An Interview with Oscar-winner Glen Hansard

Glen Hansard is the lead singer of The Frames, a band whose double platinum albums have made them one of Ireland’s most successful recent acts. He is also half of the folk rock duo, The Swell Season, alongside Markéta Irglová. The pair won an Oscar when their semi-autobiographical film, Once, was awarded best soundtrack in 2008.

On one of the coldest days of the year in 2012, we interviewed Glen on a bench in Central Park. The interview was conducted by one of my best friends (and long time fan of Glen’s), Eve Wolff.

You can watch his interview here, or read an edited version below:

I actually started busking when I was like thirteen, just going on fourteen. My headmaster said, “I'm going to give you some advice that might not necessarily be smart for us as a school, but you should go play music. Music is clearly what you love.” 

He gave me a challenge. “Go play music on the streets. Go to the lowest rung on the entertainment ladder and start playing your music. And if in a year that hasn't worked out for you, or you're not enjoying it, come back to school.” 

I was very excited about his challenge because I just hated school. Nothing interested me about school. I wasn't taking anything in, I wasn't really getting anywhere. It was just torture, every day, just to sit there.

So I started busking. I didn't go to the part of town where I was from, where my mother used to sell fruit and vegetables on the street where we grew up. I went busking on the other side of the city, which was the slightly posher part of Dublin, the South side, on Grafton Street. 

I ended up playing with guys that were my age and still in school, obviously. I had the privilege of not being in school anymore, so I was kind of a gypsy to them that went busking on the street every day.

I met a whole bunch of poets and writers, and I found myself falling in with the kind of people who liked the same music I liked. I was into Dylan, I was into Leonard Cohen, and nobody in my neighbourhood really liked that music.

It was my education. I was learning Dylan songs that were out of my range, but eventually I'd get them. I managed to sing the version of Just Like a Woman where Dylan throws his voice right across the whole stadium. If you can build your voice muscle up enough to throw your voice and create an echo off the building opposite, something really magical happens. 

I began to learn not only about songwriting, but about song building; how a song should be constructed in order to work in front of the public. I realised what songs worked and which songs fell on fallow soil.

The great thing about busking in the street is it's the great leveller, a completely even playing field. It's not lit, there are no effects, no one's there to hear you. What's wonderful about that is there’s no ego in it, you just have to stand there.

Later on, you begin to get into the poetics of it and expressing yourself and finding a deeper way of speaking about what it is to be alive. But, at the beginning, it's just pure, "Hi, am I any good? What do you think?” You know, it's just validation.

For me, it was always about that same thing that's in all lead singers — that insecurity, that needing a validation, that “How do I connect?” — because that's the bottom line, I think, why most people play music.

If you're good, if you’re feeling good as soon as you arrive, then people might stop and they might listen to you for five minutes, and they can throw a coin, but they don't have to throw a coin in. Giving you a coin is validation. The coin has a lot of energy, a lot of power. Not only is the energy literal, in that it is money, but it is giving you a sense of achievement. 

I made very little money for the first few months I played, like very, very little. As I started to get a little bit better, I started making a bit of money, but it was never about money for me. For some buskers it's about making a living, but for me it was all about the education, playing with other people, and basically going a different path: music.

If you stand still on any street for long enough, in any city in the world, you'll see the whole city. They'll all pass. So if you stand on the most commercial street in any city in the world, you get to know it pretty fast.

You begin to see the patterns quickly. If you're busking well, a small crowd gathers. And then what happens is this kind of micro-economy starts. As a busker, you begin to recognise the pickpockets, and you recognise the call girls. We understood who the drug squad was, how sketchy they looked. We knew who the junkies were. We knew who the shoplifters were, we'd see them scoping out shops.

You actually become kind of a valuable part of the street. You become this person that people trust. People would even leave their children with you! "I'm just going into the shop here”, and park a pram next to you. The Hari Krishnas would come along and leave all of their books with you, and all their sweets, and when they go off and do their “hari hari” up and down the street. You’re that kind of station of stillness.

In Ireland, it comes under the Vagrancy Act, which is essentially begging, and begging is illegal. You are essentially begging, you know, but you're doing it entertainingly, you're playing a bit of music and people can pass by.

Those laws usually come from the commercial aspect on the street. It was always the commercial people that were the greatest obstacle, because they've got the police's ear, of course, and the police will come along and just move you on.

The police don't really want to arrest you. I mean, we've been arrested a couple of times, but it was mostly because we resisted the police. You know, we wouldn't say, “Fuck off,” necessarily, we'd move on, and then they’d move us again, and we’d move on a bit, and they’d move us again, and then eventually you're just like, fuck this, and you disobey, and you go back to where you were in the beginning.

And the next thing you're thrown in the back of a police car and you spend eight hours at the station, and it's boring, but it's a dance everybody has to do. The police have to do this because they have to be seen to. That's happened a few times, and it's never been pleasant, or that glamorous or interesting. Thankfully, we've never gone to court for it.

The busking background, the busking education, sits at the core of everything I've done since. That attitude of, “at any point I can turn off the speakers, turn off all the lights, and still play my music.” It’s this wonderful thing you can fall back on, which is that I can still play without any of the props. That would be the thing that I would say busking has really given me. 

Going back to your chops, all that experience as a street musician kicks straight back in [when you’re on stage]. It’s actually not that different to the street. Of course, everyone's in chairs and you've been paid before you start, but essentially it's exactly the same thing: What have you got? Have you got something that's going to inspire? Have you got something that's going to really resonate with anyone?

The job of the artist is to invent the world, in a way. It's to create a world, a narrative for the greater, bigger picture, to do with the overall evolving of the human spirit. Otherwise it's just a selfish act, it's self-promotion, it's kind of just porn. You're just selling. It’s just about paying your bills and about being a dick and just kind of sucking on the energy you've been given, rather than adding to it.

And I would hope, you know, touch wood, I would hope that I remain mindful of the gift rather than the, what's the word, entitlement of what it is to be a singer. Because, you know, the gift has to be about the people, about bringing us forward. Otherwise it becomes what you see a lot of: personal gain. If it becomes about me and my wants, then I failed.

They often say that at a certain age, people lose their shit and stop being creative. And that's probably biologically true of all of us. But, I think people forget they're here to do something bigger than just singing songs. You're here to be a friend, to be a brother, to be a son, to be a person who's about light.

And if you're not about light, then fuck you.