schonmagazine.com : The band sits down with Schön! to talk about their dreams, their advice and parents. (29.01.2015)

After the worldwide success of their last albums, German pop phenomenon Tokio Hotel moved to Los Angeles and took a year off. Now, Bill and Tom Kaulitz, Georg Listing and Gustav Schäfer are back to music scene with their new album Kings Of Suburbia. The band sits down with Schön! to talk about their dreams, their advice and parents.

What do you love most about Los Angeles?

Tom: For me, it’s the freedom we have in California. When we left Germany, it was the very first time that we were able to live a regular life. Suddenly, we were able to do whatever we wanted to do. That was a great feeling, it was completely different from our life in Europe.
Bill: I love the weather so much. It’s sunny everyday and it feels like we’re constantly on holidays. But there’s is also a negative aspect about the weather in Los Angeles – people become a bit lazy with fashion. Their outfits can be a bit boring. That´s hard for me, because I´m really interested in fashion.

Do you remember your very first costume on stage?

Bill: I do. When we started performing, we had a concert in our hometown Magdeburg. For this concert, I was wearing a skirt. I still remember that I was wearing this extraordinary garment in combination with a homemade t-shirt and Dr. Martens. We had no money left, so I often created my own costumes.

Tell me about your biggest dream that became true?

Bill: We always wanted to be successful with our music. My brother and I were seven when we started writing our own songs. Back in the days, we didn’t have any producer or record company supporting us in our hometown. Together with Georg and Gustav, we have been a band for such a long time – more than fourteen years now.

So you never thought it would be possible?

Bill: Definitely not. It was just a dream and we are so blessed that it became true some years later. Now, we are living this dream and we are more than happy about it.

What does your family think about your career?

Tom: They hate us. No, I´m just joking.
Bill: They are really happy for us, actually. Our mum is really creative and our stepfather plays the guitar in a band. It sounds funny, but we are living their dream as well. They are really supportive and we have got a strong connection to our family. We have always been focused on creativity; music was an important part of us from an early age.

If you didn’t have this enormous success with Tokio Hotel, where do you think you’d be right now?

Tom: Probably at home without any plans what to do. No, I´m just joking again. Hopefully, I would have started something creative? I can´t imagine sitting in an office the whole day. When I was younger, I always wanted to be a lawyer or a porn star.

A career as a porn star?

Tom: Probably working as a lawyer and a porn star as spare-time work. Great idea, isn´t it?

Back to reality: can you describe the process of preparing a new album?

Bill: We started very slowly after taking a year off. We just needed some time for our creative side, as well as taking time to move to the United States. After a while, we wanted to create a new album: we flew to our studio in New York to start working on the record. For the first time, we produced absolutely everything on our own. Every song was written by us.

Why?

Bill: Nearly no one understood what we wanted to do with our new album. Normally, we record new songs by playing the guitar. This time it was different – Tom was more interested in synthesizers. In the end, the album sounded more electronic than Tokio Hotel has ever sounded previously. It sounds like the nightlife of Los Angeles.

Is there any piece of advice you would have liked to hear at the beginning of your career?

Bill: Read every contract carefully. Retrospectively, I wouldn´t have changed anything. For sure, we were also making lots of mistakes during the last couple of years. I think we are still making mistakes, aren’t we?
Tom: Generally speaking, we were extremely lucky.
Bill: But there is a process that we have learned: keeping the balance between career and privacy. We’ve always wanted to keep it this way, but it hasn´t always been easy.

Because of your fan base? Has it changed during the last couple of years?

Bill: Lots of guys listen to our music now. Our management just told us that there are a lot of boys who watch our videos on YouTube. Back in the days, we almost felt as if there were only teenage girls at our concerts.

Are there any differences between American and European Fans? 

Bill: Not really. It feels like a huge family for us. They are connected online from all over the world, it´s so nice to see that.
Tom: Unfortunately, we haven´t met our American fans for a while. That´s the reason why we would like to start a tour in the United States.

Have you ever thought about coming home to Europe?

Tom: Georg and Gustav still live in Germany. Bill and I, we love life in Los Angeles. At the moment, there is no reason for us to move back to Europe. We spend so much time in airplanes – it almost feels as if we are living on the road. Maybe one day, we´ll move back to Germany. Italy or Mexico would be nice as well.

Is there anything in show business you are afraid of?

Bill: We have seen a lot during the last couple of years and we do have an idea of how to manage show business – I feel like we’ve figured it out. The most important thing is just that we are always together. We are a family. As long as my brother and my band are next to me, I feel like if I can deal with everything.

What moment of your career are you most proud of?

Bill: It´s really hard to choose: I´m proud that we won a VMA in 2008. It still feels so unreal.
Tom: I felt proud when we finished our new album.

What´s next for Tokio Hotel?

Bill: We will start the first part of our world tour in March. London will be our first stop. Our world tour will be more intimate than before, we want to play in smaller clubs this time. We will just go everywhere to see our fans. It will be great.

Interview by Julian Gadatsch
Source: Schön Magazine

blog.bandsintown.com : Tokio Hotel Returns with Kings of Suburbia and a New World Tour (22.01.2015)

Following their recent show at The Viper Room in LA, we had the rare opportunity to sit down with German pop rockers Tokio Hotel, whose fan base, the Aliens, are known for being extremely dedicated. The band just released their first record in five years, Kings of Suburbia, which took them in a different direction with a new sound and a set of electronic, dance-oriented songs. They are gearing up for their new world tour “Feel It All: The Club Experience” in March 2015. Be sure to track Tokio Hotel on Bandsintown so you’re the first to know when tickets go on sale near you. 

We are also offering 5 lucky Tokio Hotel fans a chance to win an exclusive signed Polaroid from the band! To enter, simply send a tweet to @Bandsintown & @decodeltd with the hashtag #THxBIT. We’ll randomly select 5 winners and alert them on Twitter next week!

It’s been five years since you’ve put out an album. What are your thoughts on the new ways artists have to promote themselves, as well as all the new streaming services?

Bill: I feel like it’s good and bad. It’s good that you have your own kind of media so you can put out whatever you want and communicate with your fans directly without having someone come in between. You can actually communicate with your fan base and you can clean up shit that has been said about you, which is great. On the other hand, it’s sad a lot of big magazines don’t exist anymore, or they don’t have the money to do great photo productions anymore. Also CDs, downloads, streaming, I hate it. We do it because you have to do it but I hate that stuff. For me, it’s best to buy a CD. We released a vinyl from our record. We had a cassette as well. We like all of those formats and we put so much thought and work into our videos and artwork but people don’t even see it anymore. That’s the bad part about it. I can live with social media, but we should stop the illegal downloads and go back to CDs. That would be my perfect world.

How would you describe your relationship with your fans and how you see that changing now that your sound has changed and you’re moving to a more electronic music audience?

Bill: Some people grew with us. They’re our age because we were super young when we started. They now have a different taste in music, they see things differently just like we do. We have a strong fan base so it’s like going on an adventure with us. Our fans are very, very supportive – we have the best fans ever! They are very intense. We gained some new fans as well – a lot more guys. Back in the day it was always girls and now we see on YouTube that we have 50% guys watching our videos!
Tom: Now that we are a little older and a little uglier, guys are more open to our music.
Bill: Which is great! We don’t have a target audience or someone we go after. Whoever enjoys [our] music and the stuff we do, it’s like, “Welcome to our shows!” We then grow our fan base a little bit.

What do you think about older fans commenting, upset about the changing sound?

Bill: I expected it, there are people that like to complain about anything. Even if we had created the same album we did a couple of years ago, we would’ve heard, “Oh my God, they didn’t change at all! The same old shit, they didn’t put any work into it.” We don’t care about that, we never really did. With Kings of Suburbia, we wanted to make an album that we enjoy; that reflects our tastes and the music we want to make. For us, it’s all about being authentic. If you go straight to what you’ve done for so many years and just keep doing that, that’s not authentic. We’re all people, we change and life is changing us and we get inspired by different things. I can’t stick to the same sound with every album. We want to keep it fresh and do what we enjoy.

What music and artists inspire you, particularly in the creation of this album? Is there anyone you would like to collaborate with?

Tom: There are plenty of people I would love to collaborate with but it’s hard to say who inspired us for this record because we were producing it over four years. I’m really into Chet Faker right now and then there are our childhood heroes Aerosmith and Depeche Mode. It’s so different, we don’t have one genre that we love. As artists and musicians, we are more into great productions and good songs, no matter the artist. Daft Punk would be great to collaborate with, that would be amazing.

Kings of Suburbia marks the first time you produced an album yourself; was it refreshing having all that control?

Tom: It was refreshing, and really intense, and a lot of work. Totally a new experience. That’s why it took us such a long time, because we made everything on our own; like writing the songs, producing, playing, everything.
Bill: It’s the best thing we could have done. I’m super happy with it - to have that freedom, and to not have to rely on a good producer and someone you might not even want to work with. We collaborated with a couple of songwriters and producers on this album but in general we just made so much on our own. Especially in vocal production.
Tom: It started out of a frustration, because initially we met up with people and started to work on stuff but it didn’t feel right and it was not music we wanted to do. Then we decided, “Let’s build a home studio!” where we started from the very beginning. “Stormy Weather" was one of the first songs that we came up with and it was the guide for the whole record. Because of our frustration, it turned out to be amazing.

On your “TOKIO HOTEL TV” episode, you mentioned the album was ready to come out last year, but then you started writing again. Is the album that’s out now from the first or second batch, or a combination?

Bill: It’s a combination; a lot of songs weren’t on the record a year ago when we wanted to put it out. Like “Love Who Loves You Back" and “Run Run Run” – we didn’t have these songs in the beginning. We were in the studio and amazing things were happening. I was like, “We need more time because the material we are making right now is so good we can’t miss out on it.” Really it’s a best out of four years of writing and making music.

Your upcoming tour is called “The Club Experience.” Does this mean you’ll be playing smaller venues? Do you prefer smaller spaces to the big arena shows?

Bill: Not necessarily, I love to play in front of a lot of people. I like big stages. We wanted to change it up, and since the album is so electronic, we want to turn a live club into a night club; between 1,000 -2,000 people [size venues]. Its going to be small; like a night where you go and party rather than a normal concert. We thought it would be cool to have smaller venues; our fans requested that a lot. They want to see us and meet us, so the whole concept is a little different. And then we hit the arenas by the end of the year.

How did you manage to assemble such a great team behind you - with representation from De-Code LTD, distribution from Universal, publicity and marketing from 42 West and Total Assault, etc..? What advice can you share on how to choose the right partners to manage a musician’s career?

Bill: Interscope was involved with our last album but we didn’t like their work so we got out of the contract for this album. Sometimes you work with big people and big companies and that’s not always the right choice. We now work with William Morris Agency for live booking, they’re great. It always depends; it’s about the vision and the vision you have as a band and that’s how we pick our people. We never had a classic management, we always had people on our payroll just to keep everything going but the decisions we always make ourselves. Basically everything that happens is on our table.
Tom: We cleaned it up a bit too. For this record, we had the video directors, to the people making the clothing and taking pictures for the album, and the artwork… everything is pretty much with the label in the U.S.; friends and people we’ve known for a long time, and that love the band, are passionate about it and understand the project.
Bill: I hate to deal with any egos. We just wanted to work with people that are excited about the band and have the same vision. In Europe, we are still with Universal Music. It really depends on how you get along and if it works out. It’s not always the biggest company that works best, for sure.

You already put out three music videos for the new album. How much input did you have in those concepts?

Bill: A lot! We made “Run Run Run" with one of our close friends, Gianluca Fellini. For that song it was perfect because he’s very good at capturing intimate situations and very pure stuff; it was such a passion project for both of us. We worked with Chris Morris for "Girl Got A Gun" - we wanted to do something different and funky, which led to the idea of including transgenders. With "Love Who Loves You Back", I wanted to film a massive orgy, but then I told the guy no, I want to be INVOLVED in the orgy – not just singing in the background! He said, “I didn’t know you would do that… great let’s do it."

What’s a typical gig day like for you?

Tom: Now that we’re going on tour it’s going to be: get up sometime in the afternoon, soundcheck, and after that we meet the fans. Next city we get up, soundcheck, meet the fans, play; maybe some table tennis in between. Pretty much every day, exactly the same.
Bill: It’s exhausting though. People don’t know how exhausting a tour is. We are just trying to stay healthy, so no one gets sick cause it’s such a long time. You always sleep on a bus, you never have a real room or a nice shower.
Tom: You don’t have a lot of daylight.

Are there any cities you look forward to playing in, or do they all kind of seem the same?

Tom: It’s more about the venue. In Paris we have a great venue so I’m looking forward to Paris.
Bill: This tour we are playing in really special venues. Like in Hamburg, a beautiful church. We either have outstanding cool locations or legendary clubs. It’s going to be interesting, I think they’re all going to have very shitty backstage rooms.

Are there any phone apps you can’t live without?

Bill: Instagram, InstaSize, Uber, WhatsApp
Tom: I’m really old school. I’m not using anything.
Bill: He doesn’t even have an Instagram! He only takes his phone to text or make a call.
Tom: I have a news app I’m always looking into.

Interview and photos by Mallory Turner
Source: Bandsintown

HitFix : Interview with Tokio Hotel - Los Angeles, USA (16.01.2015)

diffuser.fm : Tokio Hotel Discuss Growing Up + New LP, ‘Kings of Suburbia’ (15.01.2015)

Like many young bands, Tokio Hotel were just a group of musicians who wanted to follow their dreams and become rock stars. From the moment they released their debut album, ‘Schrei,’ in their native Germany in 2005, the alt rockers were quickly catapulted into a whirlwind of sold-out international tours and a level of fandom that they perhaps weren’t ready for — all the while selling millions of records. And now with over a decade of experience in the music industry under their belts, Tokio Hotel are back with their first album in five years.

‘Kings of Suburbia’ — which hit the streets last October — not only shows another collection of Tokio Hotel tracks that fans have been anxiously waiting for but also focuses on a change in their musical direction. While still tackling personal and sometimes tough topics, the sound on tracks like ‘Love Who Loves You Back’ is more energetic and may even inspire you to dance around your bedroom (as I started to do while listening to it) compared to the darker music they produced in the past. Sure, there are some more somber tunes like ‘Run, Run, Run,’ but there is clearly a rejuvenated spirit that runs through the LP that will bring old and new fans together for this new era of Tokio Hotel.

We had a chance to chat with singer Bill and multi-instrumentalist Tom Kaulitz (brothers), bassist Georg Listing and drummer Gustav about life, music and everything in between. Not only were they an open book about the obstacles they faced being famous in their hometown and trying to live a “normal life,” but also how much the band members have grown into men and what the next few years will be like for them.

“Now that we started going on the road again,” Bill Kaulitz told us, “it doesn’t matter where we live — in other countries or hotels or the bus or whatever. So for the next two years, it really doesn’t matter where we live.”

Find out what else Tokio Hotel revealed in our exclusive chat below:

You guys have been laying low since ‘Humanoid,’ though you’ve all been doing your own things. Can you take me back a few years to the time before you started working on ‘Kings of Suburbia’?

Bill: Well, we kind of took a break for like a year. After ‘Humanoid,’ we were touring and were on the road so much, playing in South America and in Europe. So we were on the road for a while, and then for the next year we didn’t do anything. Well, Tom and I moved to Los Angeles from Germany. Then we slowly started to get back in the studio and make music again. We just got inspired by the place and everything so we started to write songs, but we weren’t working on the album constantly. But there were times for a couple of months where we weren’t in the studio. We were doing something else or just enjoying life because we didn’t have any deadline or anything like that. We just would write the songs and be in the studio and make the best possible album and release it whenever we were ready.

I was watching a few things on your YouTube channel, ‘Tokio Hotel TV,’ and one of the videos that struck me was about the reasons Bill and Tom moved to Los Angeles and how it was hard for you to actually live in Germany. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Bill: I think the whole move to America was, of course, for private reasons, and it was super necessary to to do that. I mean, it wasn’t possible for me to actually have a life outside of this band. So when we went home [to Germany], it was kind of like living in a prison the whole time. We couldn’t go outside. We couldn’t do anything.
Tom: Just to go outside, you have to run into a van and talk to all your people with bodyguards and all this. So whatever you do becomes such a big deal, you know what I mean? Doing regular stuff wouldn’t be possible.
Bill: We thought that if we wanted to take a break or if we want to live life for a moment, it’s just not possible in Germany. We’ve been trying for so long. One time, some people actually went into our house, and that was the moment we were like, “OK, we just can’t do it.” So after that we kind of moved away — and it was good. It really worked for us. And in Los Angeles, everyone has their own things to do so it’s the perfect place for us to hide and just do normal stuff.

What’s the best part about living in Los Angeles?

Bill: I love the weather — and I love the freedom.
Tom: It’s pretty much the same thing. But what I hate about L.A. is everything is closing early, and you can’t get alcohol after 2AM. It’s kind of hard because you always want to have some for parties.

And for Georg and Gustav, how has it been traveling between Germany and California?

Georg: We absolutely love Germany because our houses and friends are here, and we love to have them around us and as close as possible. But I also like to go to L.A. from time to time, but the city is a little bit too huge for me. I prefer Magdeburg [in Germany]. [Laughs]
Tom: You know what? The truth is, Georg and Gustav are loving the jetsetter life, and that’s why they like living in Magdeburg. Everybody’s recognizing them on the street and driving their huge cars and just living the life over there. [Everyone laughs]

Now onto the album. Even though it does have that Tokio Hotel signature sound, it also feels really different from what you’ve done in the past. What influenced these changes in the sound?

Bill: I feel like it was totally not planned. People think we have this huge plan on what we’re doing. We’re just going with the flow and writing and never think about anything before it. We don’t think of a certain sound or a certain way on how to approach the album or anything like that. It just comes out of us. But at the same time, we wanted to make an album that makes sense and sounds cool. That’s how you pick the songs from the 50 songs you wrote and recorded. But we never really talked about the sound. It was just something that was in development. I feel that in five years, you just change so much. Your taste level and everything is changing, so it just kind of happened.

How long did the album actually take to make?

Bill: If I were to break it down, I would say around three years. But of course, we took months off.
Tom: You’re not working constantly. Sometimes you just go into the studio, eat pizza and drink beer, then drink beer and eat pizza, especially if it’s super late. And that’s the cool thing about our jobs. [Laughs]

What are your most memorable songs on the album?

Bill: It’s ‘Stormy Weather’ because it’s the first one somebody wrote. Then after that, it was like, “OK, this is the most important song and reason to make an album.” After that song, we decided to make the new album. Before that, we were playing around with songs but didn’t really take it that seriously. But after this one, we knew it was time to make an album. So I feel that song is the most important one for this album.
Tom: It’s really, really hard to tell because I did all of the production at the time. So I spent a really long time with each song, and we put so much work into it. But when I think back, ‘Girl Got a Gun’ is a special song for me because this was one of the songs that, since production, everything went super fast. We wrote this song in a couple of hours, then I laid out the production, and everyone just loved it. So it took a day to pretty much finish the whole thing, at least we thought. So in the beginning, it was the song that everyone loved. But when we got to the end of the production, this [song] then became the one that was the most difficult for me to finish because everybody had so many changes to it. And production wise, I’m so proud of this song because there are so many details that went into it.
Georg: For me, it was ‘Great Day’ when I put down that bass line. It was this very special feeling and atmosphere. I have good memories about that time in the recording studio.
Gustav: It’s ‘Louder Than Love’ for me. I’m on the drums. And when you listen to it, you feel something special.

So the album’s been out for a few months now. When it was initially released, it seemed to chart really well in several countries. — Tokio Hotel were clearly not forgotten. How does it feel that even after all that time you guys were on a break, you put out an album and it automatically hit No. 1?

Bill: It’s amazing! It’s exactly what you want. [Everyone laughs] It’s the best. It’s the dream scenario.
Tom: If you can fly under the radar and have a life and then you put out something, then people are interested, love it and then it goes No. 1, it’s amazing. This is probably the best thing that can happen to you as an artist or a band, I think. But at the same time, we never expected that. Nowadays, people are releasing records and putting out stuff all the time, every day, and a lot of people are hustling. It’s crazy. I mean, the music industry has changed so much, and we’re still young. We’re a young band, but we’ve been in the music industry for over 10 years now.

What are some of the misconceptions that people still have about Tokio Hotel?

Bill: There are still people out there who think we’re a made up band or that we were put together by someone because “they’re all so different,” like we’re from a TV show or have some cool manager in the background. [The band] started a long time ago, and we got together because of music. And the fact is, we’re a band that started in our hometown because we loved music. And we write our own music and play our own music. We’re all musicians. Unfortunately, this sometimes gets a little lost.

Since you started when you were young, what’s something you wish you could have told your younger self?

Bill: I feel like everything makes sense, and I wouldn’t change anything in the past really. But I would probably have told myself to chill out and not take too much responsibility too early. I remember when I was 13, I thought I could be with it all and that I could handle it all. I couldn’t wait to become 18 and live by myself and do all that stuff. So I took everything very seriously. And looking back, I kind of see how being innocent and not having as many responsibilities as a kid would have been good. I always wanted that, but now I wish I would have told myself to have fun and enjoy my teenage years more.
Tom: I would probably have told myself to read the contracts that I signed. [Everyone laughs]
Georg: That’s a good idea. I would have done that as well.

What are your plans for 2015?

Bill: We always have a million plans, but I think it all comes down to how much can we do in year. So the new year looks really crazy. We just saw our schedule for the first few months and basically we’ll be in rehearsals to get our show together. We’re going to do a lot of promotion in the U.S. and then tour the rest of the world and play in every country. We’re also always making new music and are planning to make a new album.

Tokio Hotel’s latest record, ‘Kings of Suburbia,’ is out now via Island. You can pick up your copy at this location — and make sure to stay up-to-date with everything happening in the band’s world, including their tour plans for 2015, at their official website.

Interview by Emily Tan
Source: Diffuser.FM

OK! TV USA : Interview with Tokio Hotel - Los Angeles (13.01.2015)

OK! TV meets up with the members of German pop rock band Tokio Hotel to get their thoughts on their new single, "Love Who Loves You Back".

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