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"Vom Monsun an die Westcoast" (Part #1)


Interviewer: 9 years ago the first single and album of the band Tokio Hotel from Magdeburg were released. We all know how it continued, there was mass hysteria among teens, they sold millions of records, not only in Germany, but also abroad. The band won actually every imaginable award except the Grammy in the following years. Among others the „1LIVE Krone“ in 2007, which was given to you on stage by whom…?

Bill (laughs): Haha, that was you!

Interviewer: You experienced all of this in such a young age, how old were you? 15, 16?

Bill: Yeah, 15 or 16..

Interviewer: But the Tokio-Hotel-mania had its price then, you couldn’t even move freely anymore because of so much fans, and in 2010 the twins, Bill & Tom, pulled the brake and escaped to Los Angeles, Gustav and Georg stayed in Germany. That happened four years ago by now, the new album "Kings of Suburbia“ was released at the beginning of October, and I’m sitting in Los Angeles with Bill and Tom. Please tell shortly where we are right now.

Bill: We’re in the „The Village“ studio in Santa Monica…

Interviewer: 1LIVE with Tokio Hotel, or rather one half of the band. I’m sitting in a big music studio in LA with Bill and Tom, where they both still live. Well, not here in the studio, but in the city.

Tom: Well, also here in the studio… (laughs)

Interviewer: What’s your connection to this studio, „The Village“?

Bill: Well, we discovered it a while ago and we just thought the building is so cool because it’s such an old studio where so many people already recorded and there’s just such an amazing traditional studio-flair, which other studios don’t have anymore.

Tom: Yeah, a good atmosphere…

Bill: Exactly, and we recorded some stuff for the album here and really like to come here and rent it sometimes.

Interviewer: Do you know who already recorded here?

Tom: Just a bit, well I think it’s rather the question who has not already recorded here. But there are incredible stars among them, legends, among others Aerosmith, that’s our favorite band for example. But everyone has recorded here, there are also private studios, for example John Mayer has his private studio up there and I also think some other people have private studios.

Interviewer: Pink Floyd…

Tom: Pink Floyd has also recorded here…

Interviewer: And you can experience this spirit in those rooms?

Bill: Yeah, I have the feeling that there’s still also this smell of all those technique stuff and…

Tom: Yeah, also those vintage devices that just sound amazing and we just like to come here for live recordings with the band. It’s really amazing, it’s a typical studio where you bring your computer sound and add some live elements with the band.

Interviewer: Do you still know when you made the decision that you are going to move here [to LA]?

Bill: It was a relatively spontaneous decision, we first wanted to have a second home here where we just can escape to sometimes, and we wanted to keep something in Germany, but then people broke into our house, this happened on our 20th birthday and then our last haven we had in Germany was also gone and we didn’t know where to go anymore. Then we said, okay before we create a new prison for ourselves somewhere in Germany, we’ll just escape completely. And within, I think, four weeks we searched online for a house and we took our family and friends and our dogs and flew to LA. And uhm yeah, we just didn’t come back anymore.

Interviewer: And this burglary, do you know who it was?

Bill: No, uhm.. at that time there were always so many people standing in front of our house and we also had security there all the time. It surely was one of them [the people standing in front of the house] and surely everyone saw that, but no one wanted to help us, not even the police. They could never find out who did it. I only know that in the house everything was digged out and my entire underwear was on the floor…

Interviewer: Underwear?!

Bill: Yeah, they rummaged around everywhere and photographed everything and so on. And I said, okay I can’t stay here anymore.

Tom: But I think everyone knows that, doesn’t matter if it’s a private person or not, but everyone who’s house got broken into knows that I think. It’s such a disgusting feeling. You somehow feel kind of raped, because that’s your privacy and nobody wants everyone to know what’s in your bedside cabinet or so. Not that you’d have some weird things in it… (laughs) Nah, but it’s really like that, you somehow feel raped. When we got there, we already tapped the ashes of our cigarettes on the floor and so on, it already wasn’t our home anymore. But in general it’s not that we’re committed to LA, it just came along spontaneously. Bill wants to move to New York so bad, and I somehow want to go to a place that’s kinda more unusual, not necessarily a metropolis but where you could do some cool stuff. A motorcycle tour for a year in India maybe or so, or also being on the road with a backpack…

Interviewer: Would you accompany him or..?

Bill: Well nah, I would accompany him of course...

Tom: …but he doesn’t have a motorcycle license…

Bill: Exactly, that’s the first thing, and then, uhm… I can’t imagine it for such a long time.. I have to say I’m a city person in general. I also like it quiet and nature and so on, but… I can imagine going to India and then going on a trip there for two months or so, but living there… I really feel comfortable in big cities. New York or so… I really love to be there. I just like it. I also have the feeling that I’m going out way more than Tom, I just like being among people, I like those big cities.

Interviewer: You already adressed this „golden cage“, how was one typical Tokio-Hotel-day in Germany when you were still there? How can one imagine it?

Tom: Uhm… always very organized. Well, first it was like that we were on the road all the time. We had years in which we were on the road 320 to 340 days minimum. And then you come home after a tour and you fall into a sort of limbo. Because you don’t even know... well, you’re in this „tour-bubble“ then and you have all people around you, assistents, managers, tour managers, and people who manage everything for you, you actually only run after the crowd…

Bill: The day is always automatically directed by others. And that’s the thing which gets me really unhappy after a while because I actually don’t want this at all in life. You also can’t just simply get out, when you want to go to the cinema and watch a movie or eat a pizza somewhere. It’s always that you have to inform someone first and then they tell the security, who are calling the location… so everything needs a huge scheduling, and even if you want to drink a coffee somewhere it needs to be planned and scheduled.

Tom: It sounds like complaining about first world problems, which it actually is because…

Bill: It really is, because it also has a beautiful side, it’s fun, I really like being on the road and everything, but you just need the balance. And we just said…

Tom: We want to have the other side now…

Bill: Exactly, you also have to get along alone again for a while, and live on your own…

Tom: Then you can enjoy it differently again being on tour with the band and being on the road with all those people, when you also have the other side.

Interviewer: In TV interviews you said that the first year you did nothing. What is „doing nothing“?

Bill: Well, doing nothing for us was uhm, getting up in the morning and having no schedule. We had no deadline for the album, we had nothing in our calendar, and for one year we just did what we wanted every day. We got up in the morning and said „Oh, today we want to go to the amusement park…“, so we went to the amusement park…

Tom: …then you go play paintball, then you go karting…

Bill: Yeah, or you go to a concert, go to festivals…

Tom: Just normal things, you go to „Bed, Bath & Beyond“ to buy new pans and such things…

Interviewer: New pans?! (laughs)

Bill: Yeah, pans. Because we had nothing when we came here, we just had our suitcases and we first furnished our house and bought new things. And yeah, then we also partied a lot. I think I partied every day in some club…

Translation by Herzblut @ TokioHotel_Info / Please use with credit, thanks!

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