TH: “We love people screaming at us” (Argentina)

“We love people screaming at us”

Hand in hand with Si!, the Kaulitz twins reveal small (I am assuming that is what capilares means...) secrets, their short history and their love for hysteria.

Even though it’s a rock center, the lights of the Avalon club, in Hollywood, are on and the attendees drink water. There are no bracelets that gives them access to the bar, because the audience composed of people under 21, the legal age to drink alcohol in the United States. Only one of the members of the band that is on stage has that permission: Georg, the bassist. And by a scratch.

There are mostly girls in the room and they can’t stop (nor want) screaming during the show of the German quartet Tokio Hotel. “Our fans are a bit crazy, but to us no madness is enough. We love the people that scream”, the singer Bill Kaulitz (18) tells Si! in the privacy of their hotel. Like always, the four attend the interview, even though Bill and his brother Tom (18), take all the attention.

They are twins. “Soul mates”, Georg Listing (21) reaches to say, fan of Oasis and owner of a languid look and a strand of straight hair over the eyes that seems to craze the fans. They are so identical that during primary (elementary in other words) they were forced to wear t-shirts with their names. But their looks can’t be any more different. “Until the age of 6 did we dressed the same, then we developed our love for music and each one adopted a look according to their musical preferences. I like Placebo and Coldplay; he likes hip hop”, clarifies the friendly Bill. He takes one hour daily and one bottle of hairspray weakly to maintain his splendid gothic hairstyle.

Tom, on the other hand, uses medium dishevel dreadlocks, his infallible baseball cap (in LA he chose the one of the Dodgers), two t-shirts that overlap and that are three sizes bigger and pants that are baggy by the hips. “I love German hip hop, which is like English except sung in German”, warns the guitarist. The drummer, Gustav Schafer (19), with white wifebeaters (they are called that right?…lol) during the show, he only opens his mouth to clarify that he likes Metallica and that he knows that the Argentinean soccer “is awesome”. “We have a relative over there, an elderly lady that lives in a farm or something like that and has wild horses”, the Kaulitz twins say in unison. They think that they’ll be able to travel to South America soon. Basta que su base de fans crezca lo sufficiente (I can explain it’s basically saying that until their fan base grows big enough. I don’t know how to translate it correctly…sorry), like it’s doing in the rest of the world: they have sold more than 3 million records and they are the biggest German (phenomenon) exports of the last twenty years. “I don’t know if we are some kind of heroes in Germany, but we are very successful over there. Of course three years ago nobody knew about us, we performed for 50 people.”, they recognize. The band, formed in 2001, released two albums in German and later compiled Scream (2007), their first English album. The public at the Avalon hummed to Monsoon, Scream, Ready Set Go and Rescue Me and that is something that has stopped surprising them. The English of Bill is the laziest (flojito can also mean loosest, either way it‘s still saying his English is the worst out of the band) one of the four but that doesn’t stop him from being the singer. “I started writing music at the age of 7, helped by a keyboard of the ones that you press a button and the sound of a bass and drums comes out. The truth is that I was always lazy when it came to learning to play an instrument. But I showed Tom the songs and he would compose the music on his guitar.” “We started playing in public since we were young and when we were 10 Georg and Gustav came to see us and there is where we formed the band”, says Tom. “It’s just that you guys sounded incredible”, Georg flatters them.

There is a video going around the web that is called the 9 rules to interview Tokio Hotel. They say they haven’t watched it. One rule does repeat itself: Bill is the boss. “Ah, yes, that is true”, the singer confirms to the laughter of the rest. In April they had to extirpate a nodule from his throat which left him without a voice for 10 days. “It was really cool because I wrote everything on a notebook and Tom had to come with me to all places and be the interpreter. Then I did 6 weeks of rehabilitation. I am fine, but of the 26 shows of this tour, we can only do 10”. Since a few years now they have only had two weeks of vacations yearly between tours that are called 1000 Oceans or 1000 Hotels, suggesting that they are always on the move. Although they have not given themselves the pleasure of playing in Tokyo, like they dream. Or with the Rolling stones. “Some fans follow us from city to city, it is awesome”. Bill says. The girls at the Avalon can’t be, because their parents are waiting for them at the exit. They leave even more enamored. In the scene, Tokio Hotel behave like a rock band. Pretty, energetic, Bill, especially, has an incredible charisma to go with his look and he knows how to talk to the camera: Cris Morena would salivate for them. Disney Rock? "Well, Georg looks like Goofy, but that doesn't make us Disney Rock. Right?"(courtesy of tokiohotelismusic).