Band Members: Bill Kaulitz (Lead Vocalist), Tom Kaulitz (Guitarist), Gustav Schäfer (Drummer) and Georg Listing (Bassist)
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, John Lucah 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
