(16.06.2006)
We chatted with Tokio Hotel about drugs, sex and German music
I want to be honest: I’m not a big fan of artist interviews. This is ultimately due to the fact that you never actually experience anything new. Usually the pure boredom prevails, the artists try not to be at all entertaining and wind up their answers automatically. “The recordings were very special, the songs are really coming from the bottom of my heart and the album is the best we have ever done!” Everything is clear, thank you, bye.
Of course, it is up to us to get the right condiments to us and to spit exciting information, but many artists are resistant for a long time. In the end you have an interview, which at most 50 years old.
When the request for an interview with Tokio Hotel came, my otherwise imperturbable pessimism disappeared quite quickly. Tokio Hotel, this is the band you really do not really know what it is doing; who, over a decade ago, brought with middle-aged Rock song fans to wine and French to learn German and who were always easily ridiculed.
“Haha, Tokio Hotel, nee, the shit I’ve never heard! Do not understand why they were so successful! And what are they doing right now?” An interview with the band, which did not bother any longer with Germany and moved to L.A., could be interesting! So what happened at Tokio Hotel? How have they changed? How has their music changed?
The last one I can answer directly: For about half a year their album “Dream Machine” has been out – and it has nothing in common with the teen skirt from earlier days. Today, Tokio Hotel make synth pop, which clearly hits the 80s. Now that this decade is being celebrated again, not such bad idea – and I must say: That does not even sound so bad! I would not have thought that I would ever say it ironically. So, as I walked across this bridge, I am ready for the interview with Bill, Tom, Georg, Gustav – and two huge dogs that are in the room.
I come directly to speak of the current album “Dream Machine”, which I really liked! With this album you are away from the major label, they have completely produced themselves, made all the decisions. Was that a kind of liberation blow?
Bill: Yeah, I’d say. We did not have to work with anyone for the first time. Before that, there were still producers with whom we had to write and produce, and now it was the first time that we really had nothing left to do. We did not want to sign a contract in advance, but rather concentrate on the music first, then only to find a record company, which is then also really cool. We wanted to make music that we find very good and with which we are consistently happy, and then only to bring people on board who feel the same for it …
Tom: … and not just from the start with a strategy come from “guys, you have to do this, this and that!”, But only hear what we want to do and then tell us whether they find it cool or not ,
Bill: “Starwatch” found it then the hottest, so we decided for that. You can already feel the experience and self-confidence that you have accumulated over the years. You now know what you want.
Bill: We went back a bit to where we started, long before “Through the monsoon.” We have already written the music ourselves and have performed with it. If, of course, some other people also join in, so the hobby becomes a profession, then one loses between the fast and sometimes the essence of the whole. We do what we do, yes, because we like to write music and stand on the stage. Tom produces and likes to write, so we have put ourselves in a studio and just looked at how it goes on its own. It went well, we were all happy with it and so we did not bring any other writers or producers.
The album is called “Dream Machine” – in it you are talking about dipping into a dream world, which is-removing from reality. Is not reality enough for you?
Tom: I think it’s a bit up and down. Sometimes you like the reality quite well and sometimes a little less. The album title “Dream Machine” was already fixed, however, before we had the song. Actually, before we really worked on the album at all. I do not really know how to …
Bill: Because Tokio Hotel is a refuge for us. The band is for us a kind of dream world, which we create together with our various private all-day performances, with the whole songs and even the tours. We can not imagine a life without all this, and that is for us, I believe, this point, which we always go back to. A constant in our lives, no matter what happens outside the band and what goes private with us. We just want to go back to this dream world, where we can now do what we want. That is why the album “Dream Machine”.
In the songs it is superficially to search for meaning, to look into the past and not to repeat the anxiety, to continue to always experience new, exciting things. Feelings that “Millennials” do us somehow.
Tom: That has a personal background with us in any case. We had so much success so far, had traveled with 18 practically the whole world. Sometimes you ask yourself if something new is coming, and there is also fear that all that still comes is only a weaker variant of what you have already felt. If you do something for the first time, Bill and I talk about it quite often, it is actually always the hottest. The first number one, the first time taking drugs, to be on MDMA, the first time sex …
Where, now not so unconditionally. It is definitely the most exciting thing to experience things for the first time, and afterwards it’s always just a form of it, but not so exciting. Sometimes you have to change the perspective to enjoy things again and again, instead of in the same form, only weaker. That’s what “Something New” is about, which was the first single, and this has been so a bit pulled through the album. But that’s because I believe it is a personal story for us, also because of the “from zero to one hundred” career. We’ve done so much so early, some things are also repeated, and you think “F****, hopefully …”
Bill: You get something like a much too early midlife crisis.
Tom: Yes, you sometimes think “Hopefully everything will be exciting enough!”. Bill and I have already wished for aliens to come to earth, simply because it would be something new for us and that is why they are exciting. We love excitement, adrenaline and stress. We enjoy it totally, but sometimes we are also afraid that nothing can shake us so much. Just as this was perhaps the first time, at the first times on each level. We are with the band at a point where we are happier than ever, but such things sometimes go through your head.
Looking at the German music landscape, I feel that you are too unconventional for this market. Do you think you are not German enough for Germany?
Bill: We’re not the classical German artists, as you like them, so singer-songwriters, who then sit, sing in German and always down to earth. We’ve always had a lot of show, lots of visuals. When American artists do that, the Germans find the okay, but if their own do not turn it. For us the foreign market became quite interesting. We have never tried to be nice neighbors who have a career in Germany. The success abroad has made us relaxed, we just shit on many things because we had the luxury that we were never dependent on Germany. We did not have to worry about the German market, which would like to hear, but we could see more globally, make us feel more, be freer in what we really want to do. In the meantime, we are only interested in having fun with what we do.
On German radio we have never been played, not even with “Through the Monsoon”. We have never had an air play top ten, never. It is still so today that the stations get our new songs, but then such things as “If it were of Coldplay, we would take it on heavy rotation, but since it is from Tokio Hotel, we do not play it.” , This is simply so. We do not need to try to write a radio song for Germany at all. It is now very clear that they are not playing anyway. And you take that too. We have developed a very good relaxation.
You a few years ago then also moved to L.A. to win a little distance from Germany. How did Germany change from your point of view when you were back after a while?
Bill: I think it’s just relaxed. People have become more respectful towards us, now that we are a little older. For us, it has become easier to run around here. In the meantime, I’d rather be back in Germany. It is a bit like to go on holiday somewhere. One gets only then the beautiful things, because one has no everyday life here. That’s why I can enjoy Berlin quite differently than before and I think it is very nice to be here. Also, because I know I can go away again.
Apart from Rammstein, you once were the reason why, for example, Frenchmen learned German to understand your texts. This language-enhancing service is no longer an issue for Germany, are German texts no longer an issue?
Bill: After the third album, we stopped singing in German because the songs were written in English. Previously we had to translate the following in German and have also felt a bit compelled to do that. At some point, it was not natural for us, and we thought, ‘Okay, if the songs are all written in English, then let us leave them in English.’ There were a few discussions with the record company at the time, because they wanted to have it in German, of course, but we refused and just did not do it anymore.
Tom: So it’s not that German plays any more, but we have set the rule that we leave the songs in the language in which they are created.
Bill: I do not believe that we will change to German texts in the near future. When we started, there were hardly any other artists who successfully made German music. This had nothing to do with any connection to our mother tongue, but we could not speak English. And now there is this trend to German-speaking music. This is currently the all-purpose solution for all the people who have no success because it is such a sure shot. Perhaps at some point, a German song is produced quite naturally, but it just does not feel like it.