By Padraic Halpin
DUBLIN, July 29 (Reuters) – Irish musician Glen Hansard, who won a Best Original Song Oscar in 2008 for the indie film “Once” and was lead singer for rock group The Frames, died in a motorcycle crash at the age of 56 early on Wednesday, his management company said.
Bruce Springsteen, whom Hansard shared a stage with, said he and his band were heartbroken at the death of a “great musician, a good friend and a generous and gracious man.” Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin described him as an artist “who made a significant contribution to Ireland’s cultural landscape.”
The singer-songwriter began busking on the streets of his native Dublin at the age of 13 after dropping out of school, and formed The Frames in 1990. The band’s popularity at home helped make their lead singer a fixture on the Irish music scene for the next four decades.
U2 frontman Bono paid tribute to Hansard in a post on X, describing him as “a smiling rascal if you needed him to be … this most musical and mischievous archangel of Ballymun.”
Bono said Hansard “could never walk by a person living rough without checking they were OK,” and praised his work to help reduce homelessness.
“Voice of the streets. A choir of angels in one man,” Bono said.
‘GIANT IN FIGHT AGAINST HOMELESSNESS’
Hansard released a number of albums under his own name – receiving a Grammy nomination in 2016 – and as part of duo The Swell Season with fellow Oscar winner and “Once” co-star Marketa Irglova.
The pair’s performances in the low-budget movie shot on handheld camcorders where a street musician falls in love with a young Czech immigrant, and their Oscar-winning duet “Falling Slowly,” brought Hansard’s music to a much wider audience.
The film, which featured a number of other songs composed and performed by Hansard and Irglova, was turned into a hit Broadway musical that won eight Tony Awards in 2012.
Accepting his Oscar from presenter John Travolta, a stunned Hansard said: “What are we doing here? This is mad.”
His only acting experience prior to “Once” was as a band member in Alan Parker’s 1991 hit “The Commitments.”
Many tributes also focused on Hansard’s charity work and advocacy. A Christmas Eve busk he started at the depths of Ireland’s financial crisis in 2010 has raised over €2 million for the Dublin Simon Community charity, who described the singer on Wednesday as “a giant in the fight against homelessness.”
The annual gathering in central Dublin has featured Bono, Sinead O’Connor and Shane MacGowan. Hansard led a rendition of The Pogues’ Christmas anthem “Fairytale of New York” at his friend MacGowan’s funeral in 2023.
“With broken hearts we announce the passing of Glen Hansard who passed away, in the early hours of this morning, following a road-traffic accident in Dublin,” ATC Management said in a statement.
Irish police said a man in his 50s had died after a single-vehicle motorcycle collision in the west of Dublin. Emergency services were alerted shortly before 4:30 a.m. (0330 GMT) and the man was pronounced dead a short time after being treated at the scene.
Hansard is survived by his wife, Maire Saaritsa, and their three-year-old son Christy.
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin and Conor Humphries, editing by Sam Tabahriti, Andrew Heavens and Nick Zieminski)
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