(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Fri 26 December 2025 8:00, UK
In the 1990s, Keanu Reeves didn’t feel like your average person, the kind who you could call up, invite around for a pack of beers and shoot the shit with, but instead, was the Hollywood poster boy of elaborate story lines, diffusing bus-strapped bombs, riding 50ft waves and bending space and time.
But then the millennium turned, and the smouldering fell away, wherein Reeves picked creative and personal projects that revealed his real self to the world and, in a complete role reversal, became the cool uncle of pop culture. Often found in a simple pair of jeans and a T-shirt, with a wise grin sat on top, he was the guy you could finally shoot the shit with, rip open a six-pack and start talking about all things music.
His open admission of love for the bass guitar was largely the gateway for this, and in recent years, he threw himself wholeheartedly into his band Dogstar. Sitting in the rhythm section for his grunge rock band, Reeves suddenly became one of us and the more we learned about his influences, the more we grew to love this new version.
“I always wanted to play bass. I guess one of the things I love about this plank of wood is the physicality. The tones,” he said, with the sort of excitement we’ve come to expect from the new Reeves, “I love when I listen to it; I vibrate with the bass tones of it. It spoke to me.”
While he admitted that his teenage years were largely spent playing bass alone in his bedroom, hashing together scale ideas and rudimentary bass lines, his world was opened up during the heights of his Hollywood fame. While shooting My Own Private Idaho, Reeves got some much-needed tips from the iconic bass player Flea, who also starred in the film, such that, in between takes, the former would ask for brief lessons from the Californian as the pair would utilise the on-set equipment.
He explained, “There was a house, and there was amps and instruments and stuff like that, and I was like, ‘Hey, Flea. Could you give me a lesson?’ And he was like, ‘Sure, man!’ He was like [plays notes]. I was like, ‘All right’. And he’s like, ‘Just feel it, man’.”
But while first hand tips from Flea undoubtedly went a long way towards shaping Reeves the bassist, it was the work of two English bands and one bassist in particular, that lit his fire of inspiration.
“My primary influence was Peter Hook. When I heard Joy Division for the first time, it was like [mind blown] and then hearing The Cure after that, where you could repeat almost in a round, have the guitar move around that, have the vocal move around that. That was kind of like how a bass line could sit, that blew my mind.”
A humble bassist and Joy Division superfan didn’t fit the superstar mould that Hollywood executives had set out for him, which is maybe why in recent years we’ve seen a lot less of Reeves strapped to the side of vehicles, diffusing bombs, but we do have a string of records that showcase a different side to one of cinema’s much-loved stars.
Related Topics