9.30.2014
9.25.2014
STUTTGARTER ZEITUNG- Die Karriere der vier Jungs von Tokio Hotel [TH Interview]
„Americans think we’re some weird German celebrities“
Bill and Tom Kaulitz, this interview is taking place at one in the morning (californian time). Are you nocturnal people?
Tom Kaulitz: For us that’s even early. Our rhythm is pretty skewed. We
always stay up until six or seven in the morning and get up when the sun
is already going down again.
The new album “Kings Of Suburbia” only sounds melancholy, from time to time even optimistic in comparison to your past music, which sounded more gloomy. What happened?
Bill Kaulitz: We found new inspiration in the US, since we’re living a
completely different life here than we did in Germany. It also has
something to do with the fact that we were able to retreat and not do
anything for a long time. Of course we also changed. The music on our
new album feels good to us though. It’s not a concept album where
everything was planned through, we simply started with writing and
producing.
Why didn’t you just decide to work with a popular producer from L.A.?
Bill: We did actually work with a few people from L.A., Rock Mafia for example. But also worked with our old team.
Tom: The first few sessions were really unsatisfying for us, because music wise, it just wasn’t going in the direction we wanted it to. That’s when we realized that we wanted to do everything ourselves. We built up our home studio and recorded songs in different parts of the world. The cornerstone for the album was the song “Stormy Weather”, which has been for three years years already.
Tom: The first few sessions were really unsatisfying for us, because music wise, it just wasn’t going in the direction we wanted it to. That’s when we realized that we wanted to do everything ourselves. We built up our home studio and recorded songs in different parts of the world. The cornerstone for the album was the song “Stormy Weather”, which has been for three years years already.
To what extent were you able to refince your individual specialties in L.A.?
Tom: We were totally able to do that. But it was less because of the
city L.A., even if you do run into international artists and producers
pretty often. We learned a lot here, but what really helped us was the
time. We had five years to master the art of mixing and producing a
song.
Are you not interested in writing German songs anymore?
Tom: This time there aren’t any German ones, because we find it
difficult to translate our lyrics word for word without them losing
their meaning. We already noticed that with our last album. We didn’t
want to go through this process again. Today we either immediately write
the song in English or in German, and with this album we just kept
writing in English so we thought: Let’s keep it that way! We didn’t want
to force anything.
Does Los Angeles feel like home to you?
Bill: We like living here, but we could also decide to go to India tomorrow. There are a lot of things I miss about Germany, that’s why I like coming back once in a while. But I also like going back to L.A.. Home, for us, is where the people live with whom we get along, since we took our family and our dogs with us to the US.
Bill: We like living here, but we could also decide to go to India tomorrow. There are a lot of things I miss about Germany, that’s why I like coming back once in a while. But I also like going back to L.A.. Home, for us, is where the people live with whom we get along, since we took our family and our dogs with us to the US.
Is the album a hommage to life in Los Angeles?
Bill: It’s more a hommage to our own life. Germany just didn’t work for
us anymore, because in the end we didn’t really have a private life left
next to our career. Moving to L.A. was the right decision for us. It
doesn’t have anything to do with the city itself. It’s important for us
to find the right balance between our job and our private life.
Do people in L.A. expect you to take part in the social life of the high society?
Tom: Yes, they totally do. A lot of celebrities there can’t understand
the fact that we don’t want to. We came to L.A. to retract. We didn’t
want to go to any parties, have paparazzi surround us or walk the red
carpet. For a lot of people here that’s normal though, even calling
photographers is. I’m not in the mood for all that when it isn’t an
officially scheduled appointment/date. It bores me – maybe because we
already went through a lot of similar situations. We just want to make
music, and as soon as we get home, we don’t want to have anything to do
with Hollywood. I think a lot of Americans think we’re some weird German
celebrities because of that.
Do you still live together?
Bill: Yes. We couldn’t even imagine living separately from each other.
That would be completely unnatural for us, because we don’t even like
to spend a second without the other.
Did you go through the same experiences/gain the same insights in the US or do they now differ when it comes to certain things?
Bill: Each of us, of course, has some private things going on, but if
Tom has some kind of problem then it immediately turns into my problem. I
actually never need Tom’s advice. He usually already knows about any
problem I might have. If I needed advice I would probably ask a friend
or my mom.
Is your togetherness exhausting for people you work with?
Tom: I know that, from time to time, people would prefer to have only
one of us talking to them on the phone. It’s just that I’m the likeable
twin and Bill the unlikeable one. (Bill laughs)
Bill: I myself sometimes think that we’re exhausting. Since we’re of the same opinion most of the time, people always have to deal with a unit if they go against us.
Bill: I myself sometimes think that we’re exhausting. Since we’re of the same opinion most of the time, people always have to deal with a unit if they go against us.
How often do you meet up, as a band, with the other two band members?
Tom: For a while we only skyped. When everything started again the other
two flew over here a few times. But we’ve also been to Germany in
between, even if it wasn’t often.
Bill: It sounds cheesy, but we’re really good friends. When we see each other again, after a long break, it’s just like it was before. This energy between us is back. For people looking in, especially for our record label, it’s not always easy to get through to us. Sometimes I really feel bad for them.
Bill: It sounds cheesy, but we’re really good friends. When we see each other again, after a long break, it’s just like it was before. This energy between us is back. For people looking in, especially for our record label, it’s not always easy to get through to us. Sometimes I really feel bad for them.
In the video „Bill’s special Pill“ on your website, Bill suprises
watchers with a his drug-related comment: “But with a little Heroin and a
little Cocaine everything works.” Was that a joke or do people have a
legitimate reason to worry?
Bill: Nooo, in this case it was only a joke. Someone who’s a real heroin
or cocaine addict would probably never say that. I can’t lie – we do
have a lot of fun here – I love the nightlife and everything it entails.
However you have to say that the nightlife in Europe is a lot more
awesome than the one in L.A. L.A. is a pretty boring city, but I still
like to go out to party and drink. I really like this feeling of being
alive. In Europe it wasn’t possible to do this that easily. But no, I’m
not a heroin addict!
Bill and Tom Kaulitz, Georg Listing and Gustav Schäfer released their
debut single “Durch den Monsun” under the bandname Tokio Hotel in 2005
and immediately took the charts by storm. All their albums were
extremely successful: „Schrei“ (2005), „Zimmer 483“ (2007) and
„Humanoid“ (2009). Millions of girls, especially in Germany, lose their
mind when Tokio Hotel perform.
Five years after their retreat to California the quartet is back –
with a new look and a new sound. The songs from the album “Kings Of
Suburbia”, which will drop on 3. October, are more electronic than their
old tracks and all written in English. Tokio Hotel will be guests at
“Wetten dass…?” on 4. October.
Translation by: Icey @ LoveTH-Music.com
9.23.2014
Der Spiegel #39/2014 - Küss Mich [ + Translation ]
Pop: They were teen stars from a Magdeburg village. As megastars they fled to Los Angeles. And today?
Bill kisses. Subject, predicate. Simple sentence but it’s rather complicated. „I have never kissed someone in front of a camera before“, says Bill „I’m totally shy“.
First scene of the video shooting for a new song of Tokio Hotels new album in Los Angeles: Bill Kaulitz sits in the middle of a couch, to his right brunet, to his left a Blondie, behind him a redhead and around him young pretty and half naked people, everybody tightly entwined and everybody kissing.
Second scene: Bill walks through a corridor, shoves himself between two girls who are making out, he takes over one of them: around him young pretty half naked people, everybody tightly entwined and everybody kissing.
Third scene: similar.
Before the fourth scene Bill sits on a director’s chair and chats about how weird it was at the beginning and he talks about this shock: that he got one who used lots of tongue and kind of “tongue raped” him. But now he got used to it: “I lost my inhibitions”.
Bill wears tight pants and suspenders his upper body is naked. He stands in front of an old hotel pool without water, the stone crumbles, the paint chips off, Olympic games once took place here in 1932. For the fourth scene the pretty half naked women now gathered on the bottom of the pool, they lay tightly entwined together. Bill is watching everything and says: A bit more skin would be great, you have to see some boobs as well.
“Love who loves you back” is the name of the song and “Love who loves you back” is the video which Tokio Hotel uses to show they’re still alive: Next week their new album gets released “Kings of Suburbia”.
They’re now with mid twenty something like veterans. The press release of their record label stylizes them as heroes who know that in this business you can’t just vanish for five months and especially not for five years. For Tokio Hotel there are other rules. They took over the world once before. Now they’ll try it again. With music that according to them is 100 percent Tokio Hotel and most of it even self produced.
Something that catches your eye immediately: Tokio Hotel doesn’t sound like Tokio Hotel. Tokio Hotel used to be German Poprock, now it’s mostly Pop and only in English, in between a ballad with Tom at the piano and Bill with an uncommon high voice. Apart from that mostly electronic, perfectly styled, danceable, international club culture.
Bill says, in a video shooting break of “Love who Loves you back”, that this song is one who doesn’t take love too serious. “Sometimes you just have to take yourself what you need. It doesn’t always have to be the big love. Nobody likes to be alone: simply take yourself something, someone who also loves you back. I still believe in big love though!”
Tokio Hotel are Germany’s mega stars. Seven million sold CD’s worldwide, in 68 countries they got platinum-certified and 500 000 people came to their concert at the Eiffel tower. It’s not true that Tokio Hotel were only disliked in Germany but it kind of looked like they were as much disliked as they were loved. Four years ago Bill and his twin brother Tom moved to Los Angeles. “They ran away”, that’s what Bill calls it, “we just fleed.” Back then they lived in a mansion in Hamburg, a “lovely jail”, 24 hours security, a solid fence, people in front of their door all the time. When they went out they usually set behind a barrier tape, “just like in a zoo”, around them people who stared at them and took photos. They celebrated their 21st birthday and came back home: Someone dug through their underwear, photos were spread everywhere. “I felt abused”, says Bill. “I even threw my cigarette on the floor. That’s how strange I felt in that house”, says Tom. After the burglary they didn’t sleep in the mansion anymore. For four weeks they stayed in the Grand Hotel Heiligendamm before they took off to Los Angeles with a private jet.
They wanted a break, peace from all the media, the reporters who wrote sentences about Bill such as “Hallow cheeks, the gold jewelry rattling against his chicken breast. The tattooed little arms stick out of the leather jacket, the cap pulled down covering his face. “ And: “Tom at least grins happily with his baggy look – and also obviously has more muscles on his body.”
Appearance and looks that’s what every Tokio Hotel dedicated article spoke about. “Aliens” “Outsiders” “androgynous characters” “Mangas”. And of course over and over again: Is Bill gay? Anorexic? Often the look makes a star to a superstar.
Lady Gaga and Madonna look plain on their childhood photos, with cute headbands and innocent looks. They became artistic figures later. Tokio Hotel didn’t need to become someone. They already looked like stars when they still lived in Loitsche, a little village with 700 residents close to Magdeburg.
With nine years Bill already started to dye his hair, applied black eye shadow while Tom wore dreadlocks. Everybody turned around and teachers used to rant: that’s not how students should come to school. When people kept silent, Bill once said in a documentation from a few years ago, then it was worse than when they spoke.
In primary school the brothers wrote their first song and performed at little festivals. They called themselves Black Question Mark. Then Gustav, the drummer, and Georg, the bassist, joined and they changed their band name to Devilish because a local newspaper praised the devilish guitar sound. Bill tried his luck at the casting show “Star Search”, he didn’t succeed but a producer came to see the band when they performed at Gröninger Bad and two years later they signed their first contract at Universal. Bravo made them big, New York Times wrote about them. Their first single was “Durch den Monsun”, first successful in Europe, then in North America where journalists compared them to Nena and the Beatles. They won awards and as they toasted, you can still see that on their Youtube Channel, they said “On me”.
With 18, you can also see that in a video, Bill didn’t even know what it feels like to go into a supermarket. So he went to one with his team while they made an USA trip and he got filmed while he walks through the aisles and searches for toilet paper, buys sweets and freaks out when he has to scan the groceries by himself at the checkout. “Guys, this is revolutionary! No cashier who gets on your nerves? How phat is that!”
As teens they became stars but were never typical teenage stars. They were no puppets like Britney Spears who had to shave her head to show: Hello, I’m self-determined! They had their own sound. Their image and their lyrics always rebellious – “wir brechen aus”. Clear profile (Outsiders), a clear fanbase (even kids like pop), clear messages (be yourself, live every second, live your dreams) – huge success.
Now the question is how did they develop far away from Germany? Did they grow up? Two days after their video shoot they give an interview, the first time in a group of four after a long time. The meeting place: SoHo House an exclusive club at the Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood. Bill and Tom are members in all SoHo-houses worldwide, the costs for one year: 1400 dollars. For over 27 year olds: 2800 dollar.
“I like these membership-clubs a lot because you are simply unmolested”, says Tom.
“I like that you can’t take photos here. You can drive into the underground garage, can go upstairs without going on the street. You can hide perfectly”, says Bill.
That everything starts again now with Tokio Hotel is really cool, says Gustav. It feels like they did all of that, says Georg. They drink ice tea.
The look, you can’t just get around that: striking as always. Georg (black pants, white shirt), Gustav (jeans shorts), Tom (baggy jeans, white sweatshirts with a few holes in it), Bill (completely in beige: plateau-Buffalos, flared pants, transparent skin-tight shirt, suspenders).
Especially Bill and Tom just talk how the words come to their mind and in between Tom makes his typical Tom-jokes, mostly quite pubertal, the others laugh. “I could imagine doing something different but still something creative, like a pornstar, where you can also draw but with different kind of brush.”
As they fled to Los Angeles he couldn’t hear the name Tokio Hotel anymore says Bill. “We lost the passion, we were exhausted, we didn’t have anything left to tell. I knew that if we don’t make another step then the next album would be an huge fail.”
Would it have been the end for the band?
“I think it would’ve been bad. An album that is just okay wasn’t something I was striving for. I preferred a break and then to come back with something great. Most people advised against doing a break, they called it Career Suicide. But we didn’t care.”
They just wanted to live: they furnished an house, bought pans, filled their fridge on their own, drove to the beach and took walks with their dogs, went to get a coffee from Starbucks, went to the movies. In Germany it was rather complicated to go to the movies says Bill: “I called the assistant who then called the security and then everybody planned everything. When we wanted to watch a movie then we had to rent the whole thing. The little things suddenly turned into something huge.”
They rented the whole Heide Park Soltau for their 20th birthday and drove with their cars from one rollercoaster to another. Now for their 25th birthday at the start of September they went to Palm Springs with some of their friends for 1 ½ days. Bill found the hotel through the internet and booked it on his name.
But this “new life” is somehow also weird: As Bill needed a Social Security Number there was an huge line at the office. “Do I have to wait with all of them as well? Can’t my assistant do that?”
He had to connect himself says Tom. He now has friends with whom he can go out at night to drink something. That didn’t exist in the past. Interpersonally, says Tom, he is a bit weird. Bill and him can’t really pull off a small talk because they just never really learned how it works since they were shielded from everything out there. If they meet new people they usually just stand there and say nothing. “And what are you guys doing?” – “Music”. They usually have extract every further information from them, says Bill “everyone thinks we’re weird”.
In this “new life” they somehow also found new music. It isn’t the music of a German band who once moved to Los Angeles anymore. It’s the music of musicians who live in Los Angeles. The inspiration was “the nightlife, the life itself, going out, being free, what is important to someone and what is not and has a meaning”, says Bill. “We do what we want”.
They partied a lot, maybe a lot because finally they had the chance to do it. “Nobody recognized me”, says Bill. “I had the opportunity to go into a club and get wasted, going out totally drunk without the fear of getting photographed.” Their studio sessions were almost like parties: a house in the Hollywood Hills, that’s where they partied and produced music often totally exhausted and tired and sometimes drunk until the sun rose.
As free as he feels in Los Angeles, says Bill, he has never felt in his entire life. “That’s the maximum. We couldn’t be more free at the moment except if I moved to India.” Tom: “Yes we will do that one day.” Bill: “Only with a backpack.” Tom: “I would sell everything I own before I leave. “ Bill: “That would be an huge adventure.” Tom: “That would be something completely different than what I have experienced so far. I also wouldn’t want to carry too much money with me because I know myself, I would just book an hotel and miss out the whole experience. “
There is no specific plan yet though. At the beginning of October they’ll go back to Germany for a performance at “Wetten, dass…?”. The question is what they still want there.
Translation by www.loveth-music.com
9.08.2014
Bill Kaulitz Instagram Update 08.09.14
Bill's Instagram
"SOLD
OUT! #kingsofsuburbia super deluxe album is already sold out! thank you
guys so much! we're overwhelmed. can't wait for you guys to hear the
first song! we're working on a solution with the record company to make a
second edition available ASAP!!! #tokiohotel #soldout #aliens #love
#thankyou"
9.07.2014
Gustav with a fan [07.09.14]
"#meet #gustav #from #tokiohotel #lovethisband #groupie #so #happy #gehenauftour #konzerteichkomme #traumwahrgeworden"
Happy Birthday, Gustav - September 8th
Happy Birthday to our favorite drummer, We want to wish you a
Happy Birthday and all the best! We love you, and we are very grateful that you exist ❤.
Always making us smile, always knowing what to say, you are a very wise boy. We hope you keep succeeding today and always. We hope you have a blast! Today is your day!
Happy Birthday GUSTAV!
Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag!
9.03.2014
Bill's Instagram Update = Kings Of Suburbia - Out on October 3rd!
Bill's Instagram
"KINGS OF SUBURBIA - out on October 3rd! #albumcover #albumartwork #kingsofsuburbia #newalbum #thirdofoctober"
9.02.2014
Tokio Hotel's Message on Spotify.... ?
Screencap taken by Tokio Hotel Street Team Germany
9.01.2014
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