Bono paid tribute to Glen Hansard, the late singer-songwriter best known for the movie Once and his bands the Frames and Swell Season, in a heartfelt tribute posted to U2’s Instagram on Thursday. The singer called Hansard an “angelic presence,” a “voice
of the streets,” and “the shining star of the Christmas Eve Busk,” the annual charity concert that they and other Irish performers participated in to raise money for those in need. Hansard died at age 56 on Wednesday in a motorcycle crash.
“He really was who you thought he was,” the U2 frontman wrote. “He could never walk by a person living rough without checking they were OK… and more than that, he worked very hard so that less people had to live on the streets in the first place.
“When the crowds got bigger [at the Christmas Eve Busk] 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. 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.”
Bono summed up how he saw Hansard’s legacy by focusing on Hansard’s generosity. “For me, he will always be everywhere I see a coin spinning into an open guitar case,” Bono wrote.
Hansard recorded several albums with the Frames and Swell Season, his duo with his Once costar, Markéta Irglová. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for Once’s “Falling Slowly,” and the production won eight Tonys when it was adapted to the stage. Recognizing his prominence, Hansard began organizing the Christmas Eve Busk in 2010. Bono, the Edge, Sinéad O’Connor, and Shane MacGowan are among the performers who participated in it.
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