My "Almost Famous" moment - Behind the Scenes w Tokio Hotel (House of Blues 2015)

There are many moments in my life that do not feel real…

At 16 years old, I had an iPod, a notebook, a nearby park and a head full of dreams…and at the time, I didn’t quite understand the power of manifestation and vision boards. I was just scribbling away, lost in translation, thought and bliss…

My cousin just introduced me to the German pop-punk band, Tokio Hotel, and I was briefing myself on the last 3 years of their discography, music videos, interviews and things galore. I became a fan girl to the point where my style started to mirror that of the lead singer’s, Bill Kaulitz, and I went from wearing bright Rocawear shirts and jeans from Marshalls to faux leather and zippers from Pacsun, Hot Topic and Zumiez.

Everyone at one point or another had their “emo phase” but mine just never left. I fuck with faux leather, zippers, chokers, piercing and silver rings til this day.

My style was just being conceived and it was becoming edgier, grungier, sexier and I myself have started to feel a lot more comfortable with who I was becoming and what I gravitated towards naturally.

Sure, as someone who is much older now, one would dare to ask why haven’t I taken my head out of the clouds just yet?

The answer to that is simple. I was a dreamer and I believed in my wildest dreams coming into fruition…and did not stop until they did and I had it all documented for others to gnaw at.

I wanted to say, "See? It is possible. We come from the same town, we’ve been in the same classrooms, we’ve absorbed the same knowledge, but I just took it a step further and actually did the damn thing by busting the doors to the rooms they told me I wasn’t allowed in."

I infiltrated a space that opened up so many opportunities for me and were one of the best lessons of my life…one that college doesn’t even measure up to.

Growing up, there were a myriad of posters on my walls, but one that I treasured with my entire heart was a poster of Bill and Tom Kaulitz from the Polish edition of a teen magazine, Bravo. It was the equivalent of PopStar or Teen Beat in the United States.

The poster covered nearly the entire wall of my side of the bedroom I had shared with my sister.

To give you a broader perspective, I was emulating Lola played by Lindsay Lohan from the 2003 teen flick “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen” who was obsessed with the lead singer, Stu Wolf, from Sid Arthur, a made up pop-punk band.

Lola too had a huge poster of her idol on her bedroom wall, bopping to their favorite records and reciting the lyrics word for word, enamored with admiration for such poetic lyricism.

In the movie, she ends up meeting her idol and, in a rather predictable cinematographic fashion, is disappointed with him and his demeanor. It turns out Stu is a drunk. Lola says it’s disappointing that she is never going to be able to discuss his poetry with him because of his constant inebriated state.

If you grew up in the early 2000s and have seen the movie, you know that Stu essentially turns it around and becomes sober, but what is more significant about this particular scene is he returns Lola’s Coca-Cola cap DIY necklace (hello, product placement, you’re a clever one). He takes the necklace and proceeds to put it on Lola as she holds her hair up and is awaiting the magical clasp to seal the manifestation come to life.

My dream centered around meeting my idols too, but not to flex, but rather to sit down with every member of the band and conduct an interview. I already started writing for my school newspaper and was becoming really infatuated with the idea of conducting interviews. I loved watching them on YouTube, replaying them, analyzing the various techniques and approaches of other interviewers, good and bad.

Fast forward to 5 years later when I am already making strides in the world of music journalism, building my own writing portfolio and rapport with other writers, artist and band managers and record labels to see how to best promote their talent…and of course relish in the experience of reporting on it on my own accord. This push and tenacity got me to places like the headquarters of SONY MUSIC in New York City, music festivals around the country and tour stops in my beloved city of Chicago, and of course artist greenrooms backstage at various night clubs and popular poppin’ music venues.

These were places that I didn’t think I could get into, but my willpower was a lot stronger and a lot more persistent than I could even imagine. I was hungry for it…hungry for becoming a serious music journalist who would be regarded as dependable, interesting and cooperative.

Networking and building those relationships has eventually gotten me into the room that I had been in in my head, in my dreams, in the depths of my wildest imagination…for the longest time. This room was finally being opened in reality…

The person that has made this possible knows exactly who she is and she has since been a really reliable, dependable and friendly colleague that has represented other bands that buzz in my ears nearly every day (i.e. Nothing but Thieves) and I could always count on a guest spot with her.

This representative was managing the “Feel It All” tour for Tokio Hotel at the time and the boys have had a five year hiatus before stopping at Chicago’s House of Blues. I remember this moment like it happened last night.

I was sitting with my friend on his back porch, hanging out and enjoying the last rays of sunset, when I suddenly heard my phone buzzing. It’s an email from the representative asking me if I AM AVAILABLE TO INTERVIEW THE MEMBERS OF TOKIO HOTEL AT THE HOUSE OF BLUES IN CHICAGO…FOR THEIR FEEL IT ALL TOUR.

I had to blink and readjust my sight to make sure my own imagination was not playing tricks on me. The “Feel It All” album was the last tangible CD record I had bought before I fully caved into consuming music via streaming exclusively and it was currently stacked away in my backpack, on a loop on my laptop and during my commutes.

OH. MY. GOD.

My dream was coming into fruition. I immediately replied and set a time slot for the interview. I was shaking. I was happy crying. I was in awe.

This happened and the only thing that was bugging me at the time was that the girl that had shared this fantasy with me in high school was no longer in my life. She was never going to see the outcome of my manifestation, but screw it.

The day of the show has officially rolled in. I coordinated with my photographer, Mandy, who was working freelance at the time with me for a small publication, SOUND AND SILENCE, which gave me my first shot at this, and was on my way to cross off one of my biggest dreams off of my bucket list.

I remember it vividly because this happened in 2015 at the start of my 20s.

I arrived at the House of Blues Chicago and was instructed to head up to the third floor and meet the boys in their green room and everything leading up to the moment where I was breathing the same air as Bill Kaulitz felt like a blur, like I was floating on a cloud, but also fully aware and coherent as what is going on around me.

It was one of the most surreal and hardest experiences of my life because despite my overt enthusiasm, I had to remain professional and poised.

And then, I finally stepped past the threshold of their greenroom and inside their room. Bill was the first one to greet me, and then Tom, and then Georg and then Gustav. The guys were incredibly hospitable in offering us a beverage and making us feel like we’re a part of the crew. In my head, I kept trying to absorb and capture every single fleeting moment, but deep in my heart I knew that this particular part of my life was going to hold a very special place in my heart.

Digging back into my archives, I decided to relive the moment and re-transcribe my most important conversation with THE BAND that had given me confidence, had given me lyricism that has touched my heart in ways I can’t describe in so many words, and the band that helped me figure out who I really am.

Tokio Hotel needs no introduction for me, but these four German artists have set the entire world ablaze and I wholeheartedly believe that it was their eccentric energy, their desire to be different, their insisting on setting their own rules while also remaining relatively humble and grateful was the ideal concoction that has made so many people relate to them and their craft.

Their music has certainly undergone a reinvention from the days of Shrei to the days of The Kings of Suburbia in which they had proven that their knowledge of music and music theory continues to evolve, that their production level is going to be on their terms and that they’re going to let punk take a backseat and flirt with some beats and melodies, bring the essence of pop and electronic synths together to create a genre known as synth pop-punk.

Here I was, sitting right across from them, with my faux leather skirt, my faux leather vest and my ripped tights, talking and looking into the eyes of an amazing trendsetter…and to think that nearly 5 years ago, this vision lived only in my dreams.

The Interview:

Paulina Pachel: The tour is so different from what you guys have done before. Can you tell us a little bit about the concept of the show?

Bill Kaulitz: For this tour, the album is electronic. What we thought for this tour is we wanna play small venues and really connect with the crowd and have, like, a massive party. That was our idea. We thought, you know, it’s great to play big shows and all of that, but we thought it’d be nice to have an intimate venue and then turn this into a nightclub and just have a massive party. An electronic party with everyone. It took a long time to actually put everything together. We’ve been rehearsing for months and [putting] everything together. Especially this album is so hard to transport on stage because we’re only three musicians, so we had to figure out a way to bring the sounds to live on stage. That took a while, we’re trying different things. [...]

It’s been really fun, we’ve been touring in Europe, we wanted to do something new visually, something the fans have never seen in small venues. We have video production and costumes and amazing new lights.

PP: That’s amazing! So where did you derive the inspiration to create this new identity? There’s a new logo and everything. It’s a brand new you.

Tom Kaulitz: Yeah, I think it was surprising for fans that have waited so long. For us, it didn’t really feel like a transition because we took one year off after “Humanoid”. We toured a lot with this record too. We went back to the studio after a year. It took us four years to produce this [Feel It All] record. It was like a long transition being in the studio, writing new songs, getting inspired by our new life where we moved out to LA away from Germany and basically started a new life [on a personal level]. The whole band, creativity and inspiration evolved over time as well.

BK: You have to keep it fresh sometimes, you know? We started so young and of course you want to change when you get a little bit older, the taste is a little bit different. Life is changing as well.

PP: Absolutely. Obviously you’ve also been working on other projects, aside from the album, I’m just curious about the book that you’re writing right now. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

BK: Tom and me are writing it. It’s actually a dream project for me because I love to write. I always wanted to do it. The idea is that we take our life as the [focal point] or the inspiration. It’s a story about two guys who were not successful, but became successful when they were pretty young. But then there’s a lot of fiction going on. So we actually take parts of our lives and we mix it with our imagination. We leave it up to the audience to decide what is real and what is not.

TK: It’s a novel.

PP: And you’re writing in German?

BK: We’re writing in German, but of course there’s going to be an English version.

PP: Speaking of the two-language dynamic, you’ve had albums that were both in German and English before. Why did you choose not to do a German album this time?

BK: To be honest, for this last album, we kinda thought we were forced to do it because that is what the fans were expecting and demanding, to have two versions, and the record label was asking for it too. It felt a little forced. You always have to translate everything and that didn’t seem natural. I wrote this time solely in English. I was thinking in English. I was dreaming in English. I think it’s also because we moved to America and I only wrote songs in that language. There’s certain things that you just can’t translate [loosely] because it just sounds different. Like, it kind of gets lost in translation and the meaning gets lost. Sometimes it doesn’t feel right. So, I thought, we’re just going to leave it like that, just the way we wrote it. We’re not going to do a translation. If we write in German, fine, but if we don’t, then let’s just do it in English.

PP: What would you like fans to take away from The Feel It All experience?

BK: I just want them to have a night that they can remember. To have a night that has been a lot of fun, like a dream come true. They see us in a small venue and have a connection with us, with the music, with the crowd. We want to give them a night that they can remember and give them something special.

TK: For sure. I want them to go home and they’ll need a couple of days to digest everything because it was so amazing. Something that they can remember when they are fucking, 50 years old so that they can say, “The Tokio Hotel show was the best show I’ve ever seen!”

And indeed it has been.

I was floating on air for months after having had that experience. Towards the end of the interview, the boys did their famous “We are…TOKIO HOTEL” outro referencing the publication that I had been writing for at the time…it was everything and more.

If you’ve gotten this far into the article, thank you, I hope you have enjoyed this short walk down memory lane. I relive it at least once a week.

Dreams do come true. Believe in them and then seize them.

For an audible version of the interview, check out the mixcloud link below: