Outside of the already crushing ordeal of seeing his dad’s physical decline, Hozier has also acknowledged that serious financial turmoil arose as a result of his father being unable to work. That added yet another layer of difficulty to his childhood in Bray, Ireland.
Speaking of the period when his dad was unable to re-enter the workforce, he told The Standard, “It was a tough old time — no money. Mum kept us together in a big way.” He doubled down on that in a Forbes piece around the same time. Asked if he grew up poor or wealthy, the singer responded, “Family struggled from childhood after my father became ill.” Granted, he did point out that even with the economic hardship they faced, his parents did everything they could to ensure he and his brother were well-educated. “Parents invested everything into education,” he told the outlet.
Thankfully, at some point, John Byrne was able to try an alternative drug to morphine, and as a result, he was able to start walking and working again. Though he’d worked at a bank at the time of the surgery, he went back to his own musical roots (he’d previously been a drummer), as a sound engineer.
