Canadian actor Keanu Reeves has opened up about his time as a rockstar, recalling the time his band trolled an audience at a metal festival with a Grateful Dead cover.
Ask most fans of acclaimed actor Keanu Reeves, and they’ll likely neglect to tell you about his time a semi-famous musician.
No, we’re not talking about his career as a member of Wyld Stallyns, rather we’re looking back to the ’90s to Reeves role as a founding member of grunge rockers Dogstar.
Releasing two albums and an EP during their career, they tried valiantly to downplay Reeves’ status as a Hollywood actor. In fact, a 1995 interview with triple j presenter Sarah McDonald was a perfect example of this, banning any questions not related explicitly to the band itself.
Now, in a new interview with GQ in support of his upcoming John Wick film, Keanu Reeves has opened up about his time in the band.
Check out Dogstar’s ‘Blown Away’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F433mVoeTBg
While the music that the group was actually not terrible, Reeves notes that he felt bad for the other members of Dogstar, and how they were forced to be remembered as members of ‘Keanu Reeves’ band’. “I guess it would have helped if our band was better,” Reeves noted.
As he continued, Reeves recalled one memory of performing at a music festival back in July of 1992. With the likes of Cannibal Corpse, Deicide, Obituary, and Agnostic Front on the bill, Dogstar attempted to mess with their audience to deal with the backlash they received.
“We played Milwaukee Metal Fest. Got killed,” he explained. “I think we played close to Murphy’s Law. Imagine. So we played a Grateful Dead cover, at Milwaukee Metal Fest.”
“We were like, ‘They hate us. What are we doing here? What can we do? Let’s do the Grateful Dead cover,’” Reeves recalled. “They were just like, ‘Fuck you, you suck’. I had the biggest grin on my face, man.”
While it seems as though Keanu Reeves might have hung up his bass guitar quite a while ago, he cites groups like Canadian punks Metz as a current favourite.
“Once in a while, I have the moments,” he explained, “Where you drink the whiskey and you get the records out and you start doing the DJ thing until four in the morning.”
While Dogstar might have helped to kickstart the careers of bands like Weezer and Rancid by featuring them as supports, it doesn’t seem like we’ll be getting a reunion any time soon. By the sound of it though, Keanu Reeves is completely fine with that.
Check out Dogstar’s ‘Corner Store’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceTauvhuTq4
