Behind Tokio Walls
Singaporean fans were more than lucky as TOKIO HOTEL performed on our sunny island for the second time this year.Audrey Kua gets the band to divulge all their little secrets!
The boys of German band Tokio Hotel may appear cool and collected onstage and in their music videos, but what are the boys really like when they're not performing? Back in Singapore to perform at SINGfest, Teenage managed to steal some face time with the band to get to know them better. Chatty identical twins, Bill and Tom Kaulitz, and their band mates, Georg Listing and Gustav Schafer were very enthusiastic when it came to talking about their second performance here (which was way more explosive than the small showcase they did previously)!
"The crowd was amazing and the show was good. It was fantastic!" lead singer Bill says. His brother adds, "It was really different because we played our last tour in winter and it was freezing cold. It was easy playing two hours in the cold, but here, we could only play one hour in the heat!"
Unfortunately, due to a packed schedule, the boys were unable to watch the other performances that came before and after them, which were Wonder Girls and Katy Perry respectively. "Most of the time when you play with other artistes on the same stage, everyone has their own schedule. You're arriving just before the show and there's not much time to watch the other performances," Bill explains, to which Tom quips cheekily, "Was there a better performance that night? No!"
Now that the boys have released two English studio albums and fulfilled their dream of performing in Asia, what's next on their agenda? "We're not planning another record yet," says Bill. "But we are always in the studio collecting ideas and making music so we already have some new material. At the moment, we're still on the road with our current album, Humanoid. We want to see Tokyo. We want to visit more Asian countries and we would have to play at more concerts here."
Tokio Hotel: The Secret Files
We break down the walls and get Tokio Hotel to spill some of their secrets!
Secret #1: Do you have nicknames for each other?
Tom: We have a couple of new nicknames for Georg. We call him "Schpecky", which means fat guy. Sometimes, we also call him "Chick Georg" because his middle name is Huhn, and that means chicken in German.
Bill: This is really exclusive. I didn't even know that myself!
Secret #2: Who are the funniest and most mature members of the group?
Georg: I'm both!
Tom: Yeah, Georg is both. He's not majorly brainy but based on age, he's the oldest and most mature one. He's also the funniest one. Unfortunately, he's not funny on purpose. He's just really clumsy.
Secret #3: Who is your celebrity crush?
Tom: I don't really have one! (Bill makes a face of disbelief)
Bill: He's so in love with Jessica Alba! His room is full of posters of her. She's everywhere.
Tom: That's not true. It's not a celebrity crush because if you ask me, she'll say that her crush is Tom Kaulitz from Tokio Hotel.
Bill: She's married with a child!
Tom: Yeah but her celebrity crush is still Tom Kaulitz. I mean, she has a husband and all that but it's not important to her.
Bill: You know, I never hada celebrity crush. I think there are a lot of pretty female celebrities but I don't think I really had a crush on any of them. I really have to know their personalities first.
Secret #4: This question is for Bill and Tom. Have you ever woken up one morning and wondered if you should dress like your brother?
Tom: Never. We looked exactly the same during the first six years of our lives. But after that, we developed in completely different directions. we never thought of changing our styles.
Bill: The good thing is that we know how we would look if we were to dress like each other.
Tom: Yeah, and I just have to look at Bill to know what I'll look like with short hair.
Bill: And I can look at Tom and I know I don't want to look like that (shudders). I mean, when we were really young we would switch around sometimes.
Tom: We both had short hair, and we had these shirts with our names on them so that our teachers could tell us apart. Sometimes we would swap clothes when we were taking tests so that Bill, who was better at German than I am, could complete the tests for me.
Secret #5: What do you do when you're not performing?
Tom: We don't have a lot of free time, but when we have days off, we like to sleep long hours. If I didn't have an alarm clock to wake me, I could sleep for 24 hours.
Georg: Maybe even for the rest of your life!
Tom: Sleeping, eating and watching good DVDs. If we put all our DVDs together, we would have thousands of them! We are DVD collectors!
