Season in the sun?

Glen Hansard is ready to talk. Never mind that he's just completed a two-hour public interview at the Hot Press Music Show in the RDS. There's still plenty left unsaid, subjects that came up during the Q&A which seemed ripe for exploration, but not in front of a crowd. Now, an hour later in a Ballsbridge hotel, he's eager to pursue those loose ends.

It’s been over a year and a half since Glen and Marketa Irglova won the Oscar for ‘Falling Slowly’ from John Carney’s film Once. The Swell Season and the Frames can now play to audiences it would’ve taken them another decade to reach. Pretty much anybody in the Business will return his management’s calls. He’s had dinner with Leonard Cohen in Prague and long conversations with Bruce Springsteen, who counseled him on business strategy and voice maintenance tricks such as keeping a humidifier in the dressing room. The Oscar
campaign trail got him invited to dinner at Ringo’s and Barbra Streisand’s and the Grammy Awards. The highest accolade of all: he and Marketa got Simpson-ised. But since that surreal February night in 2008, Hansard has had to accept the psychological ramifications of his own success. He’s also had to figure out how to integrate The Swell Season and The Frames into a live revue that could capitalise on the Oscar success without compromising the collective’s integrity. Plus, while they were in the midst of this wild trip, his relationship with Marketa Irglova, so integral to the Once narrative, came to an end. Now, with the second Swell Season album Strict Joy about to be released, Hansard’s willing to try and make sense of it all with a tape running. Our conversation spans three hours over dinner, after which Hansard takes off into the night, guitar slung over his back, to hit the town with Damien Rice and David Arnold, just like he might have done 20 years ago. Nothing’s changed. Everything’s changed. Life is strange.

Peter Murphy: You’re obviously still making sense of the events of the past two years. You’ve had various degrees of success over the course of your career, but the Oscar was the culmination of 20 years of struggle. Now you’ve been given your license to practise... What are you gonna do?
Glen Hansard: There you go, you’ve been looking for affirmation and confirmation all your life, there it is, now shut up and get back to work. It must be strange knowing you're now on the radar of every musical hero you've ever had. I remember when Bono accepted the Best Album Award at the IRMAs or the Meteors or whatever they were called that year, he said, “For the first time in our career we’re beginning to get afraid when we hear the nominees getting called out. I want to say that we know who The Frames and Snow Patrol are, and they’re great.” And I remember how dignified suddenly everything felt because he had said that. because I’ve given him so much shit in the press, I’ve been down on U2 for years because they don’t recognise Irish bands, they’re not part of a system, they don’t muck in with the rest of us, they operate on some mad other level, but I realised when he said that, that was all I wanted. I just wanted recognition, I just wanted Van Morrison or someone who’s a giant from my own country to say, “Yeah, I’ve heard of him.”

It’s a classic Oedipal stuff, the son seeking the approval of the father figure.
Big time. And it’s funny, only through having spent a bit of time now with Bono... There’s an unapologetic ambition in U2 that I have always reacted against, but getting a little closer to it, I kinda respect it now. It’s straight up. This guy’s not lying to anyone. But I’ll tell you what’s really Irish is this kind of semi-indie rock thing of apologising your way into people’s knickers. Using humility as a sword. And before you know it the guy’s sleeping with your girlfriend. I hate it. I’d much prefer the Bono approach: come straight through the front door, dressed up to the nines, and don’t apologise for your energy.

You mentioned earlier today that after the Oscar win, you just ploughed on working. You didn’t take a week off to sip champagne and reflect on what had happened. Looking back, that may not have been the healthiest move. Well, the Native Americans have this belief that when you get off an airplane you should spend an hour or two in the airport just waiting for your soul to catch up, 'because your soul doesn’t travel as fast as your body, and that it’s important to just take stock. And we had been through such a whirlwind. It was a total Bill Hicks thing of, “Just go with it, enjoy it, it’ll be over before you know it.” So we were just going through this crazy few months, and it was all building to this one night, the Oscars themselves... There’s a
whole book in that. I can’t describe the feeling of that night. Mar’s a very realistic person, and she got asked somewhere along the line, “Do you remember the happiest day of your life?” And she said, “The night we won the Oscar.” And I remember thinking, “Jesus, how honest.” Her Oscar speech was a complete testament to her. Through the whole thing, all the interviews, she was completely herself. It’s been 20 months and it seems like you’ve only just come to terms with it. I’m still talking about the Oscar because the Oscar is a fucking big deal, but I hope that at some point I can move on. I didn’t speak to anybody about it apart from going on the Ryan Tubridy Show. I was embarrassed, that’s why, I mean in the States we were on the cover of Billboard. It was big over there, and I was so embarrassed by it because I didn’t own it yet, it wasn’t mine, I wasn’t in my skin with it. When you’re not sure of yourself and your success, you’ll find shadows in everything, and everyone will confirm you’re a fake over and over. And there’s a very thin line between waking up in the morning and going, “I don’t deserve this, one day I’ll be found out, they’ll all suss me out and figure out I’m a total sham and I’ll get struck off the list of people who are any good,” and waking up and going,
“I’m good at what I do at least. I make good work, I live a good life, I’m a decent human being, I haven’t killed anyone...” I always wanted to be like Springsteen, I always wanted to be like Dylan, I always wanted to be a working, playing musician. So that night I guess was the happiest moment of my life, it was where every time I went busking, everything I’d ever looked toward, everything I’d ever tried to achieve, everything I’d ever dreamed of and wanted for The Frames (came through) in one moment. You couldn’t have scripted it. And you know what was going through my mind? I was just proud to be Irish. Something that I didn’t think would cross my mind in a moment like that. All I could think of was, “I’m Irish.” What is that? What is it in a person that has this incredible moment that’s about them, and what you’re thinking about is your nationality. Sociologists reckon Ireland has undergone so many centuries of collective trauma, we’re like damaged children constantly looking for affirmation. Maybe this is why we have such an immature response to criticism. We don’t like it when one
of our own badmouths the country, and we can’t stand it when someone from outside does. Hence the reaction to your interview with Roisin Ingle in the Irish Times a couple of years ago.
I got people coming up to me calling me an asshole after that. The point being, if an American artist or athlete wins an award, they go, “I worked hard for this, I deserve it.” Here we assume some sort of collective ownership or responsibility. Right. Funny, I’m not proud of it. But I do have a big working class thing where I’m from a place that doesn’t get heard, and as a result I want to be heard. I was always a Northsider, but that night I became an Irishman, which is very interesting. It was much bigger than the Ballymun thing, it was the country. It felt like kicking the winning goal at the World Cup. I felt, psychologically, the whole country held
me up. It was huge. But I’ll be honest with you, when the violence and shock of the amazing thing that happened passed, I found myself struggling with something and I didn’t know what it was. I cried a couple of times. There was something deeply sad going on. I was moved, and I couldn’t figure it out. If you’ll forgive the psychobabble, maybe you were saying goodbye to the bloke you used to be. If a person’s marriage fails, they have to mourn not just the marriage, but the part of their identity that was a husband or a wife. If you quit music, you have to mourn the part of yourself that was a musician. And if you achieve some measure of
success, you can no longer define yourself as an underdog. That experience required me to evolve at a speed that was breakneck, because I was having to go out and talk to the world about how great it felt while I was devastated and confused inside. So there’s a weird difference between when the cameras are clicking and you’re the guy who might win, and the
cameras are clicking when you’re the guy who has won. Because the guy who has won is a deer in the headlights. I hadn’t coped with it, hadn’t figured it out. I’d been struggling in a band for 18 years at the time, all I knew was struggle. Bang! Success! What do you do? You struggle. I didn’t know how to handle it. “Did we sell out? What the fuck?” Questions, questions. “Calm the fuck down.” But I’d no way to voice this because there was nobody except Mar that understood. And she’s so much younger, but she can handle me, she’s fuckin’ smart, she’s so grounded. But I couldn’t relate to my band, they didn’t know how to deal with me. It’s almost like, “See ya!” There’s a kind of divide between you and everyone, my mother, everyone, nobody understood, me least of all. It was the best thing that could have possibly
happened in my life and career and and I’m going, “Why am I so sad? What the fuck is going on? I’m freaked out.” It’s that strange relationship between ecstasy and melancholy. Yeah, and I remember when Mic (Christopher) died, instead of mourning like I should’ve, I put myself into a schedule of work that was just fucking heartbreaking, 'because that’s how I dealt with Mic’s death. I mean, my best friend died, and instead of me collapsing and going through the stuff you go through, it was: “Book me more gigs, book me more gigs.” Moving around, playing everywhere and being angry and drinking more and damaging myself because I wasn’t going to face it, because I was terrified of what was going to happen when I stopped. And I came to a place last year where I said to (Frames/Swell Season managers) Claire and Howard,
“I need a year off really bad,” and they were like, “Okay, you can have a year off, but this is what it means, here’s all this work – do we cancel it?” And I said, “Okay, there’s nothing booked for June, July and August next year, can I please have those three months off?” "Absolutely.” But I was terrified of the same thing, having nothing to do, and they were like, “Dude, we’re not cancelling this three months for you to go off and do lots of solo gigs on your own. If you’re gonna take some time off, you fuckin’ take it off.” How did you spend that time?
I’ve always been interested in carpentry, so I went to a DIY and hardware store in town and bought good tools and loads of wood, came home and thought, “Right, I’d like to make a table for my mother.” I went online and figured out how to do a mortis and tenon joint. There’s something so grounding about taking a piece of wood, cutting it with a saw, chipping a hole out of it and sticking another piece of wood into it. It’s like songwriting in that if you did
a good job, it’s going to outlive you and your family and probably a generation after. The table in my house is a couple of hundred years old, a well-crafted piece of furniture, which is what a song at its best is, something that you get to use. A song like ‘Bird On A Wire’ is not gonna let you down. It’s a great song, it’s built well. And how did this time off affect your state of mind?
Something happened in that first few days. I was on my own in my house, music was the last thing on my mind, and I got this huge sense of goodwill and happiness and joy, and I realised, “It’s finally hit me. The good stuff”. Because sometimes you go through an experience and you miss it because you’re too busy, and you should enjoy it. Like we were saying today, when you work and work, the day your ship comes in, that great moment might just be another day at the office, you might just miss it because you’re too busy. And I did – even though I went through it and had an amazing time. But that month off, there were waves of just good stuff, and then waves of grief, because there was other stuff coming up that I hadn’t dealt with. And that’s what happens when you slow down, suddenly all your feelings are allowed to happen. And you deepen.
When you and Marketa’s relationship ended, you issued a press release. The reason, I presume, was because that story had become part of the narrative of the film’s success, therefore it had to be addressed publicly.
That was the toughest bit of this chapter, only because it just seemed natural. We were doing an interview in New York and somebody said, ”God, you’re so great on screen, does it continue off?” and I looked at Mar and we were just like, “Yeah, we’re kind of together and figuring out what it is”. And we had no idea that would become a story as such. In America certainly it became a big deal: “The couple are together,” and suddenly it was like, “Oh god, this is the sequel. We’re in it”. I had no idea... Because my personal life is my fuckin’ business, but in that particular instance, it was part of the whole thing of wanting to be straight with people. We were in a band together, we were traveling the country, we were in very intense quarters, and it happened. And it was beautiful, I was in love with her. We were in love. It might come across that we tried it out – it wasn’t, it was intense and beautiful, and still is, we’re still very passionate people with each other.
But when it ended, it was like, “Okay, well, how do we deal with this, because Mar’s gonna meet someone else, and I’m gonna meet someone else, and we’re gonna be seen with that someone else and it’s gonna become bullshit, so we just have to say it now, we’re not together.” And I didn’t want to do it, I was like, “This is my fuckin’ life, I don’t want people in my shit.” But life isn’t that simple.
One of the interesting things about Once was it portrayed not just a romance, but the weird telekinetic connection between musicians, particularly the now famous scene where you’re teaching ‘Falling Slowly’ to Marketa. The only equivalent I can think of is the scene in Milos Forman’s Amadeus where Mozart is too sick to write, so he’s dictating to Salieri, who’s at once burning with jealousy and in awe of the man’s genius.
He’s going, “Wait, wait, wait! Too fast! Bassoons! Bassoons!” Brilliant, yeah. Work. The actual work. (Director) John (Carney)’s fascinated with that. He kept going on about this idea that, “I want to see you make the song, that’s the area I want to really follow. And when you sit down and play it together in the shop I’m going to be filming, but I want you to be teaching her the song like you did the first time you played it.” We did two or three takes and it went by in a moment, and later John was like, “That’s the pivotal scene in the film.”
You and Marketa obviously have a very natural musical chemistry.
Mar is an incredibly gifted human being, and when she sits at a guitar or a piano, stuff just comes out. Being her friend has really opened my mind to how almost clumsy I can be, or how bumbling I can be around art. She’ll say something to me like, “That line there, did that happen to you?” This is one of the first things she ever said to me, she was 13. And I was like, “Well not literally, but it happened emotionally...” “So it didn’t happen to you? Then why are you singing it? You shouldn’t be putting that in your song. That’s not the truth.” And as a songwriter I’d kind of forgotten you’ve to be careful with that shit. Often a good song is the truth dressed in language that’s pleasurable or whatever. And she was just like, “But that’s not good enough.” And it blows me away, 'because all of her songs are literally what happened to her. As a lyricist you become Metaphor Man... I find it amazing that she just doesn’t have that muscle. ‘I Have Loved You Wrong’ was a song she sang over the phone to me one night and it blew my mind and I was like, “Please record that, make sure you document it.”
How has your working relationship changed now you’re no longer a couple?
Now we’re not under the same roof, there’s so many songs that she’s writing that just aren’t getting recorded... I wanted her to put more songs on this record. She doesn’t want to. She’s all about support, she’s like, “Let me get behind your music, let me be part of that.” And really what made the original Swell Season record such a beautiful thing for me was that this girl was all about framing my songs. The band framed the songs beautifully, but because it’s the lads there’s a touch more, “Here’s what I’ll do to it,” whereas Mar is almost completely selfless. She’ll play the simplest piano melody, it won’t have any ego in it, and it just lights the song perfectly, and she’ll sing a harmony that is so devastatingly correct.”
Her presence certainly seems to temper you.
Believe me, Mar has a big Amazonian thing about her as well. I was complaining about how much press we were doing this time and Mar got on the phone: “You’ve just made a record, grow the fuck up.” And when I was struggling with the whole thing with the Oscar she said, “Glen, if you flirt with success, don’t be surprised if it offers you sex.” Nail on the head. If I could talk about myself and Marketa’s relationship and do it any justice, what I’ll say is, I’ve had to – as a man who is nearly 20 years her senior – evolve so quickly around that girl, because she is so evolved. And she’s been a gigantic influence in my personal life and my career. None of this stuff would’ve happened had I not met Mar, in my opinion. She gave me the confidence to do everything that’s happened in the last couple of years. The last 20 years sit firmly on my own and Colm and Joe and The Frames’ shoulders, because we’re the long-termers in that band, but Marketa shifted everything, she put me in the head-space where I could have success. Colm would often say to me, “Glen, I love ya, but you’ll always snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, because you’re afraid of winning.” I could talk about Mar all day with you, we could turn this whole thing into her really, because she deserves it. Success landed on Mar’s shoulders because it just likes her. The muse lands on her shoulder because it just likes her.”

Five days later we meet with Marketa in the Library Bar in Dublin. She’s soft-spoken and slight, but radiates a sense of sureness and self-possession rare in a 21-year-old. Born in Valašské Mezirící in the Czech Republic, Irglova’s parents were music lovers. Her father was vice-mayor of their hometown, a concert promoter, independent publisher and journalist.
“My dad is one of those guys who doesn’t necessarily need to be a musician, he’s just an appreciator of music and musicians,” she says. “I think in the past he would have been a patron. He’s kind of been that in a way for Glen. He always had a huge music collection, even during the Communist regime in Czech, when people weren’t allowed access to western music. He would travel to Germany and sneak records through the border. He could’ve been put in prison if the records were found in his bag. Same with books. So although they’re not musicians, they’ve provided a house for me to grow up in that was very artistic.”
Glen told me that when you were 13 you interrogated him about whether or not a line in one of his songs was true. You said if it wasn’t, then it shouldn’t be in there.
I remember that. Before the band came over to Czech to play the gigs, my dad gave me the records and at one point I noticed a lot of the songs were about breaking up with people.
Any record in particular?
All of them! They were about being heartbroken or betrayed or abandoned or rejected, and at different times a feeling of being at peace with the pain, but always the underlying theme was people walking away, or walking away from people. And I thought, “Jesus, he must’ve gone through something intense.” And then when I got to know him he would be writing new songs in the house when he was hanging out, and I’d listen to the lyrics and notice that again he was singing about breaking up and being heartbroken. And I was going, “Jesus, you’re not breaking up with people all the time, why are you singing about this?” 'Because he seemed like such a happy guy, real fun to be around. And then he’d sit down with his guitar and all this sad stuff would pour out of him. And as we got closer I felt it was okay for me to ask him, “Are you actually unhappy? Are you okay?” I was concerned for him! (laughs) I wasn’t sure whether he was actually unhappy and just putting on a brave face with everyone, or whether he was too comfortable in the pattern of singing about being heartbroken.
Half in love with easeful death, as Keats put it.
It seemed fascinating to me, so I did confront him at one point. I said, “Are you actually heartbroken? Because if you’re not you’ve gotta stop singing about it! (laughs) You gotta move on, man! Put it behind you. Jesus!” It just flew out of my mouth! And I think for a split second he was offended and then he just laughed and said, “You know, you’re right.” And I think that was the beginning of any real kind of friendship between us.
I don’t think it’s had much effect on his songwriting!
I think it stayed with him though, y’know? He’s grown more aware of what he’s singing nowadays, what he’s putting out into the world. I mean, in fairness, it took years! (laughs) But he’s getting there now. I heard him saying the other day that he’s definitely more aware of what it is he’s trying to say. Which is a good thing, I think.
The cliche is that creative types tend to generate chaos in their private lives, and that it’s easier to write melancholy or anger than joy or contentment.
Well, I think it takes real guts to be happy in your life. If you take on this role of being a victim and the world is cruel to me and I keep getting hurt and people don’t treat me nicely, then the self-pity gets you off the hook in that you don’t have to pursue what it is that’s going to make you happy, acting with truth and integrity and getting your shit together and walking through your life with ease. It’s so much easier to just be sad and get comfortable in that state.
Being put-upon is a passive state. To be happy requires action.
Suffering is part of life no matter what way you look at it. You are gonna suffer, and that’s okay, that’s how you learn and grow as a person. It almost deepens your capacity for joy, and once you go through life knowing that, it takes the pressure off. Once you let the sadness pass through you, it’s not a problem anymore. But like any habit or pattern, it’s how to break it. Everybody rejects and fears change 'because it makes you step out of your comfort zone and explore an area you’re not familiar with, and that’s daunting. Real beauty can arise from expressing that sorrow and carving and creating something out of it. But sometimes you just forget to get out of it. If you do sit down and figure out what you expect from the world, then the world can conspire in a way. But I guess people just find it easier to write about stuff that’s sad. Even for myself, my own songs do have a sadness about them. I don’t think I’ve ever written a song that was about celebrating life and being happy.
Well, even ‘Amazing Grace’ sounds like a lament.
Also, I don’t know how many people can actually say they love themselves. I think some of us feel unworthy of being happy sometimes. And unless you love yourself, you can’t love anyone else. I don’t think it’s possible. So maybe we go through life thinking we don’t deserve to be happy, for whatever weird and strange reason.
You’re the first Czech citizen to win an Oscar. Given how supportive they’ve been, your parents must be very proud.
They are very, very proud. When I began playing gigs with Glen I was missing school to go and be in a studio in France or play a gig in Ireland. I’m so grateful to them. Ever since I’ve moved here and had a bit of distance and space and a bit of perspective, I can actually look at my parents now and see two people, and realise that I think they’re both really cool.
Did they worry about you during the madness of the Oscar campaign?
I think they kind of felt I was out of their reach at one point, and it wasn’t up to them to direct things or make sure that I was alright. At one point they just had to trust that I was okay in the world and wise enough and able to take care of myself, and have a good head on my shoulders. And eventually they went, “You know best.” At one point they realised they can’t know better at experiences they’ve never gone through. Nobody’s gonna learn anything just by other people lecturing you. And I think it’s really hard for parents to watch their kids get hurt through their own doings and not want to step in and interfere. But they’ve done well. I don’t think they would have let me go off into the world with a stranger. They knew Glen was a great guy and that I would be safe with him, they trusted that he would take care of me where they couldn’t, and therefore they were fine with me traveling. My dad and Glen were always really close and always got on really well, and they just accepted him as a member of the family.
How hard was it to continue the working relationship after the romantic one had ended?
I think the hardest thing is just getting used to the person not being around and not being able to hang out with them anymore. Or in our case, getting used to a different way of being with the person. New boundaries, that was the hardest thing about it for me personally, getting my head around respecting the boundaries and breaking whatever patterns we had created. We couldn’t continue acting like a couple. That was the hardest part. But after that... We were friends before we were a couple, so we had years of being close behind us. There’s a deep connection between us, it’s always been there, this quiet sense of knowing, of recognising something familiar in the person, them being part of you instantly, them being your family before you’ve met them.
You only get that a couple of times in your life.
How could you abandon something like that? It’s definitely a bond to be cherished and respected. I have so much respect for Glen, and I know that we will always be friends. Even if we never saw each other again, there would always be that love between us that we’d be connected through, whether we see each other or not.
All the same, the transition from lovers to friends is a tricky one to negotiate.
It’s a really important part of the process for two people to not see each other for a while so you can see the person again for who they are, without the hurt, and are actually able to clear out any baggage. But I think we’ve kind of done that in each other’s company, in a strange way. I kind of have anyway, I don’t know about Glen. At one point I realised that if you’re gonna have anybody in your life and claim to love them, you have to accept them 100% for who they are, and if there’s any part of you that wants to change them, Jesus, you might as well give up. I do love Glen you know, I will always love him, but I’ve got to love him for the person he is, and once I realised that everything else just fell away. All possible complication or confusion or hurt or anything else all falls away, and what you’re left with is a connection with a person.
In a way that sort of Platonic love is kinder because’ it’s not weighed down with investment or expectation.
I think Glen is always going to play a part in my life and we’re going to continue learning from each other and growing alongside each other, even if our paths go in different directions. I really do see him like a teacher, like I see everybody in my life as a teacher. The biggest teachers in your life are in a way the ones that hurt you, if you think about it, through challenging you. You’re forced to grow and get over your pain. I love the idea of walking through life being able to take the punches with humility and grace: “I’m gonna learn whatever there is to learn in this and move on.”

Strict Joy is out now on Plateau Records