MY FIRST TIME
A TEEN STAR IS GROWING UP. FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER AND EXCLUSIVELY FOR MAX THE SINGER OF TOKIO HOTEL, BILL KAULITZ, POSES FOR PHOTOGRAPHS WEARING THE LATEST TRENDS FOR THIS AUTUMN.
German original by Marcus Luft
Photos by Jens Boldt
PAGE 116
“Within the band we certainly talk a lot about what it’s like growing up. Something like that is on our minds a lot.”
It’s not like being a grown man in your mid-thirties necessarily makes you a fan of the band Tokio Hotel. Sure: one thinks their album “Schrei” which they’ve sold more than three million copies of, is great. One has heard that even Campino (nb singer/songwriter of the German band Die Toten Hosen) thinks their music is super. However, somehow one can’t picture themselves at a concert of the band from Magdeburg, standing next to heavily sweating girls that hold up a banner saying “We want to see your d*cks”. That’s how one goes rather prejudiced to the MAX photo shoot with Bill Kaulitz, the singer and saint of all girls aged eight to 18. He’s skinny, very skinny. However, his hand shake is firm. He seems reserved. However, it soon becomes obvious that Bill – mostly by older people who think they know in what pigeonhole they have to put those teen stars – is misjudged. Bill is more grown up than some people whose son he could be. He knows how he comes across as to others. Or rather, how he meets the expectations of others. He is a poser. In front of the photographer’s camera he moves like someone who has been working in the music industry for decades. Bill doesn’t pretend to be a star. He is one.
In the dressing room he rummages through his blue Louis Vuitton bag, in the mirror he meticulously checks that his massive necklace by Diesel sits right. No question: Bill is all about style. He knows his way around fashion. He knows the hot brands and knows how thin a tie has to be so it’s considered “hip”. “He constantly flicks through all the magazines to know what’s in at the moment” someone who’s on the road with him a lot reveals.
“It has always been important to me to have my own style”, he says later while talking to him. Suddenly he isn’t shy anymore at all. He talks fast and self-confident, sophisticated and intelligent. “Even back in school, I wanted to be different than the others. I didn’t care that I was slagged off by others because I used eyeliner. Equipped with this kind of self-confidence he not only conquers Germany but already some parts of this world with Tokio Hotel as well. Maybe that’s mainly down to Tokio Hotel being different than other so-called teen bands. They are genuine. They began as a band of school children who managed to find a record label. That’s how Bill became one of the most successful and well-known singers in Germany. That’s not easy. “Of course, more and more people try to interfere by now. However, our close circle has stayed the same.”
Bill also doesn’t let others interfere when it comes to clothing. He likes to buy in second hand shops and puts his outfits together himself. However, it’s not really easy like that though. Bill is 16 [years old]. Others his age would take the bus after school to get to H&M in the afternoons. He takes a taxi or has a driver to being able to just quickly spend a few hundred Euros in designer shops. “I’m surely not a fashion victim,” he claims. “Currently everybody is wearing those really skinny jeans. However, I rather choose some bootcut ones.”
Fashion also always means to slip into a role. And of course Bill’s stage outfits go perfectly with the job description of a star. One expects exactly that look from him. “That might as well be, however, I don’t even think about something like that when I get dressed,” he defends himself. “This look is actually exactly the one I’d also be wearing in private. However, I have to disguise myself in my time off so nobody recognizes me.”
To just walk to the bakery shop with a hood pulled down where dozens of girls could collapse – there’s a risk of cracking up. Losing it. Except for a few scandals exaggerated by the tabloids, the guys from Tokio Hotel seem to be dealing pretty relaxed with the entire buzz. That’s because they reflect on what’s happening with them. “We often talk about how we’ve changed and are still changing”. For example, when they were watching this spring’s Echo awards together recently. “Our voices were still much higher and by no means had we been at the point where we are today,” Bill remembers. He isn’t afraid of growing up. Why should he be? Everything can probably only get better because experts haven’t regarded Tokio Hotel as just a teen band phenomenon for a long time now.
Unlike his twin brother Tom, the guitarist, Bill knows that he will change his clothing style some day. “Tom believes that he’ll still be running around in his XXL shirts in ten years time. Of course, that’s an absolute no-no.” It’s one of the points for discussion of the identical yet so different twins who decided that they don’t always have to look the same when they were younger. “It was like that when we were children. We always wore the same.” One doesn’t have to worry about Bill there. During the MAX shoot he wore the first suit that fit him and that he liked. He immediately bought it for himself.
That leaves the thing with the “We want to see your d*cks!” banner. Does one find something like this irritating? Bill laughs. “I didn’t even see it from the stage. I think the others liked it.” However, Bill noticed only one thing in the newspaper later. “Instead of Schwänze [d*cks] the banner read Schwanze.”
