Keanu Reeves had an impromptu bass lesson from Flea
20.10.2023 - 22:37
/ nme.com
Keanu Reeves has revealed that he once received a lesson in bass guitar from Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.The John Wick star, who also plays bass in the Los Angeles grunge band Dogstar, spoke about the encounter in a video posted to Fender’s YouTube channel.“I remember one time I was doing a film, and Flea was in it, or I was in a film with Flea,” he said. “And I remember there was a house, and there [were] amps and instruments and stuff like that.”“And I was like, ‘Hey, Flea, can you give me a lesson?’ And he was like, ‘Sure, man!’ And he was like [gestures complex bass solo]. And I was like, ‘Alright, so?’ And he was like, ‘Just feel it, man.
Just play.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’”Reeves and Flea both appeared in the film My Own Private Idaho, directed by Gus Van Sant and released in 1991.Dogstar were together for eleven years between 1991 and 2002, releasing two studio albums: ‘Our Little Visionary’ in 1996 and ‘Happy Ending’ in 2000. During the 2020 lockdowns, the band starting spending time together in quarantine, writing enough material to form a new album. They released their third full-length, ‘Somewhere Between the Power Lines and Palm Trees’, earlier this month.They made their first live appearance in two decades at BottleRock Festival in Napa, California in May, debuting several of the new songs.
See the remainder of their upcoming shows below.Speaking about how he became a bassist, Reeves said, “I think I’m a wild animal playing with a piece of wood. I didn’t learn a lot of songs. I didn’t listen to a song and try and figure it out.
Kids: I regret that. If you’re picking up an instrument, it’s cool to figure out what people have done before, but I wasn’t doing that. So I would just play.