(05.10.2017)
Cologne, Germany
Toms Dating-Routine, Bill’s wedding wish and more. 💥 Übrigens: The “Boy do not cry” video release will take place next week. 🎬 // Wanna know everything about the craziest adventure with Georg, and Bill‘s wish to marry? We‘ll reveal even more in our interview with Bill Kaulitz, Tom Kaulitz, Georg Listing and Gustav Schafer from Tokio Hotel on sunday on styleranking.de! 💥 FYI: The video premiere of “Boy don‘t cry” will air next week. 🎬
To the premiere of thier documentary “Behind the World”, editor Lara is talking with Tokio Hotel about Instagram dating, song production, wedding plans and more! 💥 Editor Lara talks with Tokio Hotel about their work life balance, Instagram dating and wedding plans! 💥 Find out more and read the whole interview
“What happens on tour stays on tour”
Köln.
Before the Film Festival on the Cologne Hohenzollernring, a human trait is already forming at the dawn of the fifth October. Every hour, the amount of human beings grows around the red carpet. Another film presentation at the Film Festival Cologne is approaching. In the evening premiere is celebrated. Around quarter past seven, the documentary Behind the World is supposed to flicker over the cinema screen in Hall One. As a second chorus of the chart striker Monsoon is obvious, which director Oliver Schwabe has accompanied the internationally successful German band for many months. In whose daily stress and fan-ecstasy he is immersed. Which four musicians have gained their recognition with ease during the intensive filming of the private and professional. On the occasion of the Kinopremiere of Hintere Welt, styleranking editor Lara Bill and Tom Kaulitz, Gustav Schäfer and Georg Listing meet the interview and chat with the guys of Tokio Hotel about affairs, their work-life balance, crashes, wedding plans, the production process of their albums and their musical future.
styleranking: Let’s start with a question about the premiere of your documentation: What motivated you to produce behind the world?
Bill Kaulitz: We were at a point where we wanted to take the time to tell our story. There are always crazy rumors around us. It is discussed about Toms and my move to Los Angeles or the long break with the band. So far, there was no insight into how it came about and how we were working as a band. In most interviews, there is little time and no platform to explain such topics. The film is supposed to give answers what has happened in the years. Not as a justification, but as an insight, which is otherwise hard to get from the band. Then we got the concept of our director Oliver Schwabe. Although we liked it, we were a little bit skeptical at the beginning of letting someone get into our lives so easily. We filmed for over two years. The camera was always there, there were no taboos. This only came about because the final release was with us. When you leave cameras in your life, you never know what happens in the end with the material and you easily lose control.
styleranking: Since your comeback in 2014, you have emphasized that you want to create a balance between private life and career. How do you manage this, especially during such a film project?
Bill: We all live in different parts of the world and lead completely different lives – this is no more like a teenager. We are now nearly 30, one is married and has a child. Tom and I have created a world apart from the hustle and bustle around the band in Los Angeles. There we can dive and on the other side enjoy the time with the band again. We try to maintain the balance permanently. After the tour, everyone goes into his heavenly direction and disappears home. This is important for us all.
styleranking: So, finally, the friendship connects you.
Bill: Exactly! This is a very special feeling when we are four together again. Today, for example, Gustav begins to smoke like in old times, although he has actually stopped.
Tom: The energy is always the same when you’re together. We are now on tour so much that we can share our private life with no problems. Meanwhile, we are playing around the 60 shows a year – it is good to live on different continents between different parts of the world.
styleranking: Gustav, how do you bring the tour life with wife and child under one hat?
Gustav Schäfer: That’s all right. If we are touring in Europe, we are always traveling a lot in Germany, so you can go back and forth. If we play over the big pond in America next year, it will be a bit more difficult. But we get that too.
Tom: In conclusion, this is all a question of the organization. Bill and I have two children, two dogs. We can not take it to Latin America. Otherwise they are always on the tour bus.
styleranking: Your albums you produce completely yourself. How much did you take over the shooting of your documentation behind the scenes itself?
Bill: Of course we have introduced ideas. But in the end, we made Oliver easy. He had a clear vision of the film and kept to his concept.
Tom: Above all, we talked a lot from the beginning.
Bill: We were constantly in exchange. In the end we had the opportunity to kick out sequences or change them. We have seen the pre-version in the cinema in Berlin all together and were totally happy with it. Of course we had a few comments for changes. But it can also happen that you turn for months, the film looks and thinks: Absolute catastrophe! So it was fortunately not. That is why we were very fast. Oliver has put most of the work into the film and worked nonstop. During the shooting Oliver has accompanied us two periods of albums and tours. So we were in our usual business stress and he has been a director in our everyday life.
“The documentary is not a reality at home“
styleranking: Does the documentation double with the book your twins write?
Tom: I do not think so. The biggest difference to the film, which was also dear to our hearts: the documentary is not a reality reality at home. Even though we ran the cameras close to us, there should be no documentation of Bills and my house, which shows how we chill the whole day at the pool. Nevertheless, we wanted to let the cameras close to us and have our doors opened as well as everywhere. The film should not focus too much on our private life, but focus on the band’s history and our profession. The book deals much more with private thoughts. In the end, a novel remains.
Bill: So you can think about what is fictional and what is true. The novel tells from the perspective of two brothers who grow up in the music industry.
styleranking: What a coincidence!
Georg Listing: I have to say honestly, I’m already really afraid of the book.
Tom: Bill and I tell you from our perspective.
Bill: In the documentation, Oliver tells the band about the band from his out-of-sight. You get a good picture of how differently we live and how our roles differ within the band. It was exciting for us to see how we look at others from the outside. Without the view of the camera you rarely reflect this way.
styleranking: Georg and Gustav, you do not know the book yet?
Bill: No!
Georg: I do not think I’ll read it either.
Bill: Georg, we’ll give the audiobook.
Tom: The book is not finished yet. We started with the book about one and a half years ago and are still in the middle of the writing process.
Bill: We plan to release the book next spring.
styleranking: So in the foreseeable future.
Georg: There’s something you have to do.
Tom: You do not know!
Georg: I know you guys.
Bill: We want to finish the writing process this year, to make Feintuning at the beginning of next year and then to release it in the spring.
“We all want to have a unicorn tattooed“
styleranking: What is the biggest friendship proof between you guys? To read the book, it is not.
Georg: I do not think we need any proof of our friendship. We are more than friends and know each other for more than half our lives.
Gustav: Maybe make a beautiful portrait.
Tom: I also find a nice proof of friendship.
Bill: We all wanted to have a unicorn tattooed! If George does, he is a real friend. If he is the only one who does not let himself be caught by a friendship tattoo, then we really have to worry about a new bassist.
Georg: I’ll have a unicorn tattooed under the big toe.
Tom: Maybe we’ll get this all under our feet.
Bill: Do not be underfoot! Do you know how it hurts?
Tom: Do not have to be big.
Georg: Then you can bathe the cornea, and then the unicorn is gone again.
Bill: I think we’re doing this as a hedge antler.
styleranking: To find out a bit more about you, please end the sentences for each of you reciprocal. Let’s start with: After getting up, Bill …
Tom: Pretty ugly.
Georg: You’re back in top shape today, Tom.
styleranking: supplements?
Tom: Swollen. Hangover.
Georg: After getting up, Bill is usually very quiet.
Gustav: Not approachable.
Georg: He is very uncommunicative immediately after getting up. In the morning he can not stand it when a lot is chattered.
Bill: I need my time …
Georg: … until everything in the head again works.
Bill: I have my morning ritual and that takes a bit. I’m not that morning man.
styleranking: The best experience with Georg …
Georg: That will be difficult.
Tom: Drive at 40 km / h in the 30’s zone.
Bill: When he was alone in Amsterdam and we flew the next day. There Georg collapsed in the plane because he had an alcohol and drug poisoning.
Georg: Drug poisoning is not true at all.
Bill: You thought you had someone in the glass. We still think that you may have been raped. Maybe there was a pair of roofies in the game.
Tom: Not raped, but deflowered at least.
“I could imagine getting married soon“
styleranking: You have quite different relationship status. If you have to decide, do you prefer single life and independence or relationship and security?
Bill: They can not be honest now. I can be honest: Because I’ve been so long single, I’d like to be in a relationship. I could imagine marring soon, would love to be in love again and for a few years in a working relationship.
Georg: But only for a few years.
Bill: For the beginning is the first time. I have never been with someone together and I would wish me the time.
styleranking: And the others?
Bill: They’d like to be independent – I know – but they are not.
Gustav: In the end, it’s the mix. I am very happy to be at home with my wife and my child.
Bill: But – what happens on tour stays on tour.
styleranking: Then we make a theme change.
Georg: Very quickly, please.
styleranking: Social media can no longer be thought out of our lives – be it in private life, for fan contact or promotion. What role do social media play in your professional and private life?
Bill: So Tom does not.
Tom: I’m doing it only for Direct Messages.
Bill: Tom uses Instagram only for data.
Tom: I’ve never written anybody over Instagram!
Bill: Of course! That’s a lie! I know this is true.
Tom: Personally, I think it’s nice if you do not have the phone in your hand. I find it awful when people hang around the phone all day. I have my official Instagram account, which should be verified by the way, although I have never posted anything. My goal is to get most followers without posting anything. I want to revolutionize the social media world.
Georg: You’ve reached that long ago. You have to do something different now.
Tom: I have not reached that yet. Nicole Kidman, for example, does the same thing as me and has 200K followers.
“Tom uses Instagram only for data“
Bill: I love Instagram. I’m not a Facebook person.
Tom: And lots of Tinder.
Bill: Yeah, it would be nice. I like everything visual, so I’m addicted to something. Before I go to bed and right after getting up I’m at Instagram. I also have a fake account to watch things I can not watch with my official account. With my official account, I am sometimes afraid that I can do something wrong.
Georg: And what is the name of the fake account?
Bill: I will not tell. The Fake account I use really only to check out people.
Georg: I use Instagram sometimes but not regularly.
styleranking: For your fans sake: Do you look at fan accounts?
Bill: Yes! We’ll all do it. When the other Direct messages get, they look at the fan accounts and also like to take a photo.
Georg: Tom does not like it at all when he gets a Direct Messages and the account is private.
Bill: I do not like that either!
Tom: That makes no sense at all! New is also now: You send me a photo and I can only see if I accept the one. What is this? I have to look first, how beautiful the photo is, before I accept it. Then you ‘ll want to check out the profile, because the photo looks quite sweet. And the profile is private …
“Caro Daur urgently needs an assistant“
styleranking: Bill, you were recently seen on your Instagram account with Caro Daur in Los Angeles. What is your general view on Influencer?
Bill: I’m totally relaxed. Caro, for example, has long since fired away from self-esteem and makes real fashion work. She is incredibly important for the fashion industry, has earned the success and invested incredibly much time in her blog.
Tom: There’s just a difference between the bloggers. Some people can not be taken seriously and others really make something of it.
Bill: Many dissociate themselves from the influencer and establish themselves as a model, make campaigns and build up a fire. This is what Caro does. In my opinion, she urgently needs an assistant.
styleranking: Your current music style in three words.
Bill: Electronic. In the. Pop.
styleranking: all right?
Tom: If you have only three words, it’s always a bit difficult. But this description leaves a lot of room. Actually, you want to create something that does not yet exist. But that also sounds boring, so this is a very good description.
styleranking: You produce as much as or actually everything itself.
Tom: Everything. But not her, but Tom.
styleranking: Do you mix yourself?
Tom: Yes, but not all tracks. On the album Dream Machine I mixed six songs on my own and four of them we mixed externally with Andrew Dawson.
“I would never want to mix a strange song“
styleranking: This is actually the know-how of a sound engineer. How did you do it?
Tom: It always depends on how you work. For me this is certainly part of the writing and production process. I am a big fan of sound design and start very early. While I am producing and writing, I begin to mix in parallel and to create, design, equalize and compress the sounds. Eventually, the process is already so advanced that the demo only needs a few corrections until the track is exactly where I want it to be. I mix such songs myself. With a couple of other tracks, an external sound engineer will get something out of the mix again.
Bill: In fact, Tom has done everything himself over time. This has also developed from the frustration that from a certain point onwards we were no longer happy with our producers and mixers.
Tom: There are sound engineers specialized in mixing. This is not the case with me. It is part of the production and I love it. I would never want to mix a strange song, because I am such a good mixer. With my own music I can do well, but I would never write it on the flag. I do not make masters myself. We always give that off. Unfortunately our Master of Trust Tom Coyne has recently passed away. Especially for our music he was one of the best.
styleranking: At What if the bass sounds like from an analog Minimoog and you have released your album as a special on vinyl. If you had to decide: Would you prefer to produce purely analog or digital?
Tom: I like the mix of both. We do a lot of analogy. Probably I would decide however for digital, because one is thus not bound to large studios. You can now be incredibly digital, frightfully, from anywhere in the world. In addition, you can reproduce analog sounds so well that you can almost no longer recognize the difference. Therefore, I would probably opt for digital. But I love to have analog gear.
styleranking: Finally, how is it going to be musical? Dear back to the roots or the more modern the better?
Tom: More back to the roots. Maybe this is a bit far from the window leaned. At the very least, we are currently recording a lot of analog gear and live instruments, and we are more integrated in the mix than we did on the last album. Back to the roots in the sense of classical rock music will never happen again.
Bill: With Kings of Suburbia and Dream Machine, we were very electronic to make a statement. In some ways, we were afraid to use old sounds because we have developed a lot more musically. Meanwhile we have distanced ourselves from our musical origin so far that we are no longer afraid to let old sounds flow in.
styleranking: Thanks for the conversation.
From childhood, the Kaulitz twins Bill and Tom learned their future band members Georg Listing and Gustav Schäfer after a performance as a duet under the name “Black Questionmark” in a Magdeburger Club. In 2005, the four came as a band under the name Tokio Hotel with the single “Durch den Monsun” from the album “Schrei” the breakthrough. 2007 appeared with “Zimmer 483” another successful album, followed by “Humanoid” 2009. Both albums were published not only in German, but also in English language. After numerous concerts and touring, Tokio Hotel retreated more and more from the public after the “Humanoid City” tour, after fans especially watched the twins around the clock. With the move from Bill and Tom Kaulitz to Los Angeles 2010 the band put a creative break. After the Kaulitz twins took part in the Castingshow “Deutschland sucht den Superstar” in 2013, they returned to the music business with their fourth album “Kings of Suburbia” in 2014. For several months, Tokio Hotel have toured the world with their new album and performed with their fans in the usual gigantic concert halls as well as in smaller clubs. On January 14, 2016, the band announced the release of their fifth album Dream Machine, which was released on March 3, 2017, at the Hotel Adlon in Berlin. After their subsequent tour of Europe, 2018 numerous concerts will take place in the USA as part of the Dream Machine Tour. On October 5, Tokio Hotel celebrated the premiere of its documentary “Behind the World” at the Cologne Film Festival.
