Teutonic teen heartthrobs aim to conquer U.S.
Published 5:15 pm Friday, May 30, 2008
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 in their native land.
They’ve sold close to 3 million CDs and DVDs in their 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.” (For a review of the album, click here.)
“The in-store was massive in terms of sales and the amount of girls that showed up,” Gyger said, relaying stories of screaming teens lining the block. “The band seems to have come out of nowhere.”
Actually, Tokio Hotel came out of the Internet. A YouTube search found 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, the band has been producing weekly episodes of Tokio Hotel TV for its U.S. Web site.
For Tokio Hotel, the visual is as vital as the vocals and is propelled by lead singer Bill Kaulitz’s anime look: teased black hair; heavy eye makeup; chain necklaces and rock and roll T-shirts.
But to hear him tell it, his look comes by way of Transylvania, not Japanese cartoons. When he was 10, he dressed as a vampire for Halloween.
“After that, I started to color my hair and polish my nails. I started to wear makeup and stuff. I’d never heard of (anime),” Bill Kaulitz said.
He and his twin, Tom Kaulitz, began playing guitar when they were seven. By the time they were in their mid-teens, they were performSing in clubs, often to less than five people. Their mother’s backing was not only desired, but vital: “We had no car,” Bill Kaulitz says.
Mom has long since stopped driving the band to gigs; they have people who do that for them now. The group’s first single, “Through the Monsoon,” went to No. 1 in Germany in 2005. 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 seven miles long. “It’s still crazy to us,” Bill Kaulitz says.
But the band — which also includes bassist Georg Listing, 20, and drummer Gustav Schafer, 19 — has a long way to go in the United States. Since the group’s CD was released in May, it has sold just more than 23,000 copies.
“We are at the beginning,” Bill Kaulitz said. “We really want to be successful in America, we really want to try it.”
Tokio Hotel already has Madison Square Garden in its sights. 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. “Maybe in two years. You need goals in your life.”
