My Account
Known on the Coast as “rockin’ Reg”, Reg Keyworth turned his back on farming, and ultimately the building trade, for a life of rock ‘n’ roll. It’s a life that has been lived in the fast lane and included several spills, including a serious motorbike accident. Having rubbed shoulders with some legendary rock guitarists, including Slash and Jimmy Page, Reg is now a contented family man, with partner Tatyana (Tania) and baby Crystal but, as he told Terry Moore, the next adventure is never far away.
I grew up in Okura, where my dad had a small farm. It was a mud track in and out and a tight knit community, quite remote. I went to Browns Bay Primary and if the bus couldn’t make it down the road because of weather or mud, there was no school that day – that’s what Okura was like in the early 1970s.
I was hanging out with the wrong crowd and getting into trouble – nothing too serious, just good farm boy trouble. If we missed the bus we’d walk home and buy firecrackers on the way to let off. You could buy firecrackers all year round at the Chinese takeaway. I was horse crazy; we used to swim them across the Okura River and ride up to Stillwater to the dairy at the caravan park. We also had sheep and cattle and I could have easily become a farmer, or a vet, but cigarettes intervened.
I was 11 years old when I started smoking, partly because lots of the kids I hung out with were older. I smoked for 11years and was on two packets a day, until I had a very serious motorcycle accident. When I was in hospital, someone offered me a cigarette and it was like a switch went off – I said ‘no’, and that was the end of that.
My first job was at Dream Merchant Waterbeds in Wairau Rd. Money was flowing in those days but when the recession hit they went bust and I was laid off. While on the dole, I was put on the PEP scheme, which got me into the building trade. I must have worked on all the footpaths and driveways in Murrays and Mairangi Bays. PEP was so much better than the dole – you were doing something, and it really led to jobs. For me it led to a carpentry apprenticeship, but then I had the accident. I had been on the big Easter Run with members of the Anglo American Motorcycle Club, which was based in Silverdale. I was coming home by myself on my Triumph Thunderbird and there had been an accident up ahead. A caravan had stopped because of the accident and when I rounded a corner I hit it and went flying through the air, then got hit by a car coming the other way. It smashed up my femur and it took over a year for me to learn to walk again. Being a bit of a rebel, I didn’t normally wear a helmet, but I did that day and probably wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t. The bike was smashed up too, but I rebuilt it and turned it into a chopper, Orange County style with cool paintwork and extended forks and so on. The building boom was underway in Australia when I moved there in 1988 and I went from earning $300 a week in NZ to $1000 a week over there. I worked for Channel Nine TV building sets and then started up my own business when I was 24, building decks and pergolas.
Dad bought me my first electric guitar when I was 16 and, as you did in those days, my friends and I formed a band. None of us could play, but we bought a bass and drum kit and started playing in someone’s house at Northcross. We started to get a proper band happening when a guy called Dudley, who had been Thin Lizzy’s sound engineer, built a home at Pinehill. He leant us his PA system, set up the sound and gave us direction. We practised in the church at Torbay, playing heavy metal after church services. There was a farmhouse where Pak ‘n’ Save in Silverdale is now, and it was set up so that bands could rehearse there. We were called Barbed Wire and we started doing a few gigs in the city, playing rock covers and originals. We were known as one of the loudest bands in the East Coast Bays and there was even a bit of a riot after one gig! I took my guitar to Australia, and did the odd gig at the local pub, but over there I was focused on carpentry work. I didn’t get into music as a profession until I was about 27 and decided it was either music or building. I sold all my machinery, bought really good amps and started jamming with some musicians I knew. That band, called Warpath, had the right chemistry. We rehearsed five days a week for six hours at a time, using a white board to write our lyrics – we took it seriously. A Canadian producer, Pete Swan, helped us make an album and EMI picked it up straight away. That was one of the best bands I’ve ever been in, looking back. It eventually crumbled because some members got into heroin, we ended up having to cancel a tour and it destroyed the band.
I moved to the Gold Coast and got into TV acting, which gave me training in acting and directing with the Australian Film & Television Academy. It was exciting working on a few projects with some well-known actors of the day. Krank was the band I was in at the time with some friends from Sydney and we did ok and won a couple of Brisbane Rock Awards. Eventually that fell apart too and I worked on a TV series called Beast Master, which was a bit like Xena, and involved playing a Nordic warrior and working with elephants and tigers – at night I was playing guitar at the Hard Rock Café, and the two combined mean I made a bit of a name for myself. To seek fame and fortune, I moved to the States, where my sister was living. I drove to Texas and worked for Guitar Centre, selling guitars, then moved to Albuquerque in New Mexico. My sales were so good that Gibson Guitars took notice and I became their ‘product specialist clinician’, based in London then later back in the American Midwest. I travelled around the music stores demonstrating the guitars; it was the kind of job where you’d be on five planes a week and in a different motel every night. It sounds cool, but it was very draining. Musicians are a cliquey little group and you get to hang out with musicians like Jimmy Page, Sheryl Crowe, Prince’s bass player, Slash and Guns and Roses – it was all part of the job, but cool from a musical point of view.
When I heard that my mum had cancer, five years ago, I came straight back to NZ. Both my parents were elderly and when I’d been back a year, my mum passed away. Then dad had a stroke and went into Evelyn Page, where he died three years ago. I started giving guitar lessons, not thinking I’d be staying here, but then I met Tania and we had baby Crystal Liana and here we are, living in my old family home in Army Bay. It’s built on land overlooking the sea that my family have owned since 1969.
I’ve got a music studio, the Mojo Room, and a publishing company that got a children’s song into the top 15 of the recent APRA Awards. It goes on the award compilation album. That was a nice surprise. I’m also releasing a new single next month called The Ballad of Seamus Finn, which I’d describe as an Irish/Western/outlaw style song. Next I’m producing a travel series for TV that will take me from Cape Reinga to Bluff – I’m always keen to find the next adventure, something’s always out there waiting.
