Songs For Life

It was late August 2010 and the band he shared with now former lover Marketa Irglova, The Swell Season, were playing in Saratoga, California. Singer-songwriter Glen Hansard takes up the story.

“It was an outdoor show, an amphitheatre, and this young man ran the length of the roof and jumped, landed right next to me. Could have killed me, could have killed anyone in the band. It was a terrible, terrible thing. Four thousand watched the young man die, instantly. Of course, when it happened, people initially laughed. They thought it was somehow part of the show – they had no idea.” The dead man was 32-year-old Michael Edward Pickels. His girlfriend had been a fan; they'd split up and he'd decided to take his life.

“The next day, I got a phone call in the middle of the afternoon. We were all just kind of zombies, hadn't slept. 'Hello, this is Eddie Vedder. Glen, I just wanna check in on ya, that you're okay. We heard about what happened and I don't know if you know but in Roskilde, nine people died at one of our shows [June 30, 2000] and I kind of know what this feels like a bit and I'd just like to sit with you and talk if you're up to it'. And we spoke for maybe an hour, mostly about what he had gone through, and then he said, 'If you don't mind, I'll call you again, if you're open to it'.”

Hansard had never previously spoken to the Pearl Jam singer, but over the next three days, he and Vedder spoke again, for an hour each call, and, having convinced him not to cancel the tour gave Hansard his number – “If you're in Seattle…”

“I went over to the studio and sat with him for few hours,” Hansard continues. “We ordered food and we drank tea and then he said, 'Do ya feel like singin' a song with me?' And I was like, 'Wow, I'd love that so much'. He said, 'There's this Everly Brothers tune, Sleepless Nights. If you think about what happened with you a few months ago, and I think about what happened to me a few years ago, and we sing it from that perspective, it might help us both'. So we did.”

Headlining his own shows after touring with Vedder, Hansard is showcasing from his own debut solo album, Rhythm & Repose. He'll also play tracks from his new EP, Drive All Night, the Springsteen-penned title track of which features guest vocals by Vedder.

“Which came about because of another terribly sad thing,” he admits, the record dedicated to the late E Street Band saxaphonist, Clarence Clemons. “Myself and Eddie and Jake [Clemons' son] happened to be together at the time and just thought it would be a good idea to mark [his passing] somehow. We hadn't really decided whose name it would come out under – it was just something that we should do.”