hi, sorry to hijack the thread but i seem to be having the exact same problem and with the same model of macbook. Im currently on the live usb as well but i added some persistence memory as sugested using Unetbootin. No luck there.
The keyboard reacts but only a few keys and they are mismatched, like, some letters become numbers and some simbols become other simbols and most keys do nothing. At first i even tough it was the ribbon cable that was damaged or misaligned so checked that. nope, cable is fine.
I do note that the capslock key is always lit and not changing…