When Keanu Reeves opened for David Bowie: “Is this bullshit?”
Perhaps it’s because he had such success in Hollywood during his 20s, but it’s strange to think of Keanu Reeves as a 61-year-old man, which is exactly what he is.
Maybe it’s also because for the last decade we’ve seen him absolutely decimating packs of criminal hard men while dressed sharply in a suit, thanks to the John Wick movies. Either way, Reeves appears to be ageing quietly without any particular issue, which is what we all want, really.
Another man who managed that trick, again by virtue of the fact he was annoyingly talented at a young age, and so achieved more than many do in several lifetimes by his 40s, was David Bowie. Maybe Bowie, who was such a genius that he could do things like essentially predict the internet, was actually a time traveller who could see the future, and that’s why he invited Keanu Reeves and his band Dogstar to open for him back in 1995.
At that point, 22 years after Ziggy Stardust, Bowie had basically already completed music and yet was still, shockingly only 47, touring a 20th album in Outside that encompassed styles including trip-hop, industrial rock, techno, and ambient and featured lyrics composed by randomly feeding words into an early Mac computer. Elton John had just finished promoting The Lion King.
Keanu Reeves, meanwhile, was coming off the back of the enormous success of his 1994 movie Speed with Sandra Bullock, the film that had catapulted him from the brainless teenager comedy of Bill and Ted into a fully-fledged action movie hero – and this was still some five years before The Matrix.
He was indulging his second love of music in his spare time, however, with Dogstar, the band he had formed in Los Angeles, playing plenty of gigs and music festivals, building up a bit of a following. Of course, Reeves’s star power did their prospects no harm at all, as the band opened up shows for the likes of Bon Jovi and appeared at several festivals.
Bowie, for reasons unknown to the band, hand-picked Dogstar to open that gig on that ‘95 tour and their drummer Robert Mailhouse told Vice what the experience was like, saying: “He was on tour with Nine Inch Nails, and we were just doing a lot of shows here in Los Angeles, and I don’t know why but he decided to do a Halloween show at the Hollywood palladium. I remember just getting a call from our manager, and she was just like, ‘You’re not going to believe this, but David Bowie has requested you guys to open up.’”
Adding, “I was like, ‘Wait, he doesn’t need us to open up for him. What the hell is going on here? Are we being used? Is this bullshit? Is this the Keanu Reeves thing?’ But he just said, ‘I heard some of your music. Pretty cool.’ It was a great night. The crowd were like ‘who the fuck is this?’ But it went really well, actually.”
After a break of many years apart, Dogstar got back together in 2023 and released a third album, playing major festivals and then doing a full US tour the following year. Reeves, meanwhile, is doing more movies too, with a new comedy with Aziz Ansari due out in October called Good Fortune, plus a sequel to cult hit Constantine on the way. He’ll also be linking up once more with his old Speed co-star Sandra Bullock on an untitled romantic thriller.
