Glen Hansard’s music moved people. The beloved Irish troubadour who died in an early morning motorcycle crash on Wednesday (July 29) in Dublin inspired fans and fellow musicians with his passion, warmth and an open-hearted nature that unleashed an outpouring of emotion, fond memories and the kind of poetic memorials that would have been right at home in the lyrics to one of Hansard’s songs.
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The tributes continue to pour in for the singer who led the beloved Irish band The Frames, none more packed with intensity and poetry than a note from fellow Irish bard Bono of U2. “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,” the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer wrote on X.
Bono shouted out former busker Hansard’s lifelong work advocating for the homeless in his country, calling him the “shining star” of the annual Christmas Eve busk Hansard would lead outside Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre to raise funds for homeless advocacy group Dublin Simon Community. “Sometimes the only one reminding the rest of us that Christmas began with a refugee born in a manger, which is hardly a step from living on the street,” Bono said.
