(15.12.2014)

Interview with Bill & Tom on 1Live,
tomorrow at 5 p.m. Est

Really all started with “Durch den Monsun”, then came “Schrei”. The hysteria of Bill, Tom, Gustav and Georg is as undiminished.

The fact is: Tokio Hotel are one of the few German bands that are very successful abroad. In France, they are heard as well as in North and South America. For a long time already 1/2 of Tokio Hotel reside in Los Angeles, recently they released their fifth Studio album “Kings of Suburbia”.

Tokio Hotel talk about the current album and the Promidasein in the United States.

– source

The Monsoon on the Westcoast

The twins Bill and Tom Kaulitz fled from the media frenzy to the United States have after a break-in at her house. For four years they’ve live in Los Angeles, recently they released their fifth Studio album “Kings of Suburbia”.

Ingo Schmoll sits with Bill and Tom in the legendary recording studios in THE VILLAGE

– source 1
– source 2

Interview DOWNLOAD (audio)

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!

You experienced all of this in such a young age, how old were you? 15, 16?
Bill: Yeah, 15 or 16..

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…

1LIVE, one hour at Tokio Hotel in LA…

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)

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.

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.
Pink Floyd…
Tom: Pink Floyd has also recorded here…
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.

Do you still know when you made the decision that you are going to move here?
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.

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…
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…

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.

already addressed 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, assistants, 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.

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…

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…

1LIVE today with Bill and Tom from Tokio Hotel in LA, where they live. Where are Gustav and Georg actually?
Tom: They are in Germany right now, but they will come here next week again and then we’ll do some promo (please note that the interview was done in November already), and then we’ll do some small performances until, I don’t know, the end of the year, promotion, playing some songs here and there, and next year we’ll be on tour together.

Don’t they like being on TV as much as you do or why do I always have the feeling that when I see your interviews that they’re a bit…
Bill: Well, they’re not…

*something makes noise*

That’s the dog by the way…
Bill: To be honest, they actually really don’t like it that much being on TV. They don’t have a big problem with it, so it’s not like they think “We don’t want that at all” but if they don’t have to, it’s totally okay for them that we do that. They really love to be on stage and play the songs but all the other things like photoshoots and interviews are just not their cup of tea.

Somehow the focus is always on you, so they find that rather good? It’s not like they say “We also want to have that”…?
Bill: Nah, they also had a way more relaxing life because of that. Many people think.. we also see it among the fans when they say “Oh again it’s Bill alone on the cover”, but we don’t have such discussions at all internally. We never talk about how long someone occurs in a video or who is on which photo. There are no fights between us about that, and there have never been. I think everyone has their position and task in the band and is happy with that.

Are they involved in the creative process when you write new music, or are they only in the video and play along?
Bill: Uhm, it varies. Concerning the music, Tom is doing most of the stuff, because he’s also producing and…
Tom: …well, because he’s also the most talented…
Bill (laughs): Nah, but Tom already had some songs finished and then we went in the studio and added live instruments with them. They also bring their input to the work of course and they also have ideas to maybe change something when Gustav wants to change something with the beat for example.. But they don’t actively write songs because…
Tom: They’re just like.. they play their instruments.
Bill: Exactly..
Tom: And you can’t write that many songs with drums… (laughs)
Bill: But we also once were on such a “song-writing holiday” together, where we flew away for two weeks and…
Tom: The problem…
Bill: …and we played and jammed around a bit.
Tom: Exactly.. we played and jammed. But we have to say that as a band we’re incredibly undisciplined. Bill and me are more disciplined on our own than when we’re with the band, because we have such an energy, for example when we’re rehearsing, we actually only make fun all the time, and we’re only rehearsing one song maximum. And the rest of the day we…
Bill: …hang around.
Tom: Yeah, we chill and hang around, eat something and play table tennis or so.

It’s always said that everything you do is completely calculated, nothing is left to chance. What would you say about that?
Tom: On one hand I see it a bit as a compliment, because it only means that it somehow must be good what we’re doing and that it comes across like we’re giving thought to it a lot, which we do, but there’s no master plan or a huge machinery. People always think “Oh God, they have such a huge record company and all those clever managers and consultants” which created this and planned it, but we never had that and we most probably will never have that. For example we’ve also never had a typical manager. We always did everything on our own, and I think Bill and me we couldn’t even handle that. We would go crazy if there was someone who’s counseling us the entire day. To be honest, I hate to get advices.

So you have the control about everything that’s happening? And can one say that you’re a bit of control freaks?
Bill: Totally. Actually we’re kinda sick control freaks, we’re actually pissing off everyone in our team with that because it’s hard then for some people to do their job well. Because they always come back to us with all the things and when Tom and me are in Vegas on the weekend, then we don’t answer anything sometimes… (laughs)
That just happened…
Bill: Yeah, that just happened, but for me it’s just… that’s our baby, that’s our band. And I can’t live with it if other people make decisions for us. If I make decisions on my own and it doesn’t work out well then, I know I fucked it up all on my own and I can live better with that then, than if I know that some idiot made this decision for me and it went wrong. I couldn’t deal with that at all. And as I said, I have always been self-determined and that’s really important to me.

Above all you knew that you wanted to make this thing, you wanted to go out, play live and reach the audience and so on. Since when did you know that?
Tom: Actually we had a relatively small hope…we had the band all the time, also during our school time and always played some gigs on the weekends, and we were always happy when we had some bigger performances where we got 250 € or so, those were the biggest performances for us to date.
Just like nowadays, right?
Tom: Just like nowadays, exactly, so we could earn some pocket money.. But uhm, we never had… I mean, in Magdeburg there were like a handful of bands and you met in the clubs at the weekends, but there is no record company or management or… there is no music industry. So we never really had hope that a video of us will play on VIVA or MTV. We couldn’t even imagine that. And that it worked out in the end actually still feels like a wonder today.

Now of course everyone comes and says “Oh that thing with all the sexed up stuff, the video and single cover with this weird clit mouse is all planned”…
Tom: I have to say that when we noticed that all the people said “Oh now you have created such a sex package” … Anyway I think that sex as a strategy doesn’t work for guys as well as for Christina Aguilera for example… (Bill laughs)
Or Miley Cyrus…
Tom: Yeah.. But I think in general it works better for women. It just happened, because Bill wanted to shoot this orgy video all the time and…
Bill: Yeah, it’s really true.. But I also have to say that the people get it all together and consume it so quickly. But when you make the videos, there are longer periods of time in between of course. We shot the video for “Girl Got A Gun” for example way earlier than the one for “Love Who Loves You Back” and then we don’t see it together anymore. We decide our idea actually relatively spontaneously, what we want to do. It also depends on the situation, you don’t sit together at the table and think about how to attract the most attention or how do you make a good promo action. But it really happens in the moment. You have a vision for the song and an idea to it, and it just somehow happens. And when it’s released the people consume it so quickly, they watch one 3-minute-video and then the next one.. and then it’s a package for them, but which was months of work for us, which we didn’t see as coherent.

Translation by:Herzblut

(10.12.2014)

Guitarist Tom Kaulitz Discusses New Tokio Hotel Album, ‘Kings of Suburbia’

Following the success of Tokio Hotel’s 2005 debut album, Schrei, twins Bill and Tom Kaulitz — along with bassist Georg Listing and drummer Gustav Schafer — became the most successful German rock band of the last 20 years.

Tokio Hotel have built a huge fan base and sold more than 7 million albums worldwide.

But in 2009, after years of relentless recording and touring, the band decided to take a break and relocated to Los Angeles to find new inspiration. The result is the band’s third album, Kings of Suburbia.

From the propulsive and sensual “Love Who Loves You Back” to the catchy, guitar-driven “Girl Got a Gun,” Kings Of Suburbia combines song writing maturity with polished production.

I recently spoke with guitarist Tom Kaulitz about Kings of Suburbia, his musical upbringing and more.

GUITAR WORLD: A few years ago, the band made the move to Los Angeles. What was the reason behind it?

We recorded our last record in 2009 and afterwards decided we needed to take a little bit of a break. We wanted to go to a different city to find inspiration and also start a little bit of a private life. We had been on the road since we were 15, putting out records constantly and being out on the road touring. So we decided to go to LA and produce the new record there.

How would you describe Kings of Suburbia?

It’s a little more electronic than the albums before. We played a lot with new sounds and programming, which was something we had never done.

Our whole song writing process changed a little bit when we started to write for this record. For the first time in our career, we really had the time to do things the way we wanted. It was a development for us. We built a home studio and I started to program and lay down some riffs. Then we met up with a few producers and songwriters and said, “OK, let’s see where this goes.” It turned out amazing. We’re really proud of this record.

You mentioned the song writing process. Can you tell me a little bit more about it?

It changes all the time. In In the past we would usually take our acoustic guitars, sit together and jam and then take it from there. For this record, we really wrote on track. Most of the time I would have a demo that was pretty far along and the others would then come up with melodies.

Do you have plans to tour in support of the new album?

Yes. We’re already planning on touring most of next year. We’ll start out in Europe and then we’re going to play the U.S. We already have a few dates set for early next year and the summer. We’ll be playing all over the Asia, South America and Europe.

What can you tell me about your musical upbringing?

We grew up in a small town in East Germany and always had music around us. From the time I was able to play three chords on guitar, we went on stage right away to present it. We’ve always knew that we wanted to do it professionally but grew up in an area where there was no real music scene. So we went to school with the idea of possibly taking on a different job, but things just took off. We’ve been doing this now for 14 years, and it’s been amazing.

Who were some of your musical influences?

I was always a huge fan of Joe Perry and Steven Tyler. The first record I got from Aerosmith was Big Ones, and I remember listening to it all day, every day! [laughs]. My stepfather was also into music and played guitar and introduced us to AC/DC. AC/DC and Aerosmith were the bands we grew up with and loved. We recently met them [Tyler and Perry] at a concert, and it was a dream come true.

What excites you the most about this next stage of your career?

I’m most excited about touring next year. Music has changed so much over the years. Today, it’s all about touring. We love being up on stage and are looking forward to playing. We’ve been pretty much everywhere in the world except Australia. So we’re hoping to get chance to play there as well. Touring is the thing that keeps us going!

– original article

Tokio Hotel’s Bill And Tom Kaulitz Talk New Album ‘Kings of Suburbia,’
And The Sexy Music Video ‘Love Who Loves You Back’ EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

Tokio Hotel is back!

Founded in 2001, the German pop rock band became huge in the 2000s, selling over 7 million albums worldwide. Though they were biggest in Europe and South America, they also made their mark in the US, becoming the first German band to win a VMA (for Best New Artist). In 2011, the band took a much-needed break and founding members Bill and Tom Kaulitz moved to Los Angeles to enjoy a little anonymity. The result – their first album in five years, “Kings of Suburbia.”

We called up Bill and Tom to talk about Tokio Hotel’s new album, the super sexy music video for their lead single “Love Who Loves You Back” and their “Mariah Carey tour rider.”

Moving from Germany to Los Angeles was a huge change for you. What was that experience like?

Bill: It was a massive change. You can’t even compare how we were living then and how we’re living now. We were on the road for such a long time. We’ve been performing since we were 15, we were been putting out one album after another and traveling all the time. So we never really had a private life aside from the career. It was just a lot of work and traveling all the time. We got burned out. We needed a change. We didn’t want to make another album that just sounded like the one before it. So we really needed that change, and Tom and I were finally able to go outside without any security, without having people in front of your house, and just be like normal people.

Do you think you’ll ever move back to Germany?

Tom: I don’t know, I don’t think so.
Bill: We go back for Christmas and for vacation. We like Europe! I think if we could live there, then we probably would have never moved away. But it’s just impossible for us to have privacy and the balance with a career. LA is way more comfortable for us. But then we want to live everywhere. I want to live in New York for a while because I love the city so much. So you never know if we’ll stay in LA. But it’s certainly been a good city.

What were some of your influences for “Kings of Convenience”?

Bill: The biggest influence and the biggest inspiration for the album was the new freedom Tom and me found living in Los Angeles. We moved from Germany to LA before we started recording the album, just to find some privacy and live life. It worked great for us. I think the biggest inspiration was life in general, to do normal things, to be with people and be out. We’ve been out a lot, so I feel like the nightlife was a big inspiration. That might be why the album is so electronic, it’s inspired by the club scene and the electronic scene. In the studio, we started to step out of our comfort zone and try different things and different sounds. That’s why this album sounds different from what we’ve done before.

I wanted to ask about the music video for “Love Who Loves You Back.” It’s very provocative! Did you come up with the idea for the video?

Bill: Yeah, it was. We are super hands on, creative-wise, and I love to come up with all the videos and photoshoots and album art and everything. I always wanted to make a video like that. I’ve always had this idea inspired by the movie “Perfume.” I was always inspired by that because it’s one of my favorite movies. The guy keeps creating the perfume and at the end he pulls it out and everyone starts to make out and it turns into this huge orgy. I always thought that we could do that with our song and our music instead of perfume. I wanted to do it with the last album but we never had the right song or the right director. It was just the perfect song and the perfect time to do it. We came up with the concept and talked about it with the director and he was loving it, he said, “Yeah, let’s do it.” And everything came together. It was definitely an interesting shoot, it was a lot of fun.

What was the filming process like?

Bill: We shot in a super old hotel in downtown Los Angeles. We shot in the basement. It was all grimy and old and it was very cool. We had so many people there. We kind of free-styled the whole thing. We had a rough idea of what we wanted and then we just saw, with all the people, where everything goes. If people were comfortable, we would take it further and further. We started very slow but went further. Then we saw tongue!

I wanted to ask about your fanbase. Even though it’s been five years since you released new music, your fanbase seems to be as strong as ever. Were you surprised?

Tom: We were definitely surprised. The label and everyone who knows things told us that it would be career suicide to stop putting out music, that the industry changes so much and people are always putting out new music. They said, “You guys are insane, you’re going to kill your career.” And we said, “If that’s the case, then that’s the case, but we don’t want to put out a shitty record and this is what we need.” So we kind of just did it even though everyone told us it was not a good idea. We never expected that the fans would wait for the music to come out, so we were definitely surprised by how they reacted and how many people waited all these years for us. Even during the hiatus we were still winning awards so our fans are so incredible. They’re so amazing and so supportive and we’re really lucky to have them, these days it’s hard to have fans who are so supportive.

When I googled “Tokio Hotel,” “fanfiction” was an autocomplete and I also found a lot of trivia quizzes and fan art.

Tom: They are creative. We get a lot of presents, a lot of creative stuff that the fans are doing. It’s insane, some of them spend so much time on things. Last week, we were in Mexico and it was crazy how many people showed up, and how long they waited to give us something. Some of them would give us their personal Bibles or a personal piece of jewelry from their family, it was so much personal stuff. It’s amazing how much love they have.

– original article

(Nov, 2014)

Germany

“Sometimes our fights escalate”
We met Tokio Hotel in L.A.

Bill and Tom Kaulitz – two names that embodied teen hysteria and prepubescent sexual fantasies of their then, most of the time, female emo-audience from the middle of the 00s, even though the emo genre didn’t even exist back then. With their band, Tokio Hotel, the identical twins climbed the European charts without any detours after quitting school and moving away from their town in Magdeburg. And they also made it into several gossip columns of magazines, at least once a week once their career took off. 2010 they put an end to it: They retreated into the anonymity of Los Angeles. Far away from Germany, and from their fans. And the media. The big break after achieving everything you could achieve there. And all that happened before they were of age. With their new album “Kings Of Suburbia” Tokio Hotel are back in the spotlight. Bill and Tom Kaulitz – two brothers, one comeback with 25.

INDIE: “Why the long break and the move to L.A.?”
Bill: We just didn’t want to be in the spotlight anymore. Tom was even temporarily unsure if he still wanted to be in the band and asked me to look for a new guitarist. He would have still worked with us in the studio, but didn’t want to be in the spotlight anymore.
Tom: We made some headlines in Germany again. We ended up on the front page of several magazines talking about some random private stuff, there simply wasn’t a balance anymore. We didn’t make the headlines because of our music anymore, but with whatever we did or didn’t do in our free time. That was the point where I just didn’t want to do it all anymore. I wanted to quit. None of us wanted to continue under these circumstances.
Bill: Apart from that, I didn’t even know what I wanted to write about after the last album we released, since we had already talked about everything we wanted to talk about on our previous records. It was about time to get our private life back again, which wasn’t possible in Germany. Everything was completely out of control. At some point we just started running away from our own career and didn’t want to have anything to do with Tokio Hotel anymore. The plan was to get everything back under control first and then think about releasing an album again.

INDIE: “A new beginning at the age of 21, in a city where you don’t know anyone, after being followed everywhere by groupies – how does it feel to actually have a private life again?”
Bill: It felt unbelievably good, being able to do normal things again, like going out for coffee somewhere or simply going to the grocery store and filling your own fridge with food. After leaving school at the age of 15 we weren’t able to do those things anymore. This is the first time that we’ve been able to have a private life, a real life as adults since our career took off. At first it was really weird, because we weren’t used to it anymore, but at some point it just started being fun for us again, especially the moment I noticed that I could basically disappear in L.A. since no one knows who I am here. I was just one of many people that others pass by on the street. In the past we were a part of Tokio Hotel 24-7. Today we found a balance. We have a private life and are only Tokio Hotel when we work. I think we have never felt as balanced as we do today. We took some time to question ourselves and to discover who we are as a private person – what we like or dislike and who we are. We have hobbies, which wasn’t really the case back then. If you don’t grow and develop as a person, you won’t do either of those things when you’re an artist as well. Looking back, the break was not just beneficial for the band but also for us as people. We just couldn’t continue like that anymore.

INDIE: “Your newly chosen home-base, Los Angeles, seems to have had a big influence on the new album, since it wouldn’t have come together like that in Magdeburg.”
Bill: Definitely not. When I think of Magdeburg today, I’m in horror. It’s an extremely depressing town. But L.A. doesn’t really have a lot to do with the album. It’s actually the opposite for me: I have to say that I think that L.A. is pretty boring. Everything happens so early; the clubs close at 2 a.m. The nightlife in Europe is much more exciting. The album reflects our own private feeling of life with the big luxury of anonymity.

INDIE: “Does it get easier or harder with time, making music as siblings?”
Bill: It stays the same. But I do have to say that we don’t just have that typical brother connection other siblings have, we’re identical twins. It’s hard to explain to other people that we’re not just brothers, but that we actually are the same in a lot of aspects as people. We live together and have also spent every single day together in the past five years, even without Tokio Hotel.
Tom: The question of needing a break from each other or living alone doesn’t even arise. We do everything together and know everything about each other, we’re basically one person. Even if I’m generally the more likeable one, out of us two.

INDIE: “You live together, which one of you is responsible for washing the dishes?”
Bill: None of us, we’re both lazy people. Most of the time we wait for our housemaid to do it for us. But if there is something important we have to do chores wise we also do that together.

Tom: But I am the one that always drives the car. Bill never drives. I’m always the driver, which is good, it’s as it should be. When I have to sit in the passenger seat I get nauseous. I hate sitting in the passenger seat and getting driven around. I love driving cars, I love driving bikes and I will have to get used to someone driving us around again when we’re back on tour. I would even prefer driving the tour bus myself!

INDIE: “So there is no friction between the two of you?”
Bill: Very seldom. It’s not like we never fight. When we fight, then it gets really intense, but we’re not the type to hold things against each other forever. The connection between identical twins is a little stronger than the one between brothers. And we don’t know it any differently. We shared all our experiences with each other. There is virtually nothing that I could tell Tom about my day that he wouldn’t know, because he was there and experienced it with me. We live a completely identical life.

INDIE: “What’s the topic you fight about most often?”
Tom: That depends on the situation; most of the times it’s about work though. We rarely fight about private stuff. The good thing about our fights is that I know Bill inside and out, therefore I can provoke him until it all escalates. No one else can provoke him more,and in turn, no one else can provoke me as much as Bill can. When we fight with each other, really fight, then it ends up being so loud and intense that other people usually leave the room with a red head.
Bill: People then usually ask themselves how we can look each other in the eyes after having such an intense fight, but after a few minutes it’s usually already forgotten.

Translation by:Herzblut