind of person to marshal random people of differing musical ability into vessels for songs. The boundaries between performer and audience become fluid when people are busking (there is, after all, literally no stage).<\/p>\n

And I think that\u2019s why Frames gigs, and the first Frames gig I attended, felt so powerful: the collective magic of music creation at a Frames gig didn\u2019t stop with the band, but spilled out to include those watching. He could produce anthems like Revelate and delicate beauties like Lay Me Down but, more importantly, Hansard let the audience feel like they were part of the band.<\/p>\n

Musician and actor, from north Dublin, was best known for his roles in The Commitments and Once. Editor: Eoin Ronayne <\/p>\n

This is very rare. It was no surprise to me that, as time progressed, he became an international representative of Irish musicality, particularly after he starred in John Carney\u2019s Once, which was a beautiful, low-key statement about Dublin and about music as a communal endeavour. <\/p>\n

He became Ireland\u2019s band leader. Bob Geldof was too shouty. Van Morrison was too grumpy. Bono was too distant and out there in Dalkey. Even in the David Letterman-fronted Apple documentary about U2, A Sort of Homecoming, it\u2019s Hansard who turns up representing the earthy reality of Irish music. It\u2019s Hansard who doesn\u2019t look out of place in a pub session.<\/p>\n

He was always supportive of other musicians. He was very kind to my band the NPB when we supported the Frames at a gig in Limerick back in the early aughts. And he took the piss out of us too, for swapping instruments so much between songs (The Frames then did this when they played, as a joke, to demonstrate how impractical it was). It made us feel like we belonged.<\/p>\n

\"GlenGlen Hansard was, by the time of his death, at the centre of Irish music in a way that bigger artists such as Enya, or U2 or The Script couldn\u2019t ever hope to be. Photograph: Joshua Bright\/The New York Times <\/p>\n

Years later, in 2023, I met him again when we were both performing at a concert for Ukraine in Vicar Street. At the soundcheck, as I performed a song with my wife and sister-in-law, he called \u201cput more jizz into it\u201d from the side of the stage. We did. It was better for it.<\/p>\n

In 2024, I saw him co-ordinate a disparate session of musicians, including Hozier, Damien Rice and folk legend Joan Baez, after a screening of a Baez documentary in the Lighthouse Cinema, Dublin.<\/p>\n

I met him only once when there was no music involved. It was at a dinner at a mutual friend\u2019s house. He was funny and thoughtful, but he wasn\u2019t the centre of things at the time. He spent a lot of that dinner holding his baby. I could see where soft and delicate songs such as Star Star had come from.<\/p>\n

The very last time I met Hansard was right after American actor John C Reilly performed his Mister Romantic vaudeville show last November in Dublin\u2019s Ambassador Theatre. It was after the performance, in the Parnell Mooney pub, across the road. At around 11.30pm, Hansard asked me to get the barman to turn the music off so he could get people to sing unaccompanied and, before I knew it, he was leading a session. <\/p>\n

Reilly sang something mournful. American country musician Sierra Ferrell harmonised on something jaunty and rootsy. Hansard sang Rocky Road to Dublin. It was full-throated and rowdy. He knocked glasses off the table in time to the beat as he went (we picked them up). He sang like he was possessed.<\/p>\n

The singing lasted 15 minutes because the pub was closing, so Hansard convinced us to go up the street to the heaving rock club, Fibber Magees. There, he commandeered the stage from a confused metal band so that he, Reilly and an assortment of musicians could play some songs. I can\u2019t remember what they played but he was, once again, being a band leader.<\/p>\n

Glen Hansard was, by the time of his death, at the centre of Irish music in a way that bigger artists such as Enya, U2 or The Script couldn\u2019t ever hope to be. The Irish music world seemed to orbit him. He represented the throughline from kitchen sessions to concert halls because he was comfortable in both. <\/p>\n

He was, in a way, our national bard and it really felt like he\u2019d be doing that job for a very long time. It was why he was the person urging other musical legends along as they sang at Shane MacGowan\u2019s funeral. His ability to connect music from players to listeners, often blending the two, helped people to mourn. Now I wonder who\u2019s going to do that for him and who is going to do that for us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the 1990s, I wasn\u2019t convinced by The Frames. They felt a bit mainstream. A bit major label.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,109247,61,60,976],"class_list":["post-575059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-glen-hansard","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-weekendreview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}