INTERVIEW FUSE TV

Part 1

Hi, I’m Gustav and I’m the drummer.
I’m Tom, I’m the guitarist.
I’m Georg, I’m the bass player.
I’m Bill, I’m the singer, and together we are the band Tokio Hotel.

Bill: I have never imagined to do anything different than music. I started so early, when I was 6. I understood that I love singing very much and I started to write some lyrics, which were really bad at that time. But I already knew that I wanted to make a living out of that. My very first contact with music was the german singer Nena, whom I saw in TV. I saw this concert and it was brilliant, and I wished to do the same. I definitely wanted to be on the stage, in front of lots of people.

Tom: Bill and I started do make music together. Our stepfather was a guitarist in a small rockband, and one day I found an electric guitar in my room. It was a gift from him. I found it so cool, I started to play some chords, and we then we immediately began to write our first songs.
When we’ve got three, we started do play them on stage in some small clubs, and that is where everything began. I grew up surrounded by music, since my very young age.

Gustav: My parents listened to Eric Clapton, Joe Cocker, Genesis. And when I was really young I started to play drums with my hands on the table, so my parents sent me to a music school, and that’s how I learnt to play the drums.

Georg: I had 2 schoolmates, a guitarist and a drummer, who asked me if I felt like learning to play the bass to complete the band. So I learnt to play the bass in a music school, but I didn’t feel like joining the band anymore, so I just stayed on my own. Later I met Gustav, and later on we got to know Bill and Tom.

Bill: No, I don’t play any instrument.

Tom: Yeah, the triangle!

Bill: No, sadly I can’t play any instrument. I’d love to, cause it would be easier to make music while playing an instrument. I tried to play many instrument but I’m really one who cannot wait. If I couldn’t handle it properly after one day, then I stopped. I’d love to learn how to play the piano, but I don’t have any time now.

Green Day is one of the boys’ favourite groups. They used to listen to this song in 2005, when it was released.

Bill: Actually, we don’t have any concrete musical influence, because we’ve always made and played our own music, since the very beginning. We never drew on anything, cause it was too easy to just copy something that was already there. We’ve always wanted to follow our own mind, and that’s what we’ve been doing since it all started.

Bill: When I saw Nena on stage, I realized that I was definitely born for that, that it was my future. We started when we were really young with our own music, so we practically didn’t live with the others’ music. We listen to completely different kinds of music, Tom for instance loves german hip hop

Tom: Yeah that’s true, but I used to love some guitar bands like the Aerosmith. Oh, I used to be a super fan. I bought all of their albums, I listened to them, and now I listen to a lot of german hip hop, which clearly has nothing to do with guitars.

Georg: I’m really into Oasis.

Gustav: But since I heard “Nothing else matters” from Metallica, I bought their “Black” album, and from then on I bought all of them. I’m a huge fan.

Part 2

Georg: At the beginning our name was Devilish. We didn’t really think a lot about it, cause we needed to find a name quickly. There was a short article about us on a local newspaper, and it said our guitar sound was devilishly good. We thought that “devilish” didn’t sound cool at all in german, so we translated t into English – that’s how the name Devilish is born.

Tom: We were 12 at that time, so we didn’t really think it over.
We didn’t like the name Devilish anymore. We had started to make music more seriously, recording a cd in a studio and becoming more professional. We said, ok we need to turn the page and look for a new name. We thought about something which mirrored us in the best way, and we came up with Tokio Hotel.
TOKIO sounds pretty well, it’s cool, as we all love big cities, it’s something we all have in common. And then HOTEL, it’s a symbol, as we all hoped that hotels would turn out to be part of our adventure, that we’d sleep in hotels often. So it was kind of a symbol, and that’s where the name Tokio Hotel comes from.

Bill: Some songs recur regularly in our concerts – Especially one, which is part of the set list from the very beginning. And I Think that this evening it’s just perfect, here in Oberhausen. Leb’ die Sekunde!

In summer 2006, the band leaves for a tournée in Germany and plays in front of more than 75000 people.

Bill: We met Peter Hoffman in a small club where we used to play, in Magdeburg. Same place where Tom and I met Gustav and Georg. It was a club where we used to play regularly. Peter Hoffman was there to visit his family, and he decided to go out in that night, just to have a beer and listen to some music. And that night he saw us, and he invited us to go to his studio, in Hamburg. We were so excited, cause it was the very first time we were invited to go to somebody’s studio like that. We screamed and we started to work together. It took pretty long, 2 years almost. Finally, when the album was ready, we said, well, it would be good if someone else listened to what we’ve been doing. We ended up at Universal, but it was not produced like that. We got at the studio, but we had no purpose of producing an album. Then it was released and everything just ran on so quickly after that.

Bill: I think I can speak for all of us, except Georg. We never loved school very much. OFC it’s very important to go through all of your studies (I can't get the last sentence =/)

Tom: But dream school would be a school of girls, where I’d be the only boy. The girls would wear very small, nice uniforms. So it wouldn’t be bad. It’d be important to have young pedagogue teachers, who know what they’re doing, and a kind of school which can suit each individual.

Bill: and they shouln’t be too big. Ours held almost 2000 students, way too many.

Bill: I was 13 when I went to Star Search, It all began with a bet I made with Tom. Obvioulsy it was something about girls. The one who succeded in dating the girl would have won. Tom won so I was the loser. The commercial was on tv very often and the loser had to enter for it.
I was a loser in the competition but I’ve gone pretty far, even if it was a show which had nothing to do with me, my purpose was to go pretty far and to do something with the band. I thought that doing that, I could be discovered and reach a goal for the band. It was awful, cause the song was not my style at all, I didn’t feel like it and I felt really bad. But I nevertheless wanted to do it, because somebody might have seen us. It did not happen in the end, but we were noticed just a bit later in a small club.

Tom: I’m really really happy not to have lost that bet, cause it would have been a huge catastrophe for me! I cant sing at all, I would have tried to dance or something, but it would have been even more awful.

3rd part:

Bill: In Germany we made ourselves known with Durch den Monsun. Releasing it as our fisrt single was our a natural choice. It’s a song that we really loved, with a nice melody. It was not a studied decision. No one was expecting it to work so well and be at #1 in Germany for so much time, neither the record company nor the producers, not even us, it was completely unexpected.
The first single in France was Schrei, because it was one of our favourite songs. It’a an awesome song on stage, and it worked really well in France. You never get used to such a success. It’s weird to feel that, and to see what happens on stage, with no previous plans. We never said, “we have to release that single, and it’s gonna be a huge success.”

In 2005, the first album of the band, Schrei, was double platinum in Germany. It sold more than 600000 cds on the other side of the Rhine. Schrei is golden disc in France.

Bill: when we create a song, each one of has already has an idea of what he would like to show in the video. Then the realizers write a synopsis and come to us. We share all of our ideas cause we love to take an active part in it. We respect every idea, the realizers’ and ours. We choose the realizer that seems to suit better to what we have in our minds. About from Durch den Monsun – it was our first clip and we didn’t have any experience, we just looked how it worked.

Tom: We were sooo excited. It was something new for us and we were really nervous.

Bill: We were learning lots of things. I can’t watch that video anymore. We were so nervous, and that left its mark on us. At present, the more we make videos, the more we take part in their realization, the more we have ideas, and we know how it works, so it turns out to be cool.

Bill: We’re never lucky when it’s time to shoot. We find a bad situation every time – it rains or it’s cold or it’s windy... or it’s too hot. Yeah but, we can have fun anyway.

Tom: We have fun during all of the shoots, but the best one must have been Schrei, there were a lot of walk-ons, fans too… it looked like a real party. (can't get the last words)

In 2006, “Schrei live” dvd is platinum dvd
The dubut dvd, Leb die Sekunde, is golden dvd.

Bill: Actually, I’ve always made up when i went to school. Obviously we have to disguise a little bit now, when we’re just walking in the streets, not to be recognized. So of course I’m not made up at those times. But in everyday life it never happened to me that I didn’t feel like making up. It’s really a part of me. I can imagine an 80year old Bill full of wrinkles but still wearing makeup. Cause it’s really a part of me and I want to keep doing like this.
I’ve got 2 tattoos: one on my neck, which is the band logo. I had it done when I was 15. The second one is a star and it’s about 9 month since I had it done.


PART4

Bill: We worked on this last album (Zimmer483) in a very different way. When we got to the studio, it has nothing to do with the previous time. Obviously it is not easy for a band to produce a second album, cause you want to keep developing, you want people to feel the difference and see what has changed. So we decided not to put too much pressure on ourselves. WE said, we’ll go to the studio and see what comes out. We’ll record our stuff leisurely, with a completely different work pace. That’s why we didn’t claim any date for the album release. We told ourselves that when it was ready, it’d be released. And it was good to do so, in my opinion, cause we could work peacefully and follow our creative process as we wanted to. The first song, Wir Sterben Niemals Aus, was written in Spain. Last summer we left for our holidays – we wanted to combine vacation and songwriting. We hired a XXXX (wtf?! i can't get this one word ) which turned out to be completely dilapidated and crumbling – a real wreck. I think we didn’t have much vacation, we just worked. This XXX had the number 483, that’s why we named the album Zimmer 483.
In Ubers Ende Der Welt videoclip, we tried to stick to the lyrics as much as possible. The lyrics want to give hope to ppl and say: dare follow your path, dare change your lives, dare get into a new world. In the video we wanted to chow that you need to get out of the daily routine, and how to get out of it.

Tom: In the video you can see a futuristic city which is so grey and sad. And we play a double part. First, We are a band who plays for the ppl to try to wake them up and get them out of that stillness, so that they can dare do something else and escape all that. For the second role, we walk with the people of that city and we wear the same clothes. In the end we succeed in waking them up and bringing them out of their daily routine. They manage to climb walls and so on.

Bill: You’re gonna see. You’ll be surprised. It was a really hard work and we’re very proud of it. We shot 28 hours straight, so it was really exhausting but we’re so glad of the result.

Ready, Set, Go is the English version of Ubers Ende der Welt.
You can find it in Zimmer483
In 2007, the Zimmer483 album goes right to #2 in france.

Bill: I think I’ll never write any song in English. I love writing in German so much. There are going to be English songs in the albums, they’re going to be translated literally from german . We can handle english in a kinda scholastic way, but it’s not enough to manage alone. We hope to always have a nice interpreter who’s gonna help us translate everything properly.

Tom: In the end we realize that scholastic English is not very useful. Special dedication to my English teacher: thank you for everything you did! (laughs)Scholastic English is nothing… it’s not easy but we hope to get more fluent and be able to use it someday.

Monsoon is the English version of Durch den Monsun.
You can find it in the Zimmer483 album.