Glen Hansard, Who Found His Voice on Dublin's Streets, Reported Dead at 56
The Oscar-winning songwriter, remembered for The Commitments and Once — a single-sourced report the Press has not yet independently confirmed
By Beatrix "Marginalia" Vellum
Before the Academy Award, before the Broadway musical, there was a scruffy guitarist named Outspan Foster, plucking away in the corner of a fictional Dublin soul band. That was Glen Hansard's introduction to most of the world, in 1991's The Commitments — a role that, as it turned out, was closer to autobiography than acting.
Hansard, 56, died last week in a motorcycle crash, according to the BBC. A funeral is being held for him this week.
This account of Glen Hansard's death rests on a single source, the BBC; the Press could not independently confirm the report before publication.
He never really stopped being that Dublin street musician. Long after the film made him briefly famous, he kept busking, kept playing pubs, and eventually turned that unpolished, ragged-voiced honesty into a career that outlasted the novelty of his early fame. It paid off in a way few could have predicted: an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Falling Slowly," written with Markéta Irglová for the 2007 film Once — a movie about two broke musicians falling for each other over a piano, made for almost nothing and beloved by nearly everyone who saw it.
What the BBC's brief report doesn't capture — because no wire item can — is what that song meant to people who don't usually cry at the movies. Once turned into a Tony-winning Broadway musical. Hansard turned into a genuine institution of Irish music, a man whose entire aesthetic was built on refusing to sound polished.
The details of his death remain limited to what has been reported by that single outlet: a motorcycle crash, last week, at 56. We don't yet know more, and won't pretend to. If further, independent confirmation changes any part of this account, we'll correct it.
What we do know is that a lot of people are going to put "Falling Slowly" on tonight, and mean it.
Worth your evening, or worth skipping — I finished it so you'd know.
— Compiled from reporting by the BBC.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."