Glam-pop German quartet makes
teens swoon, produces weekly web shows
2 days ago
LOS ANGELES — Move over Jonas Brothers, the Kaulitz twins are
moving in.
The 18-year-old Kaulitz brothers comprise half of Tokio Hotel, a
German glam-pop quartet that is creating Beatles-like hysteria
among the teen set in their native land. They've sold close to
three million CDs and DVDs in their native country, and are hoping
to replicate that rabid fan base in the United States.
"They're the stepping stone between the tween stuff and My Chemical
Romance," says Andrew Gyger, senior product manager for Virgin
Entertainment Group, a few days after the foursome appeared at
Virgin's Times Square store in New York in May to promote its
English-language album, "Scream."
"The in-store was massive in terms of sales and the amount of girls
that showed up," Gyger says, relaying stories of at least one girl
fainting and screaming teens lining up around the block for the
event. "The band seems to have come out of nowhere."
Actually, Tokio Hotel came out of the Internet. A YouTube search
shows 123,000 video listings compared to 88,100 for the Jonas Bros.
or 21,000 for a grizzled veteran like Bruce Springsteen. To further
sate their young fans' appetite, for the last six months the band
has produced weekly episodes of Tokio Hotel TV for its U.S.
website.
For Tokio Hotel, the visual is as vital as the vocals and is
propelled by lead singer Bill Kaulitz's anime look: straightened,
teased black hair; heavy eye makeup that accentuates his delicate,
androgynous, doll-like features; chain necklaces and vintage rock
and roll T-shirts. He's so thin he appears almost one dimensional
on stage, adding to the cartoon-like appeal. But to hear him tell
it, his look comes by way of Transylvania, not Japan.
When he was 10, Bill Kaulitz dressed as a vampire for Halloween and
adopted the styling year-round.
"After that, I started to colour my hair and polish my nails. I
started to wear makeup and stuff. I'd never heard of (anime)," Bill
Kaulitz said in an interview at the Avalon Hollywood before to the
group's sold-out show in Los Angeles. He, his brother, bassist
Georg Listing, 20, and drummer Gustav Schafer, 19, are squashed
together in a leather booth in the lounge one floor above the
Avalon stage. Both he and Tom speak very good, albeit heavily
accented, English, although an interpreter stands by in case any
translation is needed.
Tom Kaulitz, the older brother by 10 minutes ("A lot of people
think Bill is the boss, but I am the boss," he laughs), developed
his hip-hop/dreads look when he was seven or eight, in part as a
way to differentiate himself from his identical twin. "When we were
six, we looked the same," Tom Kaulitz said. "We had sweat shirts
with (the names) Bill and Tom so that teachers had a chance to know
who's who."
The Kaulitz brothers began playing guitar when they were seven -
the instruments were gifts from their musician stepfather. By the
time they were in their mid-teens, they were playing in clubs,
often to less than five people, and Listing and Schafer had joined
the band.
Their mother's backing was not only desired, but vital: "We needed
the support of our parents because we had no car, no money," Bill
Kaulitz says.
Mom has long since stopped driving the band to gigs; they have
people who do that for them now as they have accumulated a team
during their meteoric rise. The group's first single, "Through the
Monsoon," went to No. 1 in Germany in 2005, a pair of No. 1 albums
and sold-out European tours followed.
The fan frenzy in Germany has reached epic proportions, such as
when a group of teen girls delivered a fan letter that was more
than 11 kilometres long. After seeing a young fan repeatedly at
shows in different cities, the band later learned that she was a
runaway who had left home to follow the group. "It's still crazy to
us," Bill Kaulitz says of the distaff attention.
After witnessing the spectacle at the band's February appearance at
New York's Gramercy Theatre, Amy Doyle, MTV's senior VP of music
and talent, became a convert.
"I could not believe the line outside of screaming teen girls," she
said. "It reminded me of the audience of the late '90s and 2000 for
Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync."
Following that performance, MTV added the video for "Ready, Set,
Go" into heavy rotation, as well as highlighted the band online, on
MTV2 and on "TRL." Tokio Hotel writes a tour diary for MTV.com,
which, Doyle says, had elicited more reader comments than any
previous tour diary.
But the band has a long way to go before they reach Backstreet or
'N Sync like sales - since the group's CD was released in April, it
has sold just over 23,000 copies. Tokio Hotel's U.S. label,
Cherrytree/Interscope, has yet to take the first single, "Monsoon,"
to radio, but Doyle says the whole package is the band's selling
point.
"Radio always helps, but there's a connection that clearly is made
when the audience sees them that you can't connect with just a
song; fans are making an emotional connection."
Indeed, at the Avalon show that evening, teenage girls packed up
against the stage so tightly that security guards started a regular
procession of lifting them over the railing as several teen become
overcome by the nearness of their heroes and the pressure of those
pushing behind them.
"It's so cool that we have fans already here. But we are at the
beginning," Bill Kaulitz. "We really want to be successful in
America, we really want to try it. There are not so many German
bands who get the chance to come to America to play."
Tokio Hotel already has Madison Square Garden in its sights, but
also knows it had to put in the footwork. On this trip, they went
to the vaunted venue; not to perform, but to see Jay-Z and Mary J.
Blige.
"It's a dream to play there," Tom Kaulitz says, shaking his head up
and down. "Maybe in two years. You need goals in your life."
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