TOKIO HOTEL are Bill Kaulitz (vocals) & Tom Kaulitz (guitar), Georg Listing (bass) and Gustav Schafer (drums), and their story reads like the script for a blockbuster movie…
‘… A band from a town in East Germany become the biggest stars of the past 20 years in their native country, charting records at No. 1, playing to ten or twenty thousand each night and being feted with every German industry award. Before long, the four musicians are travelling farther afield, and demand is growing fast – not just from an increasingly manic fanbase, but from the mass media too. Much attention is focussed on the frontman and the guitarist – identical twin brothers with a potent ‘fight for your dreams’ philosophy. The former is a striking, androgynous-looking performer, pierced & tattooed, an artist effortlessly able to drive his followers into a frenzy, whilst the latter cuts a distinctive dash of his own. They record & release two full albums of memorable guitar-driven anthems, complete with German lyrics, and Tokio Fever rages out of control…’
You can already hear the cameras starting to roll, except…
The script would have to include the fact that two of the TH members were just 13 years old when they made their first record, and they are still all under 21 today. So no-one would believe it. No way.
Next!
ACTUALLY, NOT only is the above synopsis free from artistic licence, but if anything it underplays the impact the band have made on a German market where ‘Tokio Fever’ is now an epidemic…
Since signing with Universal in May 2005, TH have sold approaching three million records & DVDs in Germany alone, making them the country’s most successful band, with a host of domestic awards jostling for space in the collective cabinet (nine platinum/four gold, at last count, plus an additional four platinum awards for sales in Austria & Switzerland). And they played the most successful debut live tour EVER to grace German stages.
The two TH albums – 2005’s ‘Schrei’ (‘Scream’) and follow-up ‘Zimmer 483’ (‘Room 483’) – have both topped the charts at home, spawning four No.1 singles, and in the case of the former, staying on those charts for 66 unbroken weeks.
Meanwhile, the first leg of the European stadium tour in support of ‘Zimmer…’ (April 3rd - May 14th) saw the group playing in front of young crowds six to twenty thousand strong. All going mad. All of the time. Something underlined in the reddest possible ink by the ‘Schrei-Live’ DVD, issued in 2006, which has now sold approximately 100,000 copies in Germany, pushing total DVD sales for TH to the quarter million mark…
And just to make the ‘script’ even more improbable, all of the above (and more!) has been achieved in less than two years – although the speed of this breakthrough should in no way imply either fast-tracking or favoritism. In the world of TH, dues have very much been paid...
