No album, no game plan, no problem!

But as No Doubt embark on their first tour in five years, Gwen Stefani and her droogs face the biggest challenge of their career: uncertainty. By David Marchese. Photographs by Marc Hom

“We need this so badly,” says Gwen Stefani in the perpetually questioning accent of a native Cali girl. “We’ve been in a drought for, like, years.” She’s talking about the rain currently pelting the greater Los Angeles area. Presumably.

On an early March afternoon, the platinum blond singer, her hair tied back in a loose ponytail, is looking through the kitchen window of the recording studio where she and bandmates Tony Kanal, Tom Dumont, and Adrian Young have been working on a cover of Adam and the Ants’ “Stand and Deliver.” It’s the first music they’ve recorded together in half a decade.

Stefani wraps her long, thin fingers with shiny French-manicured nails around a mug of PG Tips tea. Her calf-length boots, loose slacks, and turtleneck are all black. “You get desperate trying to write songs,” she says. “Then the opportunity to sing this one came up, and now we’re going on tour – it’s like I got out of doing my homework!”

Five years since their last tour, eight years since their last studio album – the triple-platinum pop-dancehall Rock Steady – and a seeming life time since Stefani became a solo megastar and fashion mogul, she and the  boys are re-upping for a 52-date North American safari. If the jaunt goes as well as the band hopes, it should yield a new album. But if the limp economy (though early indicators suggest strong ticket sales) and time apart from fans prove an insurmountable buzzkill? “We can’t think about that shit,” says Kanal. “We have to focus on what we’re doing.”

Right now, that means Antmusic. A few hours after Stefani’s rainy-day ruminating, the four old friends and producer Mark “Spike” Stent are assembled in the Hollywood studio, assuming playback position – eyes on the ground, heads bobbing in time to the music. The quartet will mime “Stand and Deliver” for an upcoming appearance on Gossip Girl, whose 18 to 34, predominantly female demo just so happens to be the same consumer group whose pop-culture radar very likely has a Gwen-shaped blip where No Doubt used to be.

For her part, Stefani is no great fan of the show. “[Gossip Girl is] totally the kind of thing I would watch,” she says apologetically, “but if the choice is between sleeping and watching TV, then I’m going to sleep.”

The track is far from finished. Horns to be rearranged. Backing vocals will be tinkered with. The mix will be tweaked. But even in rough shape, No Doubt seem pretty much the same as you remember. At 39, Stefani’s vocal style remains girlishly brash. Dumont, 41 is still a guitarist adept at layering pop sheen and metal crunch. Drummer Young, 39, and bassist Kanal, 38, have retained their gift for shining skank onto even the straightest rock beats, as well as for razzing one another.

“Hey, Adrian, how much did you pay Spike to make your drums so loud?” asks Kanal. looking up from the sofa in the dimly lit studio.

“I didn’t pay him anything,” says Young, his head clean shaven except for a long mohawk that’s slicked straight back and dyed bright red. “I just gave him a pee-pee rub.”

“That reminds me,” says the tall faux-hawked Dumont, “I gotta stop at an ATM later.”

The conversation devolves into Kanal threatening to roofie his drummer before Stefani speaks up. “This is so weird,” she says, beaming. “I can’t believe we’re all here doing this again.”

But what exactly are No Doubt doing? The band never broken up, which means this isn’t quite a reunion. And they don’t have any new music to sell, so the trek – kicking off May 2 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, with a stop the next day headlining the Bamboozle festival – isn’t part of the usual album-tour cycle. Instead No Doubt’s resurfacing  is best understood as a kind of referendum on the band’s musical and cultural relevance – a road test, if you will.

“I have no idea what we mean to people anymore,” says Stefani, her legs pulled up beside her on a large L-shaped couch in the studio’s lounge. “I was on tour by myself not that long ago and selling out all over the world. But now,” she shrugs, “do people even go out anymore? The world’s gone crazy.”

The fast-approaching tour has Stefani feeling certain about two things: “We’ll have a blast and get some great ideas for an album.” Well, maybe not certain. “Writing songs is a torturous process. I never know how to do it. The fear is always there that I won’t be able to do it again. So, yeah, if the tour doesn’t sell and we don’t come up with anything, maybe this will be the end of No Doubt. But I highly doubt it.”

To encourage writing, Kanal’s tour bus will be equipped with a mobile recording studio. “We’ve never written on tour before,” says Stefani. “I just need to figure out at what point I’ll be able to get some sleep.”

In person, it takes a moment to adjust to the glamorous luster of Stefani’s candy-apple-red lips and near-geisha complexion. Her famously flat belly is hidden under her shirt. “I’m nowhere near in shape for the tour yet,” she frets, then laughs her short, sharp laugh. “I’m only just now starting to fit into my old clothes!”

Her constantly smiling and wide-eyed son Zuma was born last August. He’s with his nanny down the hall. His older brother, Kingston, 3, is at home with Dad, British rocker Gavin Rossdale. Mom has released two platinum selling albums, 2004’s Love. Angel Music. Baby and 2006’s The Sweet Escape, since No Doubt were last a functioning unit. “Before, when I was with the guys, I didn’t have any kids,” says Stefani, an almond-size diamond sparkling on her wedding ring. “That’s like, whoa – a huge deal. The dynamic of the band is different. It has to be.” She notes, ruefully, that for the first time since they formed 23 years ago, the foursome will be traveling in separate buses.

“When you’ve got the endorphins going from the show, it’s so much fun to be all on the same bus, hanging out and drinking champagne. There’s no way that can happen anymore. I’ve got two babies and their nanny, and an assistant, and my security, and a hairdresser. It’s not much of a party, but that’s what I need in order to perform every night.”

In a sense, the band is back where it started. Formed in Anaheim, California in 1986 – largely an outlet for Gwen’s older brother Eric’s quirky ska-pop – the band’s earliest success was found on the road. A sweaty, energetic live show win them plenty of SoCal fans (and built some strong internal bonds: Kanal and Stefani were in a long-term relationship), but the sound didn’t travel. Their first nine years were spent in limbo between local heroes and national nobodies. “It was so exciting to have a following and know we could go play as far away as San Diego and people would show up,” recalls Dumont from behind the wheel of his black Yukon. He’s dressed in a gray hoodie, black jeans and green Chuck Taylors. The Pacific glistens outside the driver’s side window. “It was hard to understand when our record company called us a failure because we only sold 25,000 copies of our first album.”

They sold some ten million more of their third, 1995’s Tragic Kingdom. (Eric left shortly after the album’s release to pursue a career in animation.) Unabashedly perky and deceptively deep, Kingdom’s deep, “Just a Girl,” “Sunday Morning,” and “Don’t Speak” (about Kanal and Stefani’s breakup) drove a gilded scrunchie deep into grunge’s heart.

But 2000’s Return of Saturn, writer immediately after a marathon two-year tour, traded Kingdom’s primary pop colors for standard postadolescent revelations in songs such as “Marry Me,” and “Six Feet Under.” The album sold a tenth as many copies as its predecessor. It also planted a seed.

“When we were touring Saturn, the shows weren’t packed to the rafters, but we had a fucking good time,” says Dumont. He’s on the way from his home in Long Beach to pick up a custom-made speaker cabinet in nearby Newport Beach that he plans to use while recording the new album, wherever and whenever that may be.

“That tour was when Tony discovered Jamaican dancehall music. We’d play it backstage for hours after shows – it was all about not worrying and having fun. We ended up going right from that tour into Rock Steady. That was kind of the idea behind what we’re doing now – just getting back into the vibe of being in No Doubt and remembering how awesome that is. Whether we get inspired the same way, we’ll have to see.”

During his time off from the band, Dumont and his wife, Meike, had two sons, Ace, 3, and Rio, 1. He also branched out in to production work, helming two albums by skateboarder turned singer-songwriter Matt Costa.

Taking a hand from the steering wheel to scratch his grey-flecked goatee, Dumont explains how the No Doubt machine creaked back in to action. “I called Tony and Adrian up in 2007 to get together and write. The plan was to have new music ready for Gwen to write lyrics to as soon as she finished touring The Sweet Escape.”

The Gwenless approach worked for the band before, notably on 2002’s “Hey Baby.” It didn’t work this time.

“We hit on a handful of ideas that we might come back to,” says Dumont. “But without Gwen writing lyrics or melodies, there’s only so much we could do.”

It was during a second writing session last winter at a then-pregnant Stefani’s Hollywood home that the band realized what it had to do to feel like a family again. “We needed to have group therapy,” says Stefani, back at the studio. “We would talk about crazy stuff, like how the process that we used before is not gonna work anymore. To be a mom and the lead singer and songwriter and the best friend of these guys,” she pauses, “there was a lot leaning on my shoulders. I couldn’t have a baby, then sit in a studio for a year making an album.”

Kanal also feels the talks were a turning point. “There were some very emotional discussions,” he says. “We’re still under contract for a record, but Interscope appreciates that we have to put out the right record. We have to ease back into this. I understand te skepticism people might have about a band going on tour without any new songs, but this is not us being a nostalgia act. This is not a cash grab. This is a necessary step in No Doubt making another record.”

Dumont remembers that around the same time his band was sorting itself out, he found himself continually clearing up a common misconception. “Everyone thought the band had broken up because Gwen was doing her own thing,” he says. “I’d tell family members that we were working on new music, and they’d go, ‘Really? Who’s singing?’ ”

Adrain Young pulls his metallic green 1962 Park Avenue Cadillac into the parking lot of the Virginia Country Club in Long Beach. He steps out of the car, resplendent in green and blue plaid slacks, a white long-sleeved T-shirt, and a black cardigan – a far cry from the thongs he used to favor onstage. “I’ve been a member for a year,” says the drummer. “My mentor moved here from another golf club. That’s the main reason I joined.”

Young, whose fit build, strong jaw, ramrod posture, and Technicolor clothing make him resemble a psychedelic Marine, plays to a plus-one handicap. His personal best is around 66. For those unfamiliar with golf parlance, that means he’s really fucking good.

“I’m not worried that going on tour will hurt my progress,” says Young, who invested in gonzo golf mag Schwing! in the late ’90s. “I’ll practice in the mornings and play on days off.” He tried to get his son, mason, 7, into the game. “I kind of burned him out already,” he says, frowning. “You can’t force it.”

The plan for this afternoon is to eat and the work with his 9-iron. Young enters the club’s dark wood and oxblood leather dining room and takes a seat at a table near a TV tuned to ESPN. He’s in a feisty mood, and not just because his long game has been giving him problems.

“No Doubt is absolutely still relevant,” says Young. “I don’t know if you know this, but during Gwen’s how in Irvine last June, we did a surprise encore as No Doubt,” he pokes the air with his fork for emphasis, “and that crowd was piercingly loud. Louder than any crowd I remember. That night put to rest any doubt I had about our relevance or legacy.”

Paramore’s Hayley Williams, whose four-men-and-a-lady band is opening for No Doubt this summer, needed no convincing. “I respect them all so much,” she says. “They toured around in a van for years before they blew up. They slept on floors. They’re not a marketing gimmick or a bunch of studio friends. They’re a real band and they’ve had this amazing success. That’s what we all aspire to. All my friends are stoked they’re back.”

The 20-year-old singer has a special love for Stefani. “Gwen is a big deal to me,” Williams says. “She was one of the first people I heard who wrote from a girl’s point of view. I always related to what she was singing about, whether it was ‘Just a Girl’ and being disrespected, or ‘Simple Kind of Life’ and wanting to have a family. I don’t know a girl who doesn’t think of her as a role model.”

Stefani is happy to play the part. “Heaven for me is looking out at the audience and seeing so many young girls,” she says. “On one level, it’s so strange to me that anyone knows who I am, but feeling like I am reaching people and still being respected as a woman is the most rewarding thing.”

But the Stefani that Williams first fell for is not the Stefani of Tragic Kingdom, or even Rock Steady. She married a rock star. Her L.A.M.B fashion label, started in 2003, has been sported on Eva Longoria Parker and Paris Hilton, among others. She set up a companion accessories line, Harajuku Lovers in 2005. Her dance-oriented solo albums, featuring collaborators like Andre 3000, the Neptunes, and Akon, competed and won the world of Xtina and Britnet. For a time, she made public appearances accompanied by a quartet of Japanese lovelies dubbed the Harajuku Girls (Think of them as Sanrio bric-a-brac – made of people).  To some, the fact that Stefani’s decade has been more ooh la la than oi! oi! oi! might seem like a regression.

Stefani doesn’t buy it. “I’m not doing anything now that I haven’t always wanted to do,” she argues, crossing her arms and furrowing her brow. “I’ve always been interested in fashion. I’ve always liked dumb dance music, like Debbie Deb and Club Nouveau. I know it was weird to be on the same circuit with Madonna and Mariah, but I did it my own way. It was campy, it was funny. If people didn’t get it, that’s their problem. People gave me shit about the Harajuku Girls. Seriously? How do you see that that wasn’t meant to be ridiculous?”

She says she’s used to criticism. “When you’re a creative person – and that’s how I define myself – then you’re always going to make somebody mad. Fifteen years ago, when No Doubt started making poppier songs, there were hardcore ska fans who said, ‘Fuck you’.”

So it’s fair to say that No Doubt won’t be playing “Hollaback Girl”? “I’m so over dance music now,” she says. “I had a really specific sound and concept in my head, and I’ve squeezed it out. It’s done. Everyone wants to make it like I ‘left’ the band, but I never planned for my thing to be so big. I always felt like I was cheating on them when I was working with other musicians. In my mind, there was never any question that I was going to come back to No Doubt. Those guys are my best friends forever.”

An older country club member, wearing trousers pulled up to just below his neck, approaches Young, who is finishing up his ahi and brown rice. “That’s some haircut,” he says, motioning to the drummer’s crimson mohawk. The old man’s head is dotted with liver spots.

“Yeah, it is,” says a smiling Young. “You like it?”

“No, I don’t,” the man responds.

Later, Young wallops a long drive into the path of the distinguished gentleman at the opposite end of the driving range. He says it was an accident. Then he does it again.

“If you asked me what I’d like to do every day,” says Tony Kanal at home in the Hollywood Hills, “the answer is playing shows with No Doubt. That’s been my life since I was 16 years old.” On this day, the band’s only childless member is wearing a blue plaid Western-style shirt and skinny black jeans. His black hair is dyed its usual blond. “I’ve always been obsessed with my band. That’s just how I am. But I understand it’s not realistic for everybody else. I’m sure I’d feel different if I had kids.”

Kanal and his live-in girlfriend, Erin, an actress, have been talking about starting a family. He has the band’s blessing. (“I have two boys. Tom has two boys. Adrian has a boy,” says Stefani. “Tony needs to have a girl so the kids can start their own No Doubt.”)

Kanal’s house is a 1925 Spanish Colonial villa that was designed by Stiles O. Clements, the architect responsible for L.A.’s famed Wiltern and Mayan theaters. In a nod to Kanal’s heritage – his parent’s were born in India – a large statue of the Hindu god Ganesha takes pride of place in the foyer. Four cats scamper across the intricately patterned carpets. The modest recording studio on the third floor has an immodest view: On clear days, Catalina Island is visible 20 miles away. Looking northeast, the white dome of the Griffith Observatory rises above the tall palm trees.

The studio is where Kanal, who has the slim build and springy step of a welterweight, retreats to write and record. In the last two years, he produced an album for the reggae singer Elan and did writing an production on Stefani’s solo albums. Along with Dumont and Young, he cowrote” Paralysis,” a track on Scott Weiland’s recent “Happy” in Goloshes. Lately, though, past triumphs are far from his mind.

“It dawned on me that the kids who bought Rock Steady might have outgrown us,” he says. “There are people who didn’t know Gwen was in a band. There are people who will see No Doubt for the first time. It’s a weird thing. You know, going back to when we were playing Fender’s Ballroom in Long Beach in 1987, I had a good sense about who was coming to the shows. Now I don’t really know. It could be anyone.”

The results of a survey posted on No Doubt’s website in late 2008 gave some clues. “The audience is a split you don’t usually see,” explains the band’s manager, Jim Guernot. “Gwen is an influence on very young people and brings them along with her, but there’s also the traditional audience of people in their 30s who have been following the band for 20 years. Concerts usually get one audience or the other, not both. Presales for the tour were tracking at 124 percent higher than they were for Gwen’s tour last year,” he says. “I would’ve been happy if we’d been equal.”

From his lofty perch, Kanal professes allegiance to a power greater than market research. “I’ve had moments of doubt in my life,” he says, “and they’ve been resolved through music. It sounds weird to say, but it’s true.” He continues: “We can push ourselves in a new way. If I didn’t think that we could do that, I would want to call it for what it is. I’d say, ‘Let’s call this a farewell tour’.”

Back in the studio, the final notes of “Stand and Deliver” have long faded away. The band will be back later in the week to listen to a final mix. As Stent gets back to work, Kanal tells Stefani about the radio interviews he was doing earlier that day. “They’re still talking the same shit,” he says to Stefani. Kanal cops the smooth tones of a drive-time DJ, ” ‘I hate to touch a nerve here, Tony, but didn’t you and Gwen used to date?’ ”

Stefani rolls her eyes. “That’s so lame,” she says.

“Try answering questions about thongs,” Young chimes in.

Stefani’s assistant, carrying Zuma, pops in to remind the band that they’re due at the singer’s house to discuss stage designs. Outside, the rain has stopped. The four bandmates get up to leave. Stefani, now holding her son, says anxiously and wistfully, “I want to be out there already.”

Then she speaks again, to everyone and no one, “We still have so far to go.”

Thanks to Jenny at BSO and Heather for the scan – No Doubt are featured in the latest edition of Entertainment Weekly USA with a full page promotional advert for their upcoming amphitheater tour with Paramore.

On a side note; I’m going to be travelling from the UK to the Cleveland, OH show which is on my birthday (June 29th) and also spending a few days in NYC so anyone who is also planning to go Cleveland make sure you say hi!

Up close, my famous friend looks about the same, but richer. By Eric Carpenter

With his green-plaid pants and his bright red mohawk and his fame, Adrian Young gets a lot of stares as he walks the lobby of the recent National Association of Music Merchant’s trade show.

Hey, that’s the drummer for No Doubt, I hear again and again as I walk next to Young. A few people stop to shake his hand or ask for him to pose for a photo.

But, initially at least, fame doesn’t get him on the convention floor. The trade show isn’t open to the public, and Young forgot his wallet at home in Lakewood. No I.D. No entry. No exceptions.

So we try the information desk. Then the security desk. Then the press office.

“I can’t believe this,” Young says, laughing, “I guess I’m out of here.”

But then a security manager who recognizes Young offers to escort him to an autograph session and, after that, to the booth of the drum company Young co-owns.

We’re in.

Two dreamers, one dream

Young and I can trace our experiences at this annual music convention back to the same era – around 1990.

We were playing together in No Doubt. I was part of a three-man horn section, playing saxophone, and he was the new drummer. At that point, few outside of Southern California knew of the band.

Back then, at NAMM, we were nothing. Just musicians looking at gear we couldn’t afford; dreaming. I left No Doubt in 1994, just before the band’s meteoric rise, to pursue journalism. (Insert your own joke here. I’ve heard most, and eventually learned to laugh at them too.)

So Young agreed to hook up with me at NAMM again, nearly 20 years after our first experiences at this convention, to discuss how it has changed.

“I don’t think I ever went as myself back then,” he says. “I always had to borrow a badge to get in.”

Young’s status at NAMM rose somewhat in 1993 when Orange County Drum & Percussion offered him a free snare, knowing that No Doubt was achieving some modest success.

“I still own that drum,” he says. “I’ve probably used it on a dozen No Doubt tours.”

But at the 1997 NAMM show, No Doubt had released “Tragic Kingdom,” one of the biggest albums of the 1990s. Young’s status was mega. Fans swamped him and companies like Zildjian cymbals offered all the free equipment he could use.

Fame wasn’t free. He spent countless hours at autograph signings and appearances on behalf of the companies that endorsed him.

“I definitely found that I’d spend a lot of time at the beer stand.”

Playing for a living

But celebrity has its surreal moments, too. Like the time he was signing autographs at the booth for Remo drum heads when Latin percussionist superstar Sheila E. came up to him and said she’d always wanted to meet him. Or the year jazz icon Peter Erskine told Young he likes his playing.

“He’s telling me ‘I like what you do?’” Young says incredulously. “I’m, like, ‘I don’t even understand what you do.’ He’s that good.”

Young has taken several years off from No Doubt, as lead singer Gwen Stefani pursues a solo career.

But he’s kept playing with other musicians, such as Scott Weiland (of Stone Temple Pilots).

And he spends a lot of time on the golf course. A golf magazine recently named him the fourth best “celebrity golfer. But, Young jokes, “they had my handicap wrong. I’m better than Kenny G.”

Young makes it clear that despite some gossip that seemed to suggest otherwise over the years, No Doubt never broke up. What’s more, the band has a limited concert tour in the works.

“It’s fun to be playing together again,” he says. “We’re lucky we all get along so well still. We are all having dinner tomorrow night.”

Thirst for fame

Having worked out the security issues, we head inside the convention hall.

Young admits this is when the activity feels a little overwhelming. He worries that without his wallet he’s got no money to buy a beer.

I offer to spot him some cash if he needs it.

We walk about 100 yards without anybody stopping him. But a woman in a No Doubt tank top soon trails him, lingering for about five minutes before asking to pose for a photo. Young obliges.

“Is that a Bloody Mary?” he asks the woman as they shake hands.

“Yeah, you can have it,” she says.

Young only wants a sip. And we’re on our way again.

Once we arrive at the Orange County Drum & Percussion booth, the scene changes. Young is a one-third owner of the company that gave him his first free drum. He bought in after No Doubt hit massive success.

Here at the booth, some people have heard he’s coming.

Audrey Ungaro, 21, a college student from Kentucky, has waited a half-hour to get a photo with Young.

“No Doubt is my favorite band,” she says. “I was so excited he was coming.”

Young appreciates her waiting. Though he sometimes dreads the idea of such meet-and-greets, in advance, he says they don’t feel like a chore when he actually gets face-to-face with people who like his music. So he shakes a few more hands, signs autographs and poses for photos before remembering he needs to leave.

Tonight’s his ninth wedding anniversary, and he’s headed out to dinner with his wife and 7-year-old son, Mason, before a gig at the Hollywood Palladium, sitting in with the punk band Pennywise.

But first, he makes a quick stop at the Zyldjian booth for an autograph session with about 15 other drummers.

He pulls up a chair next to John Blackwell, who has played drums for, among others, Prince and Justin Timberlake.

Young’s got two tools – a Sharpie pen in one hand, and a Pacifico beer in the other.

“I’m all set.”

I don’t normally post general news but this is just too exciting! No Doubt have updated their website with this fab new photo and a little flash intro that promises a tour and new record for 2009. I can’t wait for all the new magazine covers and interviews that 2009 will bring!!!

Also, I’ve been adding lots more articles this week to the archive so check out the list of most recently added in the footer.

Big thanks again go to iamanodoubtfreak4ever who has been sending over a mass of new clippings for the gallery including these fantastic magazine adverts for No Doubt’s Everything In Time and The Singles releases, also for Gwen Stefani’s Love Angel Music Baby album.

Do you have any clippings to donate to the gallery?? You can use the contact form to upload them or send them straight over to christinasparkle[AT]hotmail.co.uk

Amongst the bunch was these fab images from Teen People US May 2000. Check them out!

Do you have scans that you want to add to the gallery?? Use the contact form to upload them

I’ve added some PSDs that I created to the downloads section. Unfortunately I can only upload them as transparent pngs for the moment due the file size of PSDs but that shouldn’t make any difference to how you use them!

Use them to create sigs, banners or for your own ND fansites, just don’t redistribute as your own please!

She works hard for the money, and she ain’t no hollaback girl, but now that the world has embraced Gwen Stefani as the platinum bomb, will she ever find a simple kind of life?

The popular television series The OC and Laguna Beach have made Southern California’s Orange County and attitude like, totally rad. They portray the laidback lifestyle of perfectly aligned palm trees, lazy afternoons, and never-ending spring breaks. Meanwhile, the most famous OC girl of them all, Gwen Stefani, is quietly building her empire as the hardest working girl in show business. Last year, we saw her playing Jean Harlow in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, and this year she is high off the phenomenal success of her first solo album – having already achieved worldwide domination as front woman of No Doubt – and summer anthems “Hollaback Girl” and “Cool.” She is also busy spearheading not one but two clothing lines: L.A.M.B (which shares a name with her Love. Angel. Music. Baby. album) and the newly launched Harajuku Lovers.

Her much anticipated runway show for L.A.M.B took place at the Roseland Ballroom during New York fashion week last September and on October 16th she will embark on a major North American tour, also named “Harajuku Lovers,” starting with a sold out performance at the American West Arena in Phoenix. In midst of all this activity on th music, fashion and film fronts, she also finds time to promote other products and services including the HP Photosmart R607 Harajuku Lovers digital camera and the “Hollaback Girl” ringtone, which is available exclusively through Cingular Wireless.

On this particular August afternoon at Quixote Studios in West Hollywood, Gwen Stefani is sitting in a dressing room chair, facing a large mirror while hair stylist Danilo starts crafting a new look for the TRACE cover. Gwen is chatting away, all platinum blondness and sassy sophistication, as stylist Andrea Lieberman and makeup artist Kathy Jeung try to figure out the implications of this new Afro-braided-platinum-punk look. All three are close collaborators of Gwen’s, but now they have experimented with a folded blue scarf holding in the top of her hair, in a subtle nod to the I Love Lucy housewife hysteria from the ’50s, the Afro madness just seems a little more directional. Although Gwen wasn’t feeling it at first, she quickly changes her mind and we all agree to go for the Afro look.

Two of her Harajuku girl dancers are also in attendance. Maya (aka Love), hails from Tokyo, and Mayuko (aka Baby), who is a native of Osaka, but both became Harajuku girls after they auditioned in Los Angeles. I ask where Angel and Music are. No one knows. As she makes her way to the cover set-up where lighting is being tested with Polaroids. Gwen starts rubbing her stomach. “It’s coming,” she says, speaking of her period. This time, her hands aren’t pressed against her bare midriff, as they often are, because her belly is covered by a green Harajuku Lovers t-shirt, but she still tells anyone who cares to listen that she is menstrual, and that her mood isn’t the best it could be.

However, Gwen is open and approachable as ever. We shoot the cover and venture out of the studio to nearby Poinsetta Park for additional pictures. That is where the real Gwen Stefani pop experience is brought to life in a series of casual encounters with Angelenos from all walks of life. Of course we should have suspected that a mid-afternoon outing with a pop star in a public park would cause a bit of a commotion, especially in her home state, and the broad scope of her fan base is a reality that cannot be argued with.

Situation One: A Mexican family in a huge Freightliner delivery truck suddenly stops and idles in the middle of a street, interrupting their work schedule as well as the normal flow of traffic. The wife climbs out of the truck while her eight-year-old daughter stares at the pop star from the front seat, with her father looking on. When the mother returns to the truck with an autograph that reads “To Jackie, Love Gwen,” the daughter starts weeping.
Situation Two: A black man in his early 40s steals a glance at the pop star from the corner of his eye. “Damn!” he says, to no one in particular.
Situation Three: Two LAPD policeman catch wind of our photo shoot, which is taking place without a city permit, but instead of sending us back to the studio across the street, they see Gwen and decide to turn a blind eye to our impromptu production.
Situation Four: A 15-year-old white boy playing basketball in his brand new Air Jordans: “Where’s Gwen? That’s my wife. Hey shweeeetie!”
Situation Five: A tipsy white man in his mid-50s holds his bicycle while decides to speak to Danilo, who is touching up the pop stars Afro. “Is that Gwen Stefani right there? You can tell her Madonna can’t touch her. You can tell her I love her.” To which Gwen replies, “You can tell me, I’m standing right here, aren’t I?” “Well, sure! Isn’t the Hollywood Bowl coming up in a couple of weeks?” “Yes, in a couple of months” “Well, God bless ya. You’ve got it, and most can’t find it. I love ya.”

Andy Warhol first coined the term “superstar” to promote his coterie of New York personalities. The word is now used to describe a widely acclaimed celebrity who has great popular appeal and is considered a major attraction. When we finally sit down for the interview after the enlightening Poinsettia Park episodes, I realized that although Gwen has become accustomed to the adulation, especially in a year that can, by any measure, be described as stellar, she is still relatively unfazed by the everyday situations, privileges and annoyances that come with being a superstar.

“2005 has been a mind-blowing year,” she admits. “It all happened so quick, and wild and different from everything I’ve ever done before, but some of the years in No Doubt before we got on the radio were great as well. To me, it really doesn’t feel all that different from being at Tower Records in Orange County, one year into the band, like 17 years ago, and hearing people whispering about me as the girl from that band. But still, finishing this album and having it accepted the way it was, that was great. There was a lot of mish-mashing and unlikely pairings, like getting into the studio with Dr Dre and Andre 3000. I wanted to make an ’80s inspired dance album, in the style of Debbie Deb and Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam and Club Nouveau, but also with Prince and The Time in mind, and I could see how Dr Dre was just rolling his eyes.”

Debbie Deb, as some of you older electro-heads may recall, was a two-hot wonder, but one could easily call her a one-hit wonder, because her two songs “Lookout Weekend” (“Look out weekend ’cause here I come, because weekends were made for fun”) and “When I Hear Music” sound almost the same. “Those are the songs that I would listen to when I used to go dancing at Disneyland or places like Videopolis or Studio K,” Gwen remembers. “For this album, that Debbie Deb style worked for me, because I wanted a record that was more of a chant than a melody. I wanted to do a record a record that would be in the clubs. With No Doubt, that would have been impossible, because that style of dance music excludes the drummer.”

Those years growing up in Orange County remain the foundation of her musical expression, and many of her biggest hits – starting with the breakthrough No Doubt songs “Just a Girl” and “Don’t Speak” from the 1995 album Tragic Kingdom – are derived from Gwen’s own experiences in mid-to-late ’80s Anaheim, home to Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom. In those years, Orange County was the residence of middle class white Californians who chose that particular suburban landscape over the metropolitan sprawl of Los Angeles, but it was also the chosen destination of many immigrant families, and young families, who were able to find nice and safe homes that they could actually afford.

Orange County was known as Reagan country at the time. The years of the gas crisis and forced busing created an extreme Republican climate. There were planned communities like Costa Mesa, where corporations would build an entire city from scratch, with a city center, a mall and recreation centers. Bands like No Doubt proliferated and thrived in a scene that was essentially a reaction to Reaganomics. The post-punk scene had become so vibrant and the music coming out was daring in its own fusion of mod with ska and reggae and hip hop. The early No Doubt records display that unique fusion, and it was obvious that they were listening to The Clash just as much as they appreciated Grandmaster Flash.

Shawn Mortensen, the longtime TRACE magazine photographer who shot the images in this portfolio, has been a friend of Gwen and the other members of No Doubt since 1994, when the band was just about to switch from their indie label to Interscope Records. “There was an immediate connection,” he says, “because we had all hung out in the same area in Orange County and we used to go to the same places, the same clubs. Although I was born in Long Beach, I grew up in Los Angeles and Orange County. When the label asked me to direct a video for them, I knew it would work. They weren’t famous yet, but when I first heard Tragic Kingdom, it felt to me like the Sergeant Pepper’s of Orange County life.” Shawn, who has photographed Gwen and No Doubt many times, ended up being best man at Gwen’s 2002 wedding to Gavin Rossdale. Hearing him talk about the ’80s inspired parties in OC, one senses a deep nostalgia in his voice and a longing for a mythical era that epitomized the uninhabited, creative spirit and do-it-yourself mentality of rebellious Southern Californians.

With her song dedicated to the over-the-top style of the girls who populate Tokyo’s fashionable Harajuku district, Gwen Stefani single-handedly made them recognizable to millions of Americans who would be hard-pressed to locate Japan on a world map. She is building a franchise around the Harajuku iconography so that it can exist beyond her lyrics and videos in her fans; imaginations. Yet, her most popular song from Love. Angel. Music. Baby. album, so far, is not the Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis-produced “Harajuku Girls” but rather the Neptunes-produced “Hollaback Girl.” Although Gwen is now known for her penchant for Vivienne Westwood and Christian Dior couture dresses – she wore a special John Galliano creation at her wedding – few of her hardcore fans are actually familiar with the high fashion Japenese brands (Yohji Yamamoto, Comme des Garçons, Hysteric Glamour) that she sings about in the song “Harajuku Girls.”

They can, however, relate to the Carson High School cheerleaders she recruited from outer Los Angeles for the perfectly choreographed video that Paul Hunter directed in full Technicolor, with emphasis on Gwen’s pink bra, red majorette’s outfit and bright lowrider. The vivid imagery and The Neptunes’ simple one-two beat complemented the girl power words: “Uh huh, that’s my shit. All the girls stomp your feet like that. ‘Cause I ain’t no hollaback girl.”

“The simplicity of the way Pharrell produces is so different,” she says. “It’s just one take and four instruments. It’s raw and different to the way we produce with No Doubt.” Looking back, it seems ironic that “Hollaback Girl” actually almost never made it to the album, because it was recorded after the album was completed. “We were done with the album and we really didn’t have any space left,” she says, “but I felt I didn’t have my attitude song. I called Pharrell and told him he’d be mad, because he wasn’t on the album. After two days, we had two really good songs, ‘Candy Land’ and ‘You Started It,’ but neither would make it onto the album. Then we did ‘Hollaback Girl’.”

After all, the first Neptunes collaboration outside of hip hop was with No Doubt on “Hella Good” from the 2001 Rock Steady album. They have come a long way since then. More than just an attitude song, “Hollaback Girl” somehow represented the mood of the summer of 2005, really striking a chord with young fans around the world. Shortly after “Hollaback Girl” emerged as one of the most significant songs of the year, Gwen flew to Miami to work with Pharrell in his studio and record more songs. “I have another record and I have to say the stuff that me and Pharrell did is so rad. I’m afraid if I wait too long before releasing it, it will be old. DJ Clue came down came down to the studio with eight beautiful girls, and he listened to the whole thing.”

Now that they have an entire album’s worth of material, Gwen is toying with the idea of releasing those songs as an entirely new album for Christmas or Valentine’s Day. She even has the artwork and creative direction all ready to go. But then again, the schedules may change, because her record company already has a DVD lined up for a Christmas release. This is what happens when superstars get prolific.

In the midst of all this hyperactivity, one has to question the future of No Doubt and the viability of a band, however successful, whose lead singer has found so many niches of her own, away from the legacy of a sound that was first formulated in 1986. Gwen refutes any suggestion that the band might break up, and she even mentions that they have pledged to reunite in January of 2006. She says all this while making sure she provides the context of her solo career.

“The Rock Steady Tour was one of the best experiences for us as a band. At the end of it, Adrian [Young, the drummer] had a baby. I had just got married, like two days before the tour started. After the tour ended, that’s when I heard that Club Nouveau song again, and the idea of my solo record turned out to be a huge personal challenge. We all decided to concentrate on our own projects. Tom [Dumont, the guitarist] is on tour with Matt Costa and Tony [Kanal, the bassist] is playing with Perry Farrell. When we get into the studio again, it will be great for everyone, because they will be all charged up, with the time that I was away.”

The No Doubt greatest hits album with a wonderful cover of Talk Talk’s “It’s My Life” came out early last year, at the same time when Gwen was beginning to work on her own album. Having been with the same three guys for 18 years, including a now well-documented eight years as Tony Kanal’s girlfriend, she feels that they are a family for life. “It doesn’t feel like we’ve been apart,” she says, “because Tony has been my bouncing board. I still lean on him for advice.” Tony produced three tracks for L.A.M.B and although he has been working on his own side projects in Jamaica and elsewhere, he has remained a big presence in her life. (She points out that he is the one who turned her on to Club Nouveau and Debbie Deb in the first place.)

The song “Don’t Speak,” which spent a record-breaking 16 weeks at the top of the charts in 1996 and pretty much put No Doubt on the map, is well known as Gwen’s heartfelt response to her difficult breakup with Tony. A decade later, the gorgeous video (set in Italy) that Sophie Muller directed for Gwen’s latest single “Cool” is a testament – albeit a very confusing one – to the unbreakable bond between Gwen and Tony. In it, Tony’s current girlfriend plays the girlfriend of Gwen’s fictional ex, acted by a model who looks suspiciously like Gwen’s real life husband Gavin, in a song that was inspired by Gwen’s current relationship to Tony.

“Cool” Is a prime example of Gwen’s proven songwriting skills – “After all the obstacles/ It’s good to see you now with someone else/ And it’s such a miracle that you and me are still good friends/ After all that we’ve been through / I know we’re cool.” Some of the inspiration came from the song’s producer, Dallas Austin. “‘Cool’ is an amazing song,” she says, “because I wanted to work with Dallas Austin. He’d signed Fishbone, and I felt we’d have a connection, especially knowing that he’s such a solid songwriter. He had a similar story with an ex-girlfriend of eight years, and he’d written a song about it that he’d never finished. As soon as he started playing the chords I helped him finish the song. He had this idea of cool, which he couldn’t make cool, so I wrote the lyrics in ten minutes. I wanted a Cindy Lauper or Madonna ‘Crazy For You’ feel to the song, and it came out beautifully.”

Walking across the Poinsettia Park, Gwen receives a call on her cell phone from someone who could very well be a booking agent, and from the conversation that we overhear, it sounds like she is being offered the opportunity to tour right up to Christmas day. “That’s something I’ll have to speak to Gavin about,” she says. ” I just can’t make that decision right now. We’re supposed to spend Christmas in England.” Gwen admits that she is nervous about the upcoming Harajuku Lovers Tour, because up until now, touring has always been about going on the road with her No Doubt family. “The tour is going to be different, because it will involve a lot of costume changes. It will be a lot more theatrical, and I will get to do things that I could never do with No Doubt, things that would be considered cheesy in the rock world. I mean, I love theater, I love the Sound of Music, so the Harajuku Lovers Tour will be an opportunity.”

It all seems so convenient, and I have to admit that several of my friends find Gwen Stefani’s constant references to the Harajuku subculture annoying. The tour that references the clothing line that references the camera that references the lyrics from the single may all be a bit much, but beyond a simple celebrity marketing ploy, it appears that Gwen Stefani is serious about the cross-promotion. When pressed for an answer, she seems to genuinely see her Harajuku-influenced mantra as a way to give more Gwen back to her fans. If she can make a little extra money on the side while doing that, well why not?

“The concept behind Harajuku Lovers line was to create clothes that would be better conceived than just another merchandising line. I’ve been working on it for over a year, and it was hard to get it right. Whereas L.A.M.B is my creative project that I have total free ride on, it remains limited by the price points. It’s just too expensive for most of my fans. Harajuku Lovers is how I express another kind of creativity, because I am so inspired by the whole Japanese culture. The song lyrics are all over the t-shirts, and the clothes are available for all ages and sizes, from babies all the way to XXL. We have erasers and school stuff and we even teamed up with Nakajima for some Hello Kitty items.”

Although Gwen has full creative control over the L.A.M.B line, she has recruited an new designer to guide her through the creative process. New York-based Zaldy who has designed costumes for Mary J Blige and Christina Aguilera in addition to Gwen, says that he has known Gwen for a while because his ex-boyfriend, Matthew Anderson, used to be Gwen’s make-up artist.

“Even before meeting her in person, the first day I saw her on TV, I could tell she was for real,” he says. “She just seemed like the kind of girl I would have hung out with in high school.” One night, when he was returning to Los Angeles from the Coachella music festival with Gwen’s hair stylist Danilo, he was invited to a party at Gwen’s house. That’s when she approached him with the idea of helping her design her new collection. “I was flattered, and when we started working together, I had to process all this information. When I design the L.A.M.B line, I always have her in mind, because she is the muse, the only muse, whereas when I design my own line, I have other muses. It is really a great experience for me, because [stylist] Andrea Lieberman is also a consultant, and I get to work in a team. It’s almost like doing a group project.”

In 1997, I was invited to a Chinese restaurant called Chi Dynasty, in the Hollywood Hills near Gwen’s house in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. That night, I had dinner with photographer Shawn Mortensen, Gavin and Gwen. I remember asking her about being a star, and she told me about the constant online interactions she had with her fans. She said that she had a habit of checking the Internet on a regular basis. She admitted that, somehow, she always managed to find the time to to maintain ongoing dialogues with a lot of her devoted fans. Eight years later, at the Quixote Studios, I reminded her of our conversation and asked her whether she still had time to engage in regular dialogue with her fans, having recently spotted dozen of websites dedicated to the cult of Stefani. She thought about it for a second and said “I like going online and look here and there, but it’s not really that healthy, because you get bummed out a lot. Actually, all the fan forums on our sites are down at the moment because they got hacked.”

When the interview was drawing to a close, I asked her about the history behind my all-time favourite No Doubt song, “Sunday Morning,” from the Tragic Kingdom album. She smiled and said it was such a long time ago. She told me that the video, which was directed in the spring of 1997 by Sophie Muller, in her third of eight collaborations with No Doubt, was filmed at her grandparents’ house. “The guy that’s in the store when I buy the tomatoes, that’s my grandpa.” Those somewhat innocent statements are really charming coming from a 35-year-old superstar in her prime. They also go a long way towards explaining the enduring popularity of Gwen Stefani, the hardworking girl from the OC who once sang about wanting a simple kind of life. “I was with Tony when we wrote ‘Sunday Morning’, and we were just kids just learning how to write songs. I never in a million years would have that that…”

Blender joins the No Doubt singer’s court to find out about her solo album, movie career and love life. “Everything you could probably think up is true,” she says.

Gwen Stefani is dancing barefoot in her kitchen. One of the tracks she’s just finished for her first solo album is playing on her laptop, and she spinning around saying “I love this song!” while a small posse of assembled staff looks on: her publicist, her graphic designer and her British manservant Pete, who is juicing a lemon and preparing Stefani her light, fragrant lunch.

All around Stefani, in her Mediterranean-style Los Angeles mansion, are the lavish accumulations of the truly successful: a driveway crowded with Mercedes; huge vases of tall, perfect lilies on every table; two silent cleaning women fluffing every cushion and dusting every shiny surface; a parade of Herb Ritts photographs of Stefani with her shirtless husband, Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale; and drawings by couturier John Galliano of the dress he made for her wedding, framed with a card from the designer that reads: “Dearest Gwen, Thank you for the most amazing evening.” Stefani arrived here from London just last night, but Rossdale had to stay behind. “We’re trying to get his dog out here,” she explains, “but it’s hard to get a private plane to fly a person with a dog.”

Stefani sings along to her song “Harajuku Girls” in the kind of mock pop-star voice one might use to croon “Like a Virgin” into a hairbrush. “I’m your biggest fan!” she squeals in perfect unison with her recorded self. And if Blender didn’t know that the woman bouncing and twirling about was the queen of this castle, that she and Madonna have actually “hung out several times,” that the voice coming from the computer has sold 26 million records worldwide with her band No Doubt, we might think she was exactly what she just said: a fan, a starry-eyed hopeful bopping along to the beat.

Blender’s Woman of the Year still has the giddy enthusiasm of a person who is surprised by her luck, even after 17 years in music, three Grammys and the launch of her own fashion label L.A.M.B, which Gwen-ishly stands for “Love Angel Music Baby,” also the name of her new album. Love Angel Music Baby will not only bring her another car or manservant, it’s sure to brighten the celebrity spotlight, as happened to Justin Timberlake when he stepped out of ‘N Sync.

But going solo is still a risk, a move away from a proven formula and out into the unknown. Just ask Mick Jagger. Or david Lee Roth. Or Al Gore. Stepping out – at age 34, no less – of the protective cocoon of a band that she has been in half her life requires remarkable ambition, power, balls. Gwen Stefani doesn’t see it that way.

“Everyone keeps calling it a solo record and I keep calling it a dance record,” she says. “‘Cause if I was doing a solo record, that would be like, finally, me… finally this is the real Gwen Stefani. It’s not that. This album is actually less of me than ever before.”

Growing up, Gwen Stefani never fantasized about being a rock star. Never pictured living the brilliant transatlantic life of pop royalty. The Gwen Stefani story according to Gwen Stefani, goes like this: All her life, things just happened to her. She is an accidental rock star – or at least she likes to think so, maybe because it’s true or maybe because lusting after fame and fortune seems unladylike to her.

And to be sure, Stefani has been lucky in one crucial regard: The men in her life have buffeted her from many of the uphill struggles in her life.

Her brother Eric founded the band No Doubt when Gwen was still in high school in Anaheim, California, and herded her into the band. “Eric’s the one who brought the first Madness record home and got us all into ska,” she says. “I’d wake up because he’d be banging on the piano. He would always be trying to get me to sing, because he couldn’t sing very much himself, and I could sing along to the Annie soundtrack or Evita.”

Gwen’s first real boyfriend, Tony Kanal, was, and is, No Doubt’s bassist and co-songwriter. Kanal has always handled all the wheeling and dealing and planning that are crucial, tedious busy work of any successful band.

“Tony took care of everyone and he was on top of all business,” Stefani says. “Nothing went wrong – no stone unturned, every corner cleaned. The opposite of me. I’m a mess!” (She means literally as well as figuratively: Stefani says that of all her indulgences, the one she’s most hate to lose is her cleaning women. “I get home, I drop.” She mimes throughing things in every direction.)

Stefani entered the band that made her a star when she was 17 years old. “I was a very passive girl,” she says. Stefani is perched on an immaculate, overstuffed white sofa, her white hair pinned up in a glamorous puff.”I was completely satisfied with just being in love with my boyfriend and dreaming about getting married.” Stefani didn’t consider herself talented. “I always considered myself as really lazy because I was bad at school…. Not that I was a bad girl,” she says quickly. “just that it was hard for me to learn. I couldn’t even pay attention, I spent the whole fuckin’ time drawing pictures. The bell would ring and I would be like, ‘Gosh the period’s over?’ I would have just written my boyfriend’s name in really sketched out, really nice letters.”

Part of the fun of being a No Doubt fan has always been tracking Stefani’s crushes and heartaches through her unusually transparent, occasionally, artless lyrics. Listening to a No Doubt song can feel like peeking into high-school journal: finding out on 1995’s “Sunday Morning” how excruciating it was for her when Kanal ended their romance; hearing, on Rock Steady’s “Underneath It All,” about how happy she’s become with Rossdale (“You give me the most gorgeous sleep/ That I’ve ever had”); or how badly she wants a baby on “Simple Kind of Life” (“I always thought I’d be a mom/ Sometimes I wish for a mistake”).

Gwen Stefani wrote that song in 1999, a couple of years after No Doubt and Bush were pushed together on a tour by their label, Interscope Records. Initially, everyone in the band was dead-set against the pairing. “The label was always talking about Gavin and Bush,” she says in the whine of a kid talking about history and math. “We were just like, ‘Whatever. We are not going on tour with those guys; that’s not who we are.’ And then we went and it was love. It was magic.”

Well, maybe for her. The rest of No Doubt were furious.

“Everybody was against it,” Stefani says. “It was a very crazy time. There was already my breakup with Tony, and we were enjoying success for the first time and having outside things come in to to our little band, our little family. And then I met Gavin. It was really lonely, because I felt like nobody wanted me to go out with him. My ex-boyfriend and all of my, like, brothers in the band were saying ‘You are not gonna go out with that guy!’ ”

Why not? “Because I had never been out with anyone else! And other reasons. Everything you could probably think up in your brain is probably true.”

Gwen Stefani started thinking about making a solo album when No Doubt was on tour in 2002 to promote Rock Steady. This was just a few weeks after she married Rossdale in London, went on a quickie honeymoon to Capri, then had a second ceremony in Los Angeles at the home of Jimmy Iovine, her boss at Interscope records. (“That dress,” she says of her custom-designed Galliano with a giggle, “was the whole reason I had another wedding.”) All four members of No Doubt were planning to take a break after the triple platinum Rock Steady “because we hadn’t had one in so long and everyone was burned out,” Stefani says, “Me, first and foremost.”

But the girl who had always worried about being lazy wasn’t planning on taking it easy. “I had so many things I wanted to do: the baby, the movie, the whole list, and the clock was so loud in my head!” Stefani says making her solo album was actually a low priority, but that once she put it in motion, it was impossible to halt. An all-star group of musicians and producers from very different genres came forward to collaborate with her: André 3000, Dr. Dre, Linda Perry, Dallas Austin, the Neptunes and Nellee Hooper, to name a few. And once she told the label she was interested in doing her own “side-project,” you can imagine their reaction. Gwen Stefani, the billboard-ready blonde with the crazy voice and the mad style is finally going solo? Ka-ching!

“As soon as I told Jimmy Iovine that I wanted to do this record, it’s been, like, his record,” she says. “When someone believed in you more than you believe in yourself, you almost want to do it to please them.”

“I would literally back her on anything,” Iovine says from his L.A. office. “Her vision is that strong, I use her a lot in Interscope’s business, the way I would use Dr. Dre: ‘What do you think of this? What do you think of that?’ ”

But when Stefani first started working on Love Angel Music Baby, she found herself – or cast herself – in a familiar role, as the subordinate: dealing with other people’s time lines, striving to meet other people’s goals.

“This is how crazy it was,” she says, tapping her feet frantically as if still buzzing with the pressure and the adrenaline of the whole thing. “The record company called me and was like, ‘You’ve got to go work with Linda Perry. Now. She has only five days out of the whole year to work with you.’ And I’d just got off tour! I was tired, I was burned out, I’d just got married. I hadn’t even seen my husband! But then I thought, OK, if I don’t do this now…. I want to do great things, and I know that I’m super-lucky?” she says in perfect so-cal upspeak.

“So I should just take all the opportunities. It’s one to have ‘Just a Girl’ on the radio, but to have years of cake and ice cream?” She grins and makes eating noises. “It’s gonna end soon! So basically, I cried in my bed, like, for real.”

“When Stefani talks, she actually does sound very much like that teenager who sings into hairbrushes and spends 6th period tracing her boyfriends name in curlicues. But it’s confusing, hearing this animated, teenybopper voice come out of the crimson mouthed woman who is so outrageously glamorous. She doesn’t wear clothes so much as she does costumes. Even sitting around the house, she has gold high-heeled Mary Janes and a plaid Vivienne Westwood top with a cape-like piece that she throws dramatically over her shoulder every 20 minutes or so.

Her assistant brings out an exquisite china coffee service and she takes hers with honey and milk, raising a tiny teacup to her lips with a perfectly manicured hand. “I feel so ‘lady’ now!” she says, beaming. She is not unlike the cliché of the platinum-haired silent-movie star who opens her mouth and spoils the illusion of frosty allure with her Betty Boop voice.

Only in Gwen Stefani’s case, the tears and the eating noises and the “rads” that pepper her conversations are a large part of her Valley-girl-next-door appeal. You can’t be too fancy when you begin your career with a bindi glued to your forehead or decorate your backyard with two intersecting green street signs that read “Gwen Drive” and “Gavin Way.”

“I’m gaudy and cheesy and I always want to push it,” she admits. “Adrian [Young] was always the yang of the band if I was the yin. If I’m the cheese, he’s the cool. That’s what makes No Doubt.” She thinks about it for a minute. “We would be like the most not-best-friends.”

The down side of all this guileless, youthful charm is that Stefani sometimes seems on the verge of drowning in her own adolescent securities. “I think Gwen is over-critical of herself,” say Linda Perry, who was the first producer to work with Stefani on her solo tracks. (Perry was the lead singer of 4 Non Blondes and then went on to write and produce Pink hits like “Get The Party Started” and Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful”) “There was one day where she had a little insecurity breakdown. But I found it very endearing: I loved seeing her that insecure. You meet a lot of people who have half her talent and the they think they’re God’s creative monster.”

Somehow, when Stefani tells it, she is, again the person who things are happening to, not the person in control. “At the Grammys, Linda Perry came up to me like a fucking bull dozer and basically put me in a headlock and was like, ‘We need to write some songs together,’ ” says Stefani. Gwen was accustomed to taking her time – sometimes years – to write songs with No Doubt. “It was always a long, hard process. So I was like, ‘I can’t sit next to you and pour my heart out. I don’t even know you!’ There was times I was just like, ‘Fuck you, dude, you’re totally stepping on my territory.’ Other times we were really inspired by each other. Linda and I had a meant-to-be thing that was magical. I get emotional about it,” Stefani says, and starts to cry a little.

It will probably come as no surprise that Stefani is big on emotion. She is also big on magic. With Pharrell Williams, she “wrote three songs in three days and they were all magic.” The Rock Steady tour was “so magic.” Shooting her cameo appearance as Jean Harlow in martin Scorsese’s upcoming biopic on Howard Hughes, her film debut, was “super-magical.” She had a “magical night” with Adrian Young at the MTV Video Music Awards in Miani. And recording with Andre 3000 was, you guessed it, “total magic!”

Despite all her breathless enthusiasm for the new pool of talent she’s been soaking in, Stefani claims she has no plans to stay solo. “No Doubt is definitely not broken up,” she says firmly. “I don’t even have plans to tour at this point; I don’t see myself putting out a bunch of Gwen Stefani records. Who knows? I might have a baby and just want to stare at it all day and quit everything.” She assesses her time with No Doubt thus far like so: “To be able to put that many years into one project? It was magic.”

Back in her capacious, green tiled kitchen Stefani plays a few more of her new tracks for Blender, and one in particular stands out: a heart-melting ’80s-ish pop song called “Cool” that she wrote with Dallas Austin. She sings “After all the obstacles/ It’s good to see you now with someone else/ It’s such a miracle that you and me are still good friends/ After all that we’ve been through/ I know we’re cool.”

Sounds personal. Is it about anyone in particular? Any bassist in particular?
“It reminds me of the ending of something… that place we are with the band. Like, how every thing’s cool no matter what and we all know it,” she says and looks at her feet. “And other things you can probably pick up on.”

Blender wonders if all this isn’t a little weird for her husband: having a super famous wife who’s till intensely enmeshed with an ex boyfriend, an ex she’s written whole records about, an ex who’s produced several tracks on her solo album, an ex on whom she still depends (“Doing this on my own there’s this whole pile of things where you go, ‘Frick! Where’s Tony?’ “).

Stefani won’t get specific about it. But she does admit that working out without No Doubt on this record has made it possible for Rossdale to contribute more to her music.

“It’s one thing to be in a band with all these guys, and obviously Gavin’s not gonna offer much of an opinion.” she says. “But when I’m on my own, we can talk even more, he can have more of an opinion. It’s been really… romantic.”

For the first time, Rossdale wrote some lyrics for one of Stefani’s songs, a track called “The Real Thing.” It’s so clear the lines that he wrote because they’re so visual and mine are always so obvious,” she says. “Like, just how you would talk it.”

Their second wedding anniversary, on September 14, just passed. “We haven’t done anything yet because he’s in London, but when he gets here I’m sure we’ll make out or something.”

For all her insecurities, Stefani is refreshingly proud of this album. She fully expects 7th graders to be slow dancing to “Cool” and requesting it – begging for it – at make-out parties.

“That,” she says, “would be so perfect! The thing about my record is you can try not to like it. You can try. But you know what? It’s gonna be your guilty pleasure. I just know it!”

All about my year: Gwen Stefani

No band mates were consulted in the answering of this questionnaire!

Best song I heard in 2004
OutKast’s “Hey Ya!”

Trend I’m most sick of
Reality television.

Sex symbol of 2004
Beyoncé

Most expensive purchase of 2004
A Vivienne Westwood shopping spree.

Most rock-star moment of 2004
Every day felt like a rock-star day.

Where I’ll spend New Year’s Eve
At my house in L.A. with 300 people dancing to my record.

With Madonna lost in Kabbalah-land, Gwen Stefani, who is releasing her dance-pop solo debut, Love Angel Music Baby, looks set to take over as Top Blonde. Here, the No Doubt frontwoman and fashion icon talks marriage, movies, motherhood, and the future of her band.

She used to be just a girl. Now she’s just “Gwen.” Thanks to megahits with Eve and Moby, a hot clothing line (L.A.M.B), a fantasy wedding to longtime boyfriend Gavin Rossdale, and her film debut (as ’30s movie star Jean Harlow, opposite Leo DiCaprio, in Martin Scorsese’s Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator), the No Doubt singer has transformed into a one-name pop icon and multimedia brand – the kind you read about in supermarket tabloids, fashion bibles and rock magazines alike. With every door in the music industry open to her as she plotted her solo debut, Love Angel Music Baby, Stefani went shopping for producer (Dr. Dre, Andre 3000, and Linda Perry among them) and emerged with a truly eclectic homage to the ’80s pop disco of her adolescence. With a potential motherhood and a film career ahead, this may be the last time the 35-year-old will be able to stay in the groove for very long, and she’’s determined to dance for inspiration.

How are you Gwen?
I’m fucking great. I’m really, really, really great. I finished my album yesterday. Like, literally finished it. Like, it’s a wrap, you know? It’s so exciting. I feel like I’ve been running this marathon and I’m still breathing really hard, but I know I won.

Why did you decide to release a solo album? No Doubt are as big, if not bigger, than they were in 1996.
People don’t do the same thing their whole life, do they? I mean, I’ve been doing this since I was 17. You get to a certain point in your life when you’re like, “Oh my gosh. I wanna do something else, ’cause I’m gonna die.” Your life starts to go really quick.

Did you always want to make a dance record?
Yeah, I first got the idea while on tour in 2002. I’d heard that old Debbie Deb song [1983's club classic "When I Hear Music"] on the radio: [sings] “When I hear music/ It makes me dance.” And then Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam. Those songs were the backdrop of my life. They were what [No Doubt bassist] Tony [Kanal] was super into when we met; he was 16 and I was 17. [Drummer] Adrian [Young] was like, punk-rock bad boy, and [guitarist] Tom [Dumont] was heavy-metal guy, so they didn’t really like that music. But I said to Tony, “I want to do a record like this. A dance record.”

Recently a pattern has emerged of artists making emotional, singer/songwriter statements in their 20s. Then, in their 30s, they’re like, “Let’s Dance!”
Right. For me, this was coming from my heart. I don’t know if people are gonna like my record, but it’s exactly what I wanted to make. It has such a theme to it – a concept that was never really intended, but it just kind of happened.

Can you explain the concept?
I can’t really. But it definitely has more substance to it than I wanted. I wanted it to be like Madonna’s “Into the Groove.” I didn’t think it was gonna be so hard. I thought I’d work with a couple of talented people, and it would be a side project. But it snowballed and took over my life. It was a whole year of hell.

You collaborated with loads of people on the album. Was it hard not to have your bandmates around to weigh in on what worked and what didn’t?
Yeah. It was a really big deal for No Doubt. It was always, “We write the songs. That’s the point of the band.” But after all those years, it’s fun to go in with super-talented people and do something fresh. All you have to lose is time, and if you write a shitty song, who cares? Going into this record, I had a very specific sound I wanted to make, so I made a wish list of people I thought could get me there.

Anyone you wanted but couldn’t get?
I didn’t get Robert Smith, who said he wanted to, but he was making his own record. Same with Prince, because he was on tour. Missy Elliot and I didn’t hook up either. We did at the very beginning and she was like, “Gwen, you gotta write some songs first and then I’ll know what you wanna do!” I was like, “Okay,” and then it just never happened. [Pause] And one of the people who was not on the list – she’s gonna kill me, but… Linda Perry.

How did you end up with her?
When I got off tour, the record company said, “Linda Perry wants to work with you!” They were all excited. I was sceptical because I didn’t think I was gonna get my dance record out of Linda Perry. [Laughs] But I didn’t want to miss an opportunity, either. So I went to her studio and we wrote this song together the first day. It was a sweet little song that was ni my dance hit. The next day I came back, kind of dreading it, and she had been up all night [finishing the song]. I was like, “You did not just do this!”" It was really inspiring. But by the last day of our session, I was really dried out. I had no ideas, and everytime I’d leave the room, she’d be writing shit and I’d be like “You gotta slow down. You’re writing my record!” I was getting pissed off. She’s writing these lyrics, and that’s when it really crossed the line. It was my insecurities, but I couldn’t take it. I was like, “Call the manager! I need to go home! I need to write on my own.” I told Linda, “It’s nothing against you.” And she was like, “You are fucking crazy.”

Isn’t it a risk working with strong, creative artists like that because they can’t help but influence you? The song you did with Andre 3000, “Bubble Pop Electric,” is unmistakably OutKast-like.
Well, I always felt like if I were a boy, I’d definitely be Andre. He really did bring a lot to the table, and I was trying to keep above water with how talented that guy is. But by the ens, it felt like a collaboration. The good part about working with all these people is that I’m not fully responsible. And I can brag about them and be like, “It’s fucking good. I don’t care if you hate me and think it’s gonna be shit. I will definitely be your guilty pleasure.”

Tony plays on the record, too. How did it feel to work with him on material outside of the band?
It was really cool. After the Linda thing, Tony called me and I was like, “Dude, I suck.” And he was like, “Dude, come over.” So I went to his house and a bunch of our friends were playing these tracks that Tony was doing that were, like, stupid. I was like, “You did not do these.” And he’s like, “Yep, you wanna hear your tracks?” And I was like, “Nuh uh, you did not.” So he pulls out this one and I’m like, “Oh my God, that’s my song.” In the next couple of days, we wrote “Crash.” I basically went from “I hate myself” to “I just wrote a song!” And the songs were exactly what we wanted to do in the first place: Lisa Lisa meets Salt-N-Pepa meets Bell Biv DeVoe!

Will you return to the band if you sell 50 million records?
[Laughs] That would be fantastic, and I hope I do. I think the guys would probably hope I do too. You know, when I called Tony and Adrian and Tom to say I was doing this record, we’d already decided we were gonna take time off. You gotta understand that these are our lives and, like, lives are short. We put everything into each other for years. Now Adrian has a baby and I got married and Tom got engaged. Our priorities have changed. We’ve had our cake for a long time now. We’re fulfilled like we never thought we’d be.

You’ve reached a new level of fame in your own right. You’re not just a girl in the band anymore.
But everything that I’ve done has been a really natural progression. Like high fashion was always something that I’d been passionate about, but was shy to talk about because I thought it was cheesy. The music comes first, but fashion was my guilty pleasure.

You’ve always had a lot of style, but it’s definitely got more elaborate.
That’s ’cause I got richer.

But what about the 16-year-old girl who works at the ice cream parlor who can’t afford to look like you anymore? Do you worry about losing that fan base?
Well no, because I’m not gonna go backward. I wore Doc. Martens for 12 years and my feet were ruined from those shoes! [Laughs] I can wear high heels now. I’m a woman. So, no. I don’t wanna go backward, but I don’t really wanna go forward, either. I mean, I’m really vain and I don’t wanna get old. But at the same time, I don’t want to be that stupid person who tries to hang on. It’s hard. It definitely sucks getting older, but you always feel like the best version of yourself because you’re more experienced and confident. I hope maybe my children will save me from my vanity.

Are you and Gavin planning a family?
We talked about it, and I’ve wanted a baby ever since I was a baby. [Laughs] It’s weird, though. I go in and out of wanting to and then being scared. My life is so spectacular, I don’t want it to change. I don’t want to miss any opportunities. But I think after doing this album, I kind of got it out of my system. So it’s gonna happen when it’s supposed to happen. I mena, my life is nothing like I thought it was gonna be. It’s so much better! Wooo!

And your film career is finally beginning. What was it like to make your first movie with Martin Scorsese?
I only have a couple of lines, but, like, there’s really no small part in a Scorsese movie. To be able to play someone like Jean Harlow is just… come on, dude. I don’t care if I’m walking around looking like her – it’s still a pretty big deal. Scorsese is so warm and welcoming and smart and passionate, and Leo was so helpful. He’s incredible. It was a really good experience. I got my feet wet [in movies] and I want to go swimming. I’d love to do the breaststroke for a while on that one, but I don’t know. It’s also very tedious.

How so?
It’s nothing that’s ever gonna compare to being on stage and playing for 20,000 people. You don’t get that immediate response to a performance. It’s more like, “Okay, now do it again 14 more times.” And it’s very competitive. I’ve tried out for loads of movie that I didn’t get, like Fight Club and Girl, interrupted, but I never thought any of the parts were really my part. You get caught up in it because it’s like a race. And it’s really humiliating because people know who you are. Like, even trying out for the Scorsese movie, I had to go to the Hotel BelAir and there were all these other girls there. It’s a casting call! Which, for me, was weird because I’m like -

An icon.
Yeah! [Laughs] I’m an icon!