Hey New York, we are Tokio Hotel. And you are watching Rolling Stone.com.
We’ve heard you have crazy fans
Bill: Tokio Hotel Fans, they live the whole Tokio Hotel life with us. We travel in so many countries and they come with us and they sleep in front of the venues, I think 3 months before we came in the venue, it’s just crazy.
Tom: They write kilometre long fan letters and we have redesigned cars, Tokio Hotel cars…
Bill: And there was one girl she ran away from home, I think for 6 months…
Tom: For half a year, yeah
Bill: And that was just crazy. And she really wanted to find us but, we met her at an afterparty…
Tom: Yeah, an afterparty…
Bill: … in the end, but just I think for 10 seconds or something.
Tom: Yeah *laughing*
Bill: There was one special present, I think it was a star…
Tom: Yeah, we got a star…
Bill: And then it’s somewhere out there
Tom: A star called Tokio Hotel, yeah.
(He talks over Bill and I cannot hear what Bill is saying)
Your style has gotten a lot of attention:
Bill: For me, the very first time I wore makeup was at a Halloween party. I went to this party like a vampire and I think I was 10 years old and after that I said “Okay, I like it” and I started to color my hair and wear makeup and stuff and also in school and every day. If you take a look at the old pictures, you can see that George (English pronounciation) was so ugly and he is ugly right now.
Tom: It’s a fresh look.
We hear you like Nena’s “99 Luftballoons”…
Bill: I really like Coldplay, and Green Day but also Keene and I’m a fan of Nena. That was really my first contact with music. I was 6 years old and I saw Nena on TV in Germany and yeah, so, I’m still a fan of Nena.
Tom: He forced me to hear Nena in my childhood, so that was terrible.
Bill: It’s important to hear Nena.
Tom: And I listen to German Hip Hop music, George is a big fan of David Hasselhoff…
Bill: Yes!
Tom: Gustav is a fan of “Need artist’s name”, you don’t know “need artist’s name” I think, but also a good artist.
Georg: Not nearly as good as David Hasselhoff but…
Tom: Not a good dancer.
Were you nervous coming to America?
Bill: It’s really the first trip that we speak English and also on TV shows and in front of a camera, because we just speak our school English…
Tom: Our school English, ja.
Bill: It’s just some words and it was also a challenge for me to do the English record because I always sang in German and it’s really the first record that I tried to sing in English. And I really wanted to sound… I’m a perfectionist and I really wanted to sound like a native speaker and as you can hear, I’m not. So, that was really a challenge to do. But it’s a 1:1 translation from the German songs and we had some help with that but, yeah, I hope the fans will like it.
What’s it like being brothers in a band?
Bill: I think it’s normal because we were always together
Tom: Yeah, always the same friends, the same interests and yeah.
Bill: And we started to make music with each other…
Tom: Yeah
Bill: And in the beginning I just had a keyboard because we had no bass player and no drummer and, I don’t play an instrument. I was always too lazy for that.
Tom: Bill needs me, to be honest.
Bill: And he needs me so…