Rock On - Interview

Rock One: You stayed in Cannes recently. What was that like?
Bill: It was amazing. We stayed in a magnificent hotel with sea view, we held interviews on a sunny terrace near a big pool under palm trees. Believe me, coming from northern Germany, this really means something!
Tom: We also realised that we’ve been getting more and more French fans. There were loads of screaming people who’d been waiting for us for hours.
Bill: The only annoying thing was that I had to leave the others there and go back to Germany for an important event.

Rock One: The video for your single ‘Ready, Set, Go’ is really interesting. What was the shoot like?
Bill: It was a very demanding shoot, because to work for 28 hours non-stop!
Tom: We worked with 60 extras, and to make the footage dark like the lyrics, we created this futuristic city. All the extras played clones, with shaven heads, dressed in army clothes.
Bill: We wanted to give the impression that the clones freed themselves through our song, because that’s the theme of the track: getting people to believe in themselves, to follow their own ideas and opinions, even if they are contradictory to mainstream opinion. Sometimes have to free yourself and live your own dreams, like we have been since the beginning of Tokio Hotel.

Rock One: Do you think your fans were surprised by your look in the ‘Ready, Set, Go’ video?
Bill: That video was actually really weird for us as we had to wear horrible clothes and walk through a depressingly grey city! We weren’t worried about our image, we were just playing the roles that we thought were right for the song. Walking through the city alongside the clones was our way of describing the ordeals life can hold for us, but also the limits that you have to overcome to really achieve freedom.

Rock One: Which is what you’ve done with Tokio Hotel…
Bill: Yes, you can certainly see parallels with our lives.
Tom: It’s true that we’ve all started a new life, that we’ve all changed with the success of our band and that by following our dreams and working hard, we’ve managed to avoid the obstacles that can face you as a young German who wants to do rock music. We’ve been able to get out of our social background and follow our passion without any limits.
Bill: Nevertheless we always encounter new barriers and set ourselves new goals. I think it’s the same for everybody: you get what you search for and once you’ve achieved it, you immediately start looking for a new goal.

Rock One: How do you keep yourselves motivated?
Bill: I think we’ve already achieved a lot. We’ve always followed our own path without any exceptions and without any arguments within the band. We follow our instinct and do what seems to be good for us at that given time.
Tom: With our first album we fulfilled a number of our dreams and this is what we talk about in our new songs. With Room 483, we realised how much our fans have been looking forward to this new album. We want to show our audience that to achieve freedom, sometimes all you need is a little bit of self-criticism. We have new hurdles to overcome every day anyway, new perspectives to take into account with pleasant and unpleasant surprises. That’s life, isn’t it?

Rock One: Room 483 seems much harder and rockier than your first album. Was that your intention?
Bill: Yes, there are definitely more guitars on Room 483, which is a natural development really, because we’ve played so many gigs since the first album and have adapted our sound to big venues and concert halls.
Tom: There are also a number of ballads on our new album. We like mixing the two styles – hard, angry tracks and more romantic ones. We didn’t actually say to ourselves, ‘Let’s record a rockier album,’ it just happened during our recording sessions.

Rock One: How did you approach the new album? Was the aim for it to be really commercially successful, or to please your current fans?
Bill: To be honest we didn’t have a precise goal when we started songwriting for our second album. The songs came up naturally one after the other with no specific concept in mind. We didn’t think about the pressure of success while recording them, although we did imagine our new tracks would work.
Tom: Of course we don’t want to disappoint our fans, but to be honest, while recording our album that was not our priority. We mainly tried to create good songs we would enjoy performing over and over.
Bill: We really tried to let go when we were recording, and not think about the pressure or where it could come from. The great news was that we had more studio time, that was a real luxury. We worked with the same team of producers, and because we had more time we could really do what we wanted to, which wasn’t really exactly the case for our first album.

Rock One: Do you listen to Scream differently now that Room 483 has been released?
Bill: Yes of course, when we listen to Scream it seems like it’s a long, long time ago…(laughter)! Can you imagine – I just turned 13 when we recorded it!
Tom: The songs on Scream are very important to us at the same time though as we have spent so much time performing them. We’ve adjusted them though, they’ve grown the same way as we have. That might be why we don’t feel nostalgic about them, because they’re such a part of our daily life, even today.
Bill: We still love our first album. We’re not the type to distance ourselves from our tracks simply because they get older with time or because our new tracks could replace them in our hearts. They really are a part of us.

Rock One: Are you nostalgic about the early days?
Bill: Yes of course, we have many memories about our beginnings. Remembering them is like protection against thinking you’re more than you really are. I like remembering first times - the first time we went into the studio, our first gig, our first TV appearance, our first tour in France for example. They’re always moments of extreme excitement, a feeling you don’t necessarily feel ever again. Memories like this also help us see how far we’ve come, how we’ve developed.
Georg: We have a good laugh when we look at old photos from the early days. In those moments it’s quite natural to be nostalgic, but we’re having such a great time at the moment that we don’t really miss anything about the old times.
Tom: And when we started we were real amateurs, we didn’t know anything about a musician’s life, about rock. Like the first time at a recording studios, we were looking at it with big astonished eyes. I can remember that we thought of everything as being massive! (laughter) It’s true that we don’t feel the same way about these things anymore. Experience has brought us other joys and ways to motivate ourselves.
Bill: It’s also true that everything is going really fast for us, we don’t really have the time to be nostalgic.
Tom: Actually I am quite nostalgic about our first tour – it was amazing. It’s because of moments like those that we are where we are now and that we’re doing what we’re doing. We can’t wait to go back on tour!

Rock One: Is it true that you reveal the mystery of Room 483 in one of the tracks on the album?
Bill: Yes, it’s true. We don’t want to give away more than that though, it’s up to the fans to find out more. We don’t want to spoil the fun for them! Nevertheless, this room did exist and it was in this very location that we made a big step towards our new album. We’ll tell you more next time… (laughter)!

Rock One: Gustav and Georg, you don’t say much during interviews. Is it fair to say that you’re shyer than the others?
Georg: (laughter from the twins…) Yes, they don’t really let us say much and we have two big mouths in our band who don’t stop talking all day! No no, I’m only joking, I just simply think that we are more quiet than the others, more reserved, which is also what creates the balance and rhythm of our band. In fact, we take part, in the best possible way, in all important decisions about Tokio Hotel. I would also like to take advantage of holding the microphone to thank all of our French fans who follow us around from our arrival at the airport to the end of our gigs – it’s crazy! Thank you a million times!
Gustav: I think the same as Georg! (laughter from the others)