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Check in at Tokio Hotel
At St. Regis dwells four young devils: twin brothers, Bill Kaulitz and Tom Kaulitz, Gustav Schafer and Georg Listing. Tonight, they're not resting in Tokyo but at a palatial hotel at the remote part of Orchard Road. Once known as the Devilish back home in Germany, the foursome dropped their naughty moniker and won the hearts of teen pop rock fans worldwide with a new entity, Tokio Hotel.
THE VAMPIRE UNLEASHED
All dressed in black, Bill sits poised on a Victorian sofa in a bar; his coiffure rises over the heads of his fellow band members. He looks elongated like a samurai sword - sharp and thin, all the more so with his long legs. His glance spells caution as if to hint to us not to ask banal questions. Blame it on the black eyeliners and his lush mascara; they make him seem stern. But once the topic changes to vampires, the menace ebbs away and a crescent smile lights up his face.
Bill connected with vampires at a very young age. A Halloween party transformed his regular boy image and turned him 'vampastic'. He began to experiment with Gothic fashion and makeup. Even now as a rock star adored by millions of Tokio Hoteliers, Bill, 20, is unabashed about his liking for fantasy chick flick, Twilight. So if he were given a chance to play a vampire in a movie, will he choose to play a good or bad vampire? "I like to play a bad vampire. I think it's cooler," he says. He admits that it is the gruesome acts that a nasty vampire gets to do that entice him. Everyone in the room laughs. "For movies, it's cooler to be totally different, to try something else," he explains.
FASHION COLLECTION FROM BILL?
But god knows how long fans will have to wait to see him on the big screen. At the moment, the band only wants to focus on music. "I will always do music," Bill says. Tom, the guitarist, seconds his brother's view; "I think we're talented at doing music and nothing else." Seated at their opposite ends, Gustav, 21, the cherubic drummer and Georg, 22, the long-haired bassist, nod in agreement. However, Bill does not dismiss that if he were to dabble in something new, fashion is likely to be on his list. "The fashion thing will be cool," he says. "I like Dan and Dean from Dsquared2... I can do things like that in the future." Bill was a model for the twin-brother brand for their Menswear Winter/Autumn 2010 in Milan.
REBELS WITH A CAUSE
Tokio Hotel has attitude; depending on how you look at it, you can either admire or admonish them. At age 15, they already knew what they wanted musically for their band, Devilish. The adults at their previous record label, Sony BMG Germany, liked to tell them what to do and what was best for them but they refused to be chaperoned. Unlike other acts, they approached a record label with a completed album; they didn't want any stylists or songwriters. "We produced the record and did everything on our own then we signed the deal," Tom says. This displeased their ex-boss. "They did not believe in us and did not think that we have the potential to be successful," Bill recalls. "They dropped us." But their steadfast belief in their talents paid off when Universal Music Germany signed them on in 2005.
'HOTEL' EXPANSION
Their debut German album, Schrei (featuring Bill's prepubescent voice), received the IFPI Platinum Europe Award a year after its release in 2006. The award honours the success of European artistes who have achieved sales of one million copies of their album in Europe. In 2007, their second German album, Zimmer 483, was certified platinum by IFPI Austria. In the same year, their first English album, Scream, which won them the Best New Artist at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards. In 2009, they released their latest album, Humanoid, concurrently in both English and German. The former stayed on the Billboard Top 200 for 3 weeks. With just two English albums, their fame has percolated throughout the U.S. Recently, they collaborated with Kerli, the Estonian teen pop star on the song "Strange" on Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland soundtrack. They are the first Deutschlanders in German music history to enjoy such worldwide success. "We are really grateful to have the chance as a German band to tour so many countries. Everything started in Germany 5 years ago. It was totally surprising for everyone, our record label and producers. Nobody expected a success like that." Bill muses in perfect English.
In Singapore for the first time, the quartet performed the acoustic version of "Automatic" and "Phantomrider" from their latest album, Humanoid, at the Audi Fashion Festival 2010. After Singapore, they left for Kuala Lumpur the next day. In July, they're planning to visit China and thereafter return to the Lion City again. "We hope we can visit Japan for the first time," Bill says. It certainly looks like a legion of humanoids will soon surface in Asia.
BEFORE THEY WERE FAMOUS
Bill is the most talked about member of Tokio Hotel. Understandably, it is his androgynous image and feminine disposition that sparked speculation about his sexuality. But being looked at differently is not an unfamiliar feeling to Bill. When he was ten, he already didn't look like the kids from his village in Magdeburg, Germany. "People stared at us as if we were aliens. We don't have many friends," he says. Music was their only solace. They were performing at the local club when they met Georg and Gustav - that was in 2001. Together, they formed Devilish. But it was the 13-year-old Bill who secured the group's first record deal after the exposure he gained at a German Star Search contest.
Credit TokiohotelSg
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