Glen Hansard, who died in a motorbike crash on Wednesday, travelled an unusual journey to stardom.

The death of Oscar-winning singer-songwriter Glen Hansard in a motorbike crash in Dublin on Wednesday has been met with widespread shock and grief. The 56 year old, who shot to prominence when he was cast in 1991 musical comedy film The Commitments, was long-time frontman of rock band The Frames. From Bono to Bruce Springsteen, tributes have poured in from around the world with friends and fans sharing stories about his life and the impact he made. His was a life in music, from first picking up a guitar as a teenager right up until the final hours of his life, when he was performing in a traditional music session, external. In an interview with Irish broadcaster RTÉ in February, external, Hansard said he learned to play the guitar as a child after one was left in his home by an uncle who had gone to prison. Ballymun was one of Dublin's most economically deprived areas in the 1980s, hit hard by unemployment, crime and drug addiction. "I was on a kind of a trajectory of getting into the drugs - only gently - getting heavy into drinking, very young, beginning to kind of break into things, just getting into that slightly dodgy spot," Hansard said. But a Bob Dylan cassette, given to him by his girlfriend's brother, changed the path of his life.