“Sing my song”: Johannes Oerding’s embarrassing experience with Tokio Hotel

So runs at Oerding – and has been since his youth. Before Jones’ performance on the song “Blinde Passengers”, Johannes talked about his early days as a musician: “I had my first artist contract when I was 17. I was in a recording studio near Lüneburg. I thought: Here we go! I always went there on vacation, lived in the artist’s apartment above the studio. At the time, I didn’t even know where the journey was going.”

However, Oerding was not alone in the studio at the time. Much younger guys came by more and more often: “Suddenly there was always a band called Devilish. The boys were between 13 and 15, something like that. Then I hung out with them, we always made music.”

At that time, Oerding already had a few years as a musician under his belt and felt called upon to bring the Devilish gang down to earth: “At some point I sat around in the kitchen with the two boys and said to them: You know, boys , the music thing is a bit like playing the lottery. You have to make sure you do something else. It may not work. Make sure you cover yourself!”

The rest is music history: the band stormed the charts under the name Tokio Hotel, and Johannes Oerding couldn’t believe it: “Half a year later: Tokio Hotel is the biggest band in Europe, everywhere! And I thought: Those are the guys from the kitchen. I was so ashamed that I told Gustav the drummer and Tom about the horse.”