Flashback: Keanu Reeves and his band Dogstar performed on the Gold Coast in 1998
Hollywood actor Keanu Reeves led his band Dogstar in a performance at Currumbin’s legendary music venue The Playroom.
Dogstar was an alternative act which was founded in 1991 by Reeves and his friend Robert Mailhouse who met the same year in a supermarket before jamming together.
Reeves, already a Hollywood star, was the band’s bassist and backup singer, giving it extra publicity as it started to play a series of big gigs, including opening for David Bowie in 1995.
Later that same year Dogstar toured Australia before released their debut album, Our Little Visionary.
By 1998 the band was working on a second album and decided to tour again, with a gig announced for the Gold Coast.
And nobody was more excited than young Gold Coast guitarist Cassie Doyle.
The 18-year-old was teaching herself the electric guitar and got the chance to meet the boys, including Reeves who was also self-taught.
For 25 minutes Cassie, who made headlines when she and her mother Sue petitioned the State Government to investigate a cancer outbreak at Currumbin — chatted to the Dogstar team.
Cassie, who was fighting acute myeloid leukaemia for more than two years, got to sit through
Dogstar’s sound check before the band’s gig at the Playroom.
When the band finished they met Cassie and her mother, with the star revealing he had a close family member who also had leukaemia, his sister Kim.
“He just acted like a normal person. He asked if I had leukaemia,” she said.
“He was really easy to talk to. He was very down to Earth and wasn’t snobby. He talked normally. I said ‘sorry’ and he said ‘No I wanted to be here’.
“The whole band was really nice.”
And Cassie said she could boast to friends she had shared drinks with a man regarded as one of the world’s sexiest.
“He took a drink of water and straight afterwards asked me if I wanted some,” she said.
Cassie said she first became aware of Reeves in the Bill and Ted adventure films.
She asked him about the movie My Own Private Idaho, in which he and the late River Phoenix played gay men.
“I asked him if he ever played with River’s band …. he had … and also with Flea out of the Chilli Peppers.”
During their Gold Coast visit Dogstar’s members were planning to go swimming with the dolphins at Sea World but pulled out at the last minute.
Instead they returned to their hotel after enjoying a one and a half-hour lunch at Saks Restaurant at Marina Mirage.
Cassie continued to bravely fight cancer for another year before it finally claimed her life in 1999 at the age of 21.
She was one of 12 people who was diagnosed with the condition in her suburb, though the State Government later gave it the all clear.
Dogstar finally released its second album, Happy Ending in 2000.
They performed for the final time in October 2002 and broke up shortly thereafter.
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