Having just come off a world tour promoting her record-breaking solo career and right before she steps into the studio with her old cohorts No Doubt, singer Gwen Stefani is flying too fast and bright to slow down. It’s safe to say that Stefani has become one of the gods of today’s pop music world, with plenty of devoted followers. Welcome to Gwenopolis.

A few days before I’m supposed to meet Gwen Stefani in Los Angeles for this interview, I just happen to run into her in a Virgin Megastore. Not surprisingly, Gwen is striking-movie-star blonde, impossibly big brown eyes, impeccable style. She also happens to be standing in a clear plastic box and is approximately 12″ tall. It’s the “Hollaback Gwen” doll, a fascinating (and, in this case, adorable) barometer of fame. It’s one thing to acquire international pop-star status, your own fashion empire, a level of wealth unimaginable to most humans, and what appears to be an enviable level of domestic bliss (right after this interview took place, Stefani indeed became pregnant with a second child). It’s quite another to actually see yourself immortalized in toy form.

When the real Gwen Stefani strolls onto the patio of The Beverly Hills Hotel a few days later, it’s easy to see how she might inspire the creation of a whole fleet of impossibly big-eyed dolls. Just home from a massive world tour in support of two hit solo records-2004 Love.Angel.Music.Baby and 2006’s The Sweet Escape – Stefani has none of the pretense or guardedness that one might expect from someone at the top of their game. Most pop stars coming down from more than a year on the road would probably be on an exotic, well-deserved vacation, but Stefani is happy to spend some time “being a real person again” in LA – which for her means running errands, working on her fashion line L.A.M.B., and spending quality time with musician Gavin Rossdale and their almost 2-year-old son, Kingston. Being a real person again also means getting back to the business of being a rock star. Rather than rest on the laurels of her newly established solo career, Stefani is also gearing up to re-enter the studio with her old band No Doubt. She’s so casual and friendly, it’s easy to forget that the woman sitting across the table just happens to be a globe-trotting supermom who has sold upward of 30million records and has one of the most recognizable faces in the world. This is why people love Gwen Stefani. More than just pretty and talented, she is someone you might actually want to know-the kind of sweet California girl who still loves makeup and old thrift stores, and isn’t afraid to admit she occasionally plays with dolls…even the ones created to look exactly like her. T.Cole Rachel

The last time you were on the cover of V was in 2004. No Doubt was on hiatus, and you were anxiously putting the finishing touches on a little solo project…
Wow, has it been that long? So much has happened since then. It’s so odd that we’re having this conversation today. I’ve only been home from my world tour for a few days and earlier this afternoon I had to go and finalize my will. So, it’s like this one big chapter of my life came to an end, and then I had to come home and basically take stock of my entire life. Like, now what? It’s a really strange time.

Were you shocked by the response to your first solo album, Love.Angel.Music.Baby and then The Sweet Escape?
You know what shocks me the most? It really was just this goofy thing that I did on a whim. Like, why not make a silly dance record just for fun? No Doubt was going on a break, and I wanted to record a few songs to see what would happen. I could have easily not made a solo record. It was purely the result of following my heart.

Did the experience of making these two records outside of No Doubt change the way you write songs and make music?
I still feel like writing the songs is the hardest thing I’ve ever done and also the most rewarding. I love designing things and I love the creative process involved with that as well, but there’s so much more magic involved in making a song. You never remember how to do it or how you did it before, but when you emerge at the end with this song… it’s literally like magic. I mean, I hate the process most of the time and it’s so daunting to think about going back into the studio to make a record. But a good song will still be around after you’re dead and gone. It’s permanent. Still, going in to work with all of those really talented people… I just felt like such an asshole. Like, I don’t know what I’m doing and I don’t really play an instrument and suddenly I ‘m in a room with Dre and Pharrell and Andre 3000. It was the most intimidating experience of my life. Obviously I’m glad I did it though.
[Laughs] I don’t know yet how this will affect my creative process with No Doubt but I’m sure it will in some way.

“Hollaback Girl” was also the first song in the states to sell a million copies as a digital download. That’s crazy, girl.
Pretty historic, right? Me and Pharrell were just like, Yeah!

The experience of touring on your own must have felt strange too, not to have the band up there behind you.
It was very different, but amazing. I played for over a million people and we did over a hundred shows. Because I’ve been doing this for so long I’ve had the experience of playing in front of all kinds of different audiences, but the audiences for this tour were like nothing I’ve ever seen. Success as a musician can seem really abstract until you actually go out on tour and see the crowds. Even then, it’s hard to grasp it somehow… walking out on a stage in front of thousands of people every night and realizing that this is their big night out and they’ve bought a ticket to see YOU. Every night I’d go through the same thing – “I’m too tired, I don’’t want to put these tights on, I can’t sing, I don’t wanna get ready.” Except for putting my makeup on-which I always enjoy – I’d just dread it. Then you walk out on stage and see the way people react and what the songs mean to them and it’s just incredibly rewarding. Every night I’d run out through the audience and have some kind of hands-on experience with the fans… and I mean that literally. I actually have scars from doing that. I love it. Plus I had nine costume changes! I’m not like Cher or Madonna – it wasn’t that huge of a production – but still I wouldn’t do nine costume changes in a No Doubt show.

So the boys in No Doubt weren’t pissed when you were out on the road for so long?
They have been very supportive and cool about it. I mean, they’ve been my friends since I was 16. They knew I’d come back and do another No Doubt record, plus they were all busy as well. It’s not like they were just waiting around for me to come back. They actually went into the studio ahead of me to start working, so I don’t even know how much material is going to be waiting for me when I go in to start playing with them. We did a photo shoot together as soon as I got back from the tour. I was like, let’s get together and take a picture before my body gets destroyed by this next baby that I want to have. [Laughs]. It was also a nice way for us to get together and do something as a band. It was a little weird, but we looked really cute. Now we just have to make the record.

No Doubt has been a band for twenty years now.
What? Do we have to say that? Can’t you just tell people that we’re a brand new band? You know, this hot new band called No Doubt. Check them out.

You should be flaunting it! Very few bands last that long. Still, the musical landscape has changed a lot since the last No Doubt record came out in 2001.
Yes, for sure. It’s daunting for us, but it’s also liberating. I feel like all our records are very different from each other and we’ve never really fit into a specific category. We evolved a lot from record to record, but it always still sounds like us. It’s weird that way. There’s a certain chemistry between us that can’t be faked. We don’t have the same sorts of problems that we used to have. We’ve grown up. I think this record could be the most inspired thing we’ve ever done as a band.

In No Doubt it’s not you calling all the shots.
Yeah, it’s back to the democracy of being a band. I’m like, Are you serious? I’m voting right now?

This is such an obvious question, but did your life feel radically changed after having Kingston?
I don’t feel like I really changed all that much. Kingston didn’t really change me so much as he just has made my life better. he makes me so happy. It’s hard to imagine until you have a child of your own. It’s just one of those miraculous human things that you have to experience for yourself. God, I’m gonna start crying when I talk about this because it’s just so.. it’s so intense. I put him to sleep at night and you know, I’ll be rocking him to sleep and he’ll be playing with my hair and… it’s just the most amazing feeling in the world. To have this little guy who loves me so much automatically, its just crazy. I’ll put him to bed and then, you know, enjoy having the quiet time when I can do stuff like go online and check my e-mail, hang out with Gavin, whatever, but when I find myself thinking that I can’t wait for him to wake up again so we can play. My favorite time of the day now is six-thirty in the morning. We all get up and spend the morning together. Now, you can ask Gavin and he’ll tell you that I am a sleepaholic. I love to sleep. If you had ever told me that I’d be waking up at six in the morning and enjoying it – for any reason – I would have never believed you. The last time I got up that early on a regular basis was when I was in high school! So yes, he’s changed my life. I have to be more protective of my time now. I have to be more organized. But those aren’t bad things to be, you know?

Do you ever find yourself having total Momzilla moments, where you suddenly realize, oh my God, I have become the crazy mom screaming about organic carrots at the grocery store?
[Laughs] Not too much. I think you start to relax after a while. I think we’re super relaxed about everything compared to other people with kids that we see. You realize that they are going to grow up and make messes and whatever. You can’t be psycho about it. Still, I understand the whole crazy mom thing because after you have kids you want them to have the best things-even if it’s the perfect organic carrot-because you love them so much. It just happens. Everyone should become a little bit crazy over their kid because kids deserve it. It’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me and I’ve had a lot of great things happen to me. And yes, I definitely want to have more.. and it’s fun trying to get pregnant.

How do you juggle the music career, the family, and the fashion stuff?
It’s tough. you know. I’m going into my fifth year now of doing L.A.M.B and it’s like a full time job. Sometimes I’m afraid that I’m going to get tired from my own fashion line if I don’t do what I’m supposed to. There are days when all I want to do is relax and the baby will be asleep and even though I just want to do nothing I know that unless I do my work, no one else can do their work. So, I’ll tell Gavin to sit tight and I’ll spend the next few hours looking at old patterns online – which, bu the way, is my favorite thing in the world to do. Looking through old patterns, going to thrift stores. Visiting costume warehouses. I love it.

You’ve always had a very defined sense of style, even from the earliest days of the band. Now that you have this successful clothing line and are looking at as a style icon, do you find that you have to be more protective of your image?
Not really. I’ve always been in total control of my image and how I’ve been presented. No one ever told me how to dress or that I need to be more sexy or more fashion-y or whatever. For the longest time, I didn’t even let anyone else do my makeup or hair. To be honest, my sense of style isn’t insanely premeditated. I don’t really worry about it or think hard about it… usually it just happens. I’ll accidentally curl my hair a certain way. Sometimes I’ll see a girl in the audience who is copying my look but rocking it way better than I ever could and that will inspire me. I get inspired by everything around me. I was always the little girl locked in the bathroom putting on makeup, singing and getting a million burns from the curling iron. I’m still that girl.

As far as media attention goes, you and Gavin seem to fare pretty well. I don’t see gossip mags predicting your divorce every five minutes like they do with some celeb couples.
It’s just so weird that people feel free to comment on your marriage I guess we all do it, but it’s usually in regard to someone that we actually know. For complete strangers to weigh in on my private life is incredibly weird to me. As for me and Gavin… you know, we fell in love twelve years ago and we have had the rockiest, craziest, most amazing relationship. It’s sort of a miracle, actually. We work very hard at it. Plus, you know having a baby is just about the most romantic thing in the world you can do with somebody. We were together so long before we had him and he’s such a funny blend of us. We’re really lucky and very blessed but not because it isn’t difficult. Gavin is awesome. Oh god, what a quote… he’s awesome!

So, I was walking around the Virgin Megastore in New York and discovered that they had this huge island of Gwen Stefani mechandise – a total Gwenopolis right in the middle of the store.
Wait, did you say ‘Gwenopolis’? Can you please make sure that goes in this story? Actually, I want that. My next solo record is totally going to be called Gwenopolis.

Well, I’m looking at all the stuff – Harajuku Lovers bags, unauthorized Gwen Stefani biographies, DVD’s- and I picked up one of the Gwen Stefani dolls. As I’m holding the doll in my hands, I look over and I notice that the person standing across from me is Chris Rock. He’s the only other person around in the entire store and he totally clocked me playing with the Gwen Stefani doll!
Are you serious?

Well, it got me thinking about all the various celebrities who have their own doll. It’s a pretty elite group. I mean, it’s one thing to be famous, but to have a doll…
Yeah, it really takes it to the next level. Let me tell you, it was a long difficult creative process creating those dolls. The outfits are exact replicas of what I wore onstage for the tour… the shit is crazy. Plus, they’d bring all these doll head mock-ups of my face over to my house and I’d be talking about how the eyebrows needed to be thinner…

That has to be one of those moments when you step back for a second and think, My life is insane. This is insane.
Uh-huh. But you know, I was one of those girls who played with Barbies a lot as a kid. A lot. So strangely enough it didn’t feel that weird ot me. It was like a fantasy. The funny thing is that they keep sending them to me, so now I have a bunch of them at my house that I don’t know what to do with. I don’t want people to come over and think I just keep dolls of myself scattered around the house. That would be crazy.

Unlikely ska-chick turned international fashion icon and starlet Gwen Stefani is pushing for world domination with her Harajuku hip-pop.

Her debut solo album, Love. Angel. Music. Baby, released last year, has gone six-times platinum worldwide and, with pop anthems like ‘Hollaback Girl’ becoming the sound of 2005, Gwen Stefani has spent the year becoming a solo star of truly international status.

Hardly suprising – she has all the makings of a sex icon – bleached blonde barnet? Check. Scarlet smackers? Check. Tight belly constantly on display? Check. Gwen Stefani really is an all round siren, ticking all the boxes. An individual, quirky trend bender with a feisty attitude. Gwen was already an accomplished star, as the enigmatic front woman of No Doubt before she launched herself as a modern day style icon. An important addition to a long line of contemporary feisty females fronters of rock and alternative bands, she is the Debbie Harry of our generation.

Never far from the public eye, Gwen always has a busy schedule. Currently in the midst of an epic US tour which has seen the Black Eyed Peas as support, her second album is imminent and likely to create the same impact as the 2004 debut. Beyond music, her projects have stretched out into many expressive and artistic areas – from clothing lines (L.A.M.B) to film (a cameo in Zoolander and playing Jean Harlow in The Aviator). The No Doubt Greatest Hits compilation came out in 2003 and after being caught up in the hurricane this was by no means the end of the yellow brick road for Dorothy, she was going to the Emerald City and beyond.

Going it alone defined Gwen’s career; it all began with the dynamic single. ‘What You Waiting For?’, and the famous fairy tale video, with the cute Harajuku look becoming instantly fashionable. Then came the debut album that left Britney relieved she was taking some time out and reached the Top Five in world charts. The single ‘Hollaback Girl’ reached the number one spot of the Billboard Hot 100 parachuting her into the hip hop market with street smarts and urban attitude.

This solo debut revolved around some massive team ups, with Dr Dre and Andre 3000 of Outkast adding flava to the mix. “The whole idea was to collaborate,” says Stefani, “to do a solo record means trying to pour my heart out, which I feel like I already do in No Doubt. This is more of an art project. I wanted to play different roles and work with a ton of people.”

No problems there then. When it came to people to work with or styles to spin, she had the biggest talents queueing round the block with enough names for several solo albums to span several genres. Looking like a guest list for an exclusive shindig Mary J. Blige, Missy Elliot, OutKast, Linda Perry. Tim Armstrong, Dallas Austin and Damon Elliot are all among her collaborators, Present too were hip-hop beats from Dr. Dre, the Neptunes and Andre 3000. Dallas Austin and Nellee Hooper (Massive Attack, Soul II Soul) give the tracks a dance feel, and the album’s new wave sound comes by way of Depeche Mode’s Martin Gore, Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart and New Order. “I knew exactly what my influences were; Club Nouveau, Lisa Lisa, Prince, New Order, The Cure, Early Madonna,” says Stefani. “Everybody was under strict instructions haha!” An almighty 80s mixtape mash-up was on the cards.

Despite being such a phenomenal star, working with OutKast’s Andre 3000 on the track ‘Bubble Pop Electric’ proved to be particuarly  nerve-racking for our fearless heroine. They are clearly star-crossed collaborators, as both admire each other’s sound, “I’m such a fan of Andre’s. I was sent hundreds of tracks, and his were actually the first that I liked. It was interesting to work with him while his star was really shining bright. At first,  it was kind of intimidating, like, I didn’t feel I could shine. But by the end, it felt like we were in a band together.” Shining star Andre was equally keen to please and requested that the samples they submitted for Gwen’s consideration recieved special effort and attention.

With such a selection of talents desperate to perform and work with her it would be easy to assume she would be feeling confident, actually she is a little self conscious – and we thought she was No Doubt, not self doubt!

“I have my job in the band. I write the words and I write the melody, that’s what I do. But when you go and you’re writing with some of these people who are so talented, like they’re songwriters, they do it everyday. For some reason, it just looks so easy for them. I’ve had a hard time with my ego, becuase it gets bruised. Like, ‘Oh my god, maybe they’re writing some of the melody and they came up with something really good, and I didn’t come up with it.’ So it’s a whole kind of learning process for me.”

It is clear Gwen has no plans to cut herself off from the band and even had their input for her first solo venture. During the writing process, she went back to Los Angeles to join her husband, Gavin Rossdale. She started to feel overwhelmed by the task at hand, so she sought solace in former bandmate and boyfriend Tony Kanal, thinking that visiting him would give her a much-needed break.

“I just had a breakdown,” she explained, “I was like, ‘I gotta stop now, I have nothing to write about, I can’t do it anymore.’ So I left the studio and went over to Tony’s house, because he was like ‘Come over, we’re going to all go out!’ ” There was no therapeutic night out though, instead Stefani found that Kanal had a surprise waiting for her at his home studio.”

“He starts, ‘Hey, lemme play you some tracks’ and he plays me this track he’s doing for another singer and I was blown away. And the he goes, ‘Lemme play you some tracks I’ve been doing for you!’ So he played me this track and I was like, woah!”

With the blues and writers block behind her Gwen knuckled down with Kanal and worked out the as-yet-untitled song with him that very night, claiming it is, “probably my favourite track that I’ve written so far.” But unfortunately the inspiration only struck once. They did try to write together for two weeks straight after that, and couldn’t find a place where they clicked in quite the same way. “Tony and I kinda came from different schools,” she says. “There’s a certain kind of record I’m trying to make; it comes from something that I used to listen to growing up, so it’s more of a dance kind of thing.”

Inevitably the signature No Doubt sounds remained, but it became clear Gwen took the opportunity to develop her own space where she could be herself, and that self seems pretty kooky. The music video for the first single ‘What You Waiting For?’ really pushed the bazaar. The scene took a contemporary adaptation of Alice In Wonderland, naturally with Gwen as the over imaginative Alice. A pure slice of the Mad Hatter’s crazy cake, it was a real visual spectacular, highlighting both Gwen’s dark and juvenile dimensions. This eccentricity has never had an adverse effect on her career; in fact she is admired all the more for it. Unique and inimitable she remains the pop icon with edge, offering more than Madge, Missy or J-Lo put together.

You would think all that popularity would filter through her bleach blonde bonce and have some sort of an effect, but her eccentricity is nothing to do with her fame, it is who she is. Being unique is definitely one of her skills, but she remains modest. “I think everyone has gifts and everyone has talents. If you are successful at it, it feels really good but it never penetrates completely. There are moments where I think that we made an amazing record and I’m so proud of it, but I don’t wake up and go, ‘Wow, I’m amazing’.”

But Gwen, and therefore No Doubt, really are amazing as are their achievements to date. Introduced to the band through her brother and riding on the new wave of ska-punk No Doubt first bowled us over with ‘Don’t Speak’ and have kept us rocking for years beyond with anthems such as ‘I’m Just a Girl’, ‘Hey Baby’ and the salacious Talk Talk cover ‘It’s My Life’. Although she was born and raised in sunny California this goodtime girl is not just an average all-round American. An Italian father and Irish mother have obviousl influenced her style and helped her bridge many a cultural gap as well as giving her that flexibility between genres like punk, ska, hip-hop and R&B.

The band underwent many revamps – well they did start out way back in 1987 -  and so has Gwen, reinvention is important as her image is a sharp focus for her fans. No Doubt were huge, especially in the US, piling platinum sales figures for their albums and huge sold out stadium tours. The yellow brick road was always a long and windy one for them though. Just when they thought it was almost over they were working on another album, Tragic Kingdom and the band soon had the label Intersope’s full attention again. The old saying about the third time being the charm proved true, and there was nothing tragic to be found in this offering. The album hit Number One on the Billboard charts and also won the group a Grammy Award.

It was clear even then that the band, whatever their individual talents, had just one star, and she was ready for a new challenge, without forgetting her past. “We’re still going to do No Doubt songs, but 17 years we’ve been together… you hit a point in your music career where you put a Greatest Hits out, it’s like ‘No way!’ you know? So I decided to do this.”

It is a clear example of a change as good as a rest. “I wanted to do a dance record really bad, I thought it was going to be really easy and fun, but it was really hard and took a long time but all I wanted to do was make a dance record. Not event that – a stupid dance record, haha”

Rumours and gossip are the fuel of fame and Gwen knows it. She admits she used the speculation of band break up as a cheeky publicity stunt. “I thought it would be a good idea to say we were breaking up, but really we’re not. We decided after our album Rock Steady we were going to take some time apart to pursue independent projects. And I really wanted to do a movie.” Sure enough, having conquered the MTV screen, Gwen was ready to take over the big screen. She confidently tucked acting under her studded belt with the part in The Aviator. With a top draw cast, Matin Scorsese’s Howard Huges biopic, in which she starred alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, Jude Law and Willem Dafoe gave Gwen the opportunity to prove her performing skills could stretch beyond her singing career. Striking theatricality has always been part of Gwen’s repertoire, which is clear in the music videos. Remember ‘It’s My Life’ – a mini movie in itself.

She may not have been the main role but her part was integral, as was her look. Gwen was initially dissatisfied with the attempts to transform her into screen legend Jean Harlow for The Aviator. “I would have done it a little differently. I’m always in control of my hair and make-up. I was like, ‘Are you sure you want the lips to be that thin? Jean Harlow’s were bigger than that. It’s not like I didn’t read two biographies and watch 18 of her movies before I got here!’ “

The look, recapturing Harlow’s incandescent beauty turned out to be good enough for the cover of Vogue, but Gwen’s looks have always been a focal point. She is still not sure about all the hype. “It’s always odd to talk about my fashion. It’s something you look at, you don’t need to talk about it.” How can it be ignored though? It is so out there and unique, much like the person within the clothes. Gwen definitely has some fashion interest as she has gone on to launch her own label, L.A.M.B (Love. Angel. Music. Baby of course!). “L.A.M.B is based on everything I’ve ever worn from my first punker pants to the present day.”

Discontent with cornering the casual market, as a favour Gwen agreed to design the wedding gown worn by close pal Mieke Binzer when she wed Gwen’s bandmate Tom Dumont in October 2004. The bride was so impressed with the 1920s inspired satin gown the pop star created she thought Gwen should concentrate on becoming the next Vera Wang.

The hype surrounding Gwen’s own wedding to Gavin Rossdale, of the band Bush, was itself enormous, and played it’s part in developing Gwen’s profile away from No Doubt landing them in the pantheon of glamorous celebrity couples inhabited by Sienna and Jude, Brad and Jen, Ben and Jen, Posh and Becks and other hapless lovers served up as tabloid fodder for the generation of Heat-reading suburban secretaries and fat, lonely no-hopers.

Gwen may have been generating the hype when she got married, when someone else got married, and even when no one was getting married but few stars seem to do it with such ease, and remain so much themselves. So here’s to Gwen, there’s no doubt she’ll continue to get everything she deserves and more in 2006. Can I have it like that? You got it like that!

Just A Girl? Blonde Ambition

• Watch out Armani, Stefani’s fashion label L.A.M.B is favoured by the likes of Halle Berry, J-Lo and Nicole Kidman.
• Her designer flair was evident years ago when she used to spend hours making her own clothes. Fly girl meets high fashion is Stefani’s forte.
• She dated her bandmate Tony Kanal for many years and the anthem “Don’t Speak” is the tale of their tragic romance. Despite the split the band stayed strong.
• Gwen cites Madness, Kermit the Frog, Julie Andrews and Fishbone’s Angelo Moore as her inspirational heroes.

Few mix it up like style queen Gwen Stefani. But unlike most pretenders to her throne, she’s not too precious to share her secrets. Respect.

We get a shock when Gwen Stefani walks into the room. That’s to be expected, of course,  from a peroxide bombshell rock goddess. But today, as she saunters in from the 11 o’clock sunshine to the industrial cool of an LA photo studio, we’re taken aback because she’s so, well, under-stated.

Dressed almost head to toe in her own label L.A.M.B (Mukluk-style boots being the only concession), a beanie covers her trademark hair, over-sized shades shield her face and, despite the bomber jacket, she looks daintier than her larger-than-life stage presence – kinda doll like, which is really rather appropriate for a girl with such a penchant for dressing up.

‘This is my everyday outfit,’ she says. ‘These jackets are wicked, the lining’s camouflage with little lambs – I call it Lambi Cami.’ Gwen’s got a way with words – just read the lyrics, or cute sleeve notes, on her debut solo album Love. Angel. Music. Baby (L.A.M.B, geddit?). And as she laughs and chatters her way through our interview so enthusiastically that it’s a struggle to actually get a word in, it’s clear that not only has she got plenty to crow about, but that she’s toe-wigglingly happy with life right now.

First single What You Waiting For?, produced by studio svengali Nelle Hooper of Madonna and Björk fame, went to top 10 and follow-up Rich Girl, featuring Eve and produced by Dr. Dre, is destroying the charts right now. Elsewhere on the album, Gwen has collaborated with with other big-hitters such as The Neptunes and Andre 3000 from OutKast. She’s just won a Brit Award for International Female Solo Artist and is still very much at the forefront of No Doubt, with whom she’s sold 25 million records and won three Grammys.

Then there’s L.A.M.B, the clothing label she started two years ago with friend Andrea Lieberman. Right now Gwen’s working on an accessories line. ‘It’s Japanese-inspired, kind of Hello Kitty but older,’ she says. ‘It’s so cute. I even designed this digital camera with its own bag, stationary and all this Harajuku stuff.’

Last year she landed her first film role, in Matin Scorsese’s The Aviator, alongside Leo DiCaprio, after missing out on Chicago, Fight Club and Girl, Interrupted. It’s a back-row-snog-and-you’ll-miss-it part, but the first step on the last leg of Gwen’s bid for world domination, plus she got to play her heroine, Jean Harlow. ‘She was dope-ass, with skinny eyebrows and attitude – way ahead of her time.’

Meanwhile, Gwen splits her downtime between two continents, with homes in Los Angeles and Primrose Hill, London, where she lives with husband Gavin Rossdale from Bush, with whom she’s currently planning to have a family. So all in all, it’s something of a miracle she still finds time to be a fashion icon and inspiration to ELLEgirls everywhere.

So Gwen, first of all, can we just say that we’re loving your style?
Well, I love ELLEgirl too – I am an ELLEgirl. But I find it so surreal that people look up to me, because I’m just me, you know.

It’s because you’re so original. Where do you get your inspiration from?
I don’t really feel I’m original, I’m just a big collaboration of stolen goods. I’m inspired by everything around me, like I could look at somebody in the street and go, ‘OK, I’m doing that.’ I’m the biggest thief ever, it’s a big recycling thing. Over the years I’ve been inspired by tons of things – punk rock, Hollywood glamour girls, the ska scene, and I just put it into a big salad and mix it up. I was going to call my album Stolen Goods, or This Was Yours, Now It’s Mine.

But the way you mix stuff together it always works…
Thank you, that’s nice.

How do you get it right every time?
I don’t think I do! I guess I just have a passion for fashion… I love it. But it’s such a wierd thing to talk about – that’s why I never did it in the past, I’d always be so embarassed. Fashion’s just what you wear in the morning, you know.

When did you become conscious of it?
I hit puberty and found music, and all of a sudden I wanted to be unique. In high school I did a lot of sewing and thrift-store shopping. My mum sewed a lot of clothes for me when I was growing up, so I spent loads of time at the fabric store. Every dance that came up, we would buy fabric and make my dress. For prom, I remade Grace Kelly’s dress from the movie Rear Window. My parents were strict, though. If I was walking to college, they’d drive by and say, ‘You’re not going to school like that!’ Now I don’t wear anything that anyone tells me to wear.

Which designers inspire you?
Vivienne Westwood drives me crazy. She is the ultimate because she started the whole punk thing – so many people have copied her that she’s the book that you go to. She takes classical tradition and twists it modern. Every time I come to London I give her most of my pay check.

Do you have a stylist?
I’ve always done my own until I met Andrea Lieberman on the Let Me Blow Ya Mind video in 2001. We’ve been working together ever since and now she’s one of my best friends. She knows the fashion world a lot better than me – I’m just a girl from Orange County who goes thrift-store shopping.

We’ve got to ask – is Orange County anything like the O.C.?
Not the one I grew up in! My family lived across the street from Disneyland surrounded by a bunch of seedy motels.

How would you describe your album?
Well it was supposed to be a silly dance record, kinda like the songs I used to listen to in high school. I wanted to make a modern version of early 80s stuff like Club Nouveau, Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam, Prince, early Madonna… But when you’re writing you never know what you’re going to get, depending on your moods and what you’re going through at the time.

Like, the Harajuku Girls, for example?
I’m really inspired by the whole Tokyo scene. The first time I went, it was as if I’d landed on another planet – I was, like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ Harajuku Girls are all about being an individual and expressing yourself through style and that’s something I’ve always done. And then I started thinking, ‘I’m giving myself some Harajuku Girls and I’m going to roll with them everywhere I go.’ It was like a fantasy, almost like my muse.

You collaborated with a lot of people – what did you enjoy most?
The last session with Pharrell (Williams) was really fun becuase I already had the album done and was feeling confident. We got there at four in the afternoon and finished the song by 11. We were, ‘Wow, this is so fun.’ There was a magical thing going through us at that point.

We’re very jealous of you spending time with Pharrell in a small room…
I’m jealous of myself, I’m like – wow!

Did you learn anything about yourself from working with all these people?
That I have a massive ego. Songwriting defines me and makes me feel like I am something in this world, so to open myself up to other people was totally threatening. It was so nerve-wrecking, sitting in a room with Andre 3000, going, ‘Shit, I hope I can think of something – anything!’ But doing that fueled some fire in me.

How do you find time to do everything?
I have this big list of things I want to do and a clock ticking really hard in my head. I knew that if I didn’t do the album then, I’d never do the movie, the No Doubt record would never come out… It’s where the idea for the first single came from, like, ‘What You Waiting For, Gwen? Don’t complain about it – just go do it.’

Gwen on the couch

If you could be an accessory, what would you be?
Maybe I’d be a bra. Something sexy…

What excites you?
Following through with my ideas.

What would you do if you could be invisible?
I feel that I’ve been a fly on the wall for years, being in a band with all boys, so I’d much prefer to be visible: ‘Hello? Pay attention to me!’

How do you cheer yourself up if you’re having a bad day?
Eat pizza or Pringles, or just go to sleep… move on to the next day. That’s not very inspirational, is it? Now all you ELLEgirls will be, ‘We’ve got an excuse to go to bed.’

When are you happiest?
When I’m in bed, watching TV with my husband – eating pizza!

Do you have a recurring dream?
My dog Megan just died but she keeps coming back in my dreams so I suppose that’s God’s way of letting me still hang out with her.

Favourite smell?
Right now it’s a candle called Violet.

Do you have a massive wardrobe?
It’s obscene as I get all the L.A.M.B samples. Every so often I invite all of my friends over to pillage.

What do you always have on you?
My wedding ring, that’s going to be on me for life, and a toothbrush as I never know how long I’m going to be away. Then just my Blackberry, some sunglasses and lipstick.

Best invention?
I love the internet. To connect with the outside world without having to go out is really unbelievable.

Do you have a nickname?
Gwennie? But usually it’s just Gwen or Lamb, as I call everybody Lamb.

How do you spend your free time?
I’m usually really depressed, going, ‘I don’t know what to do with myself.’ I fantasise about going on vactation with my husband, that’d be weird. We’ve never done that before…

Name one thing you’d like to change about the world?
That there was no racism. It seems such an easy thing to get rid of.

What do you wish you could do that you can’t?
Choreography – I wish I could dance like Beyoncé or Michael Jackson.

Favourite journey?
This whole life’s been a long journey, but a good one. I don’t want it to end.

She’s a punk-rock pin-up, a female David Bowie, the new princess of pop, a style icon, a hip-hop superstar, a movie starlet, the red-carpet goddess, a cultural chameleon. Just don’t call her a faker…

“What I would say to those people,” spits Stefani in her helium-tipped Cali-purr, “is do your research. I was in a band with all guys since I was 16 years old. I’ve been in a fucking rock band touring the fucking world for eighteen years. So if you’re gonna try and erase that, then I’m gonna stick my finger right up in your face. ‘Cos you know what? I did it. And you try and be a girl and do that in 1987.

“I know what it’s like to be up onstage with anyone from a stupid, fucking wannabe, punk rock band with a bunch of fucking wannabe punk rock kids in the audience to, like, opening for U2, opening for The Rolling Stones. I mean, we’ve shared the stage with so many different kinds of groups. We played the fucking Warped Tour! I was one of the first females to do that – it was like (tampon-flinging girl grungers) L7 and No Doubt!”

A pause for breath and a flash of that winning Hollywood smile: “You can tell I get a little bit angry… No, not angry, but I feel a little bit like, y’know what? I don’t need to hear it.”

The truth is, Gwen Stefani is whoever the goddamn hell she wants to be. The other night she was Rock Gwen, accompanying her husband and bush frontman Gavin Rossdale to see heavy metal headfucks Helmet on tour (“That was pretty scary”). Earlier today, she was Fashion Gwen, emerging airbrushed-immaculate from three hours in hair and make-up to work the camera like a seasoned pro while wearing pieces of her very own clothes label, L.A.M.B.

And then suddenly she’s Street Gwen as ‘Rich Girl’ – the pop-ragga track she’s worked on with two of hip-hop’s most celebrated heavyweights, Dr Dre and her old sparring partner, Eve – blasts through the photo studio speakers and she lip-synchs along, pulling gangster poses and giggling to herself.

In her astonishing 18-year-career, Gwen Stefani has proved she can turn her hand to anything – bindis, Two Tone, ’80s clubbing, Japanese styling – and instantly make it the coolest thing in the world. For anyone with an ear for cross-pollination and an eye for fun, she is the only 21st-century superstar that matters any more.

Contrary to popular stereotyping, Gwen Stefani was not the token pretty girl drafted in to give parochial, Orange County new wavers No Doubt an MTV-friendly face and send them on their way to mid-’90s stadium success. Sure, she gave them that, but that was just the beginning. As a 16-year-old tomboy, it was Gwen who knew her stuff better than the boys, and first turned her hopelessly un-hip disco-loving bassist boyfriend Tony Kanal (perhaps more famous as the object of her lost affections in No Doubt’s 1997 breakthrough ballad ‘Don’t Speak’) onto what was to become their signature sound.

“I was into ska, like, hard ska. Like I was really into Madness, The Specials and The Selecter and all these groups you didn’t get to hear on the radio over here,” babbles the astonishingly warm (she’ll compliment on the sundress we’re wearing numerous times over the course of the day and ask us almost as many questions about ourselves as we ask her) and beautiful (for a 36-year-old, she could put many of pop’s pubescent pin-ups to shame) Stefani, sitting down in post-cover shoot spivs, to talk about her debut solo album and much-hyped career break from No Doubt.

Named after her fashion line, ‘Love Angel Music Baby’ is so crammed with celebrity cameos that Stefani prefers to call it her collaboration record (“It would be a little too greedy and untrue to call this my solo record”). With André 3000, The Neptunes and New Order just some of the ice-cool names on board, the album has crossed over to become – like Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake and OutKast – the pop record of the year it’s OK to like. From the opening bars of super-kitsch and self-berating bubblegum anthem ‘What You Waiting For?’ (just as likely to be heard on a hip indie dancefloor as it is on CD:UK) through to the style-obsessed Japanese Harajuku girls that littler the lyrics and artwork, it is totally credible, up-to-the-minute sound of now now now.

Actually, according to Stefani, it’s the sound of ex-boyfriend Kanal’s much-derided high-school music taste and her own best-forgotten nights out at Disneyland in the ’80s.

“I used to go dancing at Disneyland embarrassingly,” she blushes, “because there was a club in there and I lived across the street so I’d sneak in! I love all that music even though I couldn’t admit it then. Imagine, like Madonna had just come out, no-one had seen her before; it was like, ‘Who the fuck is that?!’ And Depeche Mode, imagine that music for the first time – you’d never heard that kind of music before! I wasn’t into all that at the time – Madonna and Depeche Mode – but as I grew up I realised that all that music, the stuff that was popular at the time, was the backdrop of my life.

“So I wanted to take that music and make it into a modern record that made me feel good but make it with modern people from the clubs today like Dre and André 3000 and Pharrell.”

Dre’s input metamorphosised ‘Love Angel Music Baby’’s latest single ‘Rich Girl’. “I kind of played him early hip-hop, almost embarrassingly hip-hop – y’know, great stuff really! – like Salt-N-Pepa and all that shit. He’d basically roll his eyes at it all, like ‘Naahhhh!’ He was actually the one who came to me with ‘Rich Girl’. I was like: ‘Really?” How am I gonna make that lyric work for me? ‘Cos y’know, I don’t see a white girl from Orange County singing that!’ And he’s like, ‘Ah, you’ve got to play the characters.’ ”

Meanwhile, André 3000’s involvement spawned two collaborations – the co-written cartoon Prince parody ‘Bubble Pop Electric’ and ‘Long Way To Go’, a politically charged duet in which Stefani and 3000 play the parts of a stigmatised mixed-race couple.

“André was on top of my list because if I could be a boy, I would be like André. I was always excited about coming into the studio to see what he was going to be wearing. Even on his dress-down days, he looked fucking fabulous. I was definitely like ‘Hmm, what am I going to wear for him today?’ ”

What began life as a passing fancy to make “a stupid little dance record” quickly began sprouting countless star turns. Suddenly Stefani was hooking up with everyone from Courtney, Pink and Christina collaborator Linda Perry to NME Godlike Geniuses New Order.

While Hooky and the boys were too busy recording their own album to write an entire track for her, they did find time to record the instrumental parts for the Linda and Gwen-penned New Order homage “The Real Thing”. When she wasn’t being followed around by four mute Harajuku girls every time she appeared in public, Gwen celebrated the completion of her fantasy-party album by dressing up as Alice in Wonderland at every available opportunity. “It was very magical, that’s where the Alice in Wonderland thing came up ‘cos it felt like I was falling down this hole and and plopping into this world, like ‘OK, go here next, do this next.’ It was very surreal, y’know, it was like a maze and I had the clock just ticking in my ears, like, ‘I need to get this shit outta me ‘cos I wanna do another No Doubt record, I wanna have a baby, I want to do all these things’ and I was, like, time is not on my side!”

Baby-envy is a recurrent theme in Stefani’s conversation (the ‘tick-tock’ refrain of recent single ‘What You Waiting For?’ is, she says, the intense clattering of her biological clock). Needless to say, the revelations that she shares a step-child with Supergrass’ Danny Goffrey (husband Gavin Rossdale recently discovered he has a 15-year-old love child with Danny’s missus and Sadie Frost’s best mate Pearl Lowe) have not been enough to satisfy her brooding. Especially when the US tabloids picked up on the story, giving her and Gavin’s marriage the kind of week-in, week-out gossip column coverage usually reserved for supermodels and their crackheads. While legal restrictions prevent Gwen giving her version of events, she is more that ready to ride-out the latest red-top rumours about her and Gavin splitting over the strain.

“Oh, we’re still together. We’re married!” she shrieks, thrusting her wedding ring before our eyes, convincingly aghast, “Marriage is forever, y’know, and, um, he’s great. He has a new record coming out and it’s wicked!”

Does he get pissed off by the fact you’re much cooler than he is? “Well, I mean, that might be your opinion and I should probably slap you because you’re speaking about my husband and you better watch your mouth, girl!” she says, suddenly getting all rude girl on our ass. “He’s got so many amazing gifts and he loves me way! So, y’know, there is no competition.”

Maybe so, but like Rossdale, whose first movie role proper is in Frances Laurence’s Constantine which opens in the UK this week (March 18) , Stefani has also recently turned her hand to acting. Following unsuccessful auditions for Girl, Interrupted and Helena Bonham Carter’s part in Fight Club, she finally got her much-hyped, big Hollywood break last year when Martin Scorsese cast her in a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo as Jean Harlow in his Howard Hughes biography The Aviator.

“I’ve been trying to do films for years. Yeah, it’s hard, it’s very competitive, they’re very specific about what they want and I think also for me it’s doubly hard because I don’t want to do anything that will fuck up what I’ve done already because people know who I am.”

So now she is a fully paid-up member of the north London rockistocracy (well, she does own a mansion in Primrose Hill and is practically a blood-relation of Camden’s most ubiquitous Britpop ligger, Danny Goffrey, these days), it’s time to test Gwen on her indie credentials. Who’s your favourite band right now? “I do love Franz Ferdinand, I really like that, though I haven’t got the record yet. The thing is about me is that – and I admit this! – I’m a bit of a singles girl. I like hits and it’s very rare I’ll give a record a whole listen. The Keane record, that was the last record where I really listened to the whole thing. I got turned onto it because someone at my label wanted me to write with those guys.”

Really?

“I wish I did it! I’m really happy for them that… actually I’m happy for me that I’ve found a record I can listen to the whole of! I love the Coldplay record too, the last one (suddenly starts laughing at herself), but they’re kinda similar, huh? What other British bands are there…”

Well there’s The Libertines, but they’ve split up?

“The Libertines have split up? Haven’t they only been together a few minutes?” They sure have. And have you heard the latest about your mate Kate Moss and Pete? Apparently they’re back together again, it’s all over the newspapers. “I know Kate vaguely, I’ve met her a couple of times… ooh, you love it (salacious scandal) over there, huh? You guys!” Stefani should know: when it’s not her private life racking up column inches, then it’s her professional one. Recent months have seen all kinds of speculation as to what Stefani’s solo move means for the future of No Doubt.

“This record, for me, is exploring some more of my musical, theatrical side that I would never have dared put my band through the torture of. Y’know have little Japanese accessory girls run around with me!” she giggles, “But I miss those guys.” Does it ever bother you what people say about you? “No, not at all. I mean, what am I so worried about? I’ve been beyond the scope of dreams, I have a really fancy life and I have everything I’ve ever dreamed of. So no, I’m not going to about what other people think at this point really.” Our time is up. Gwen stands up, compliments us on our outfit one last time and turns towards the door, readying herself to walk straight into a high-profile TV interview. Suddenly she pauses, and turns back to face us.

“Y’know someone one time called me a cheerleader, negatively,” she smile, arching one perfectly groomed eyebrow. “And I’ve never been a cheerleader. So I was, like, ‘OK, fuck you. You want me to be a cheerleader? Well, I will be one then. And I’ll rule the whole world, just you watch me.”

Ska-punk siren Gwen Stefani is about to go stellar with a debut solo album and a plum role in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator. But GQ managed to tie her down… By Charlie Porter. Photographs by Marc Hom.

Gwen Stefani is sitting in a Mercedes and she’s fizzing, fast words, few pauses. “The record is ridiculous. It is RI-DI-CU-LOUS.” Ridiculous, in her native Orange County, California speak, appears to be a very good thing. We’re driving away from the photoshoot at an abandoned riverside building in deepest south London, where the basement rooms feel like dungeons and the sparse furniture includes what seems to be a miniature bondage chair, rope knotted tight across its frame. Would she sit on it for GQ? Stefani strides up and straddles it, happy to oblige.

Now on the back seat, the 35-year-old is talking about her solo album, a side-project from her on-sabbatical band No Doubt, as well as her film debut in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator. The tape recorder began on the seat between us, but she’s grabbed it and holds it close to her mouth. She’s long and limby, not the Hollywood shorty you’d expect, and she turns truly Amazonian in the space-age heels she wears with the thousand-pound bits of nothing. When we talk, out it pours, salty mouthed stuff in a sweet tone.

We can try and dress it up all we want, but we’ve spent the day in Deptford. The locality is grim, but for a few hours it becomes Gwenworld, a satellite town of LA. Earlier in the week, one of Stefani’s people had told me, her tone call-centre flat, that they were going to “bang this story gangsta” – apparently a good thing. This became a GQ stock phrase, until someone discovered the slang originated from the particularly unsavoury sexual practices of West Coast hoodlums.

During the shoot Stefani bounces around the building: vest and combats when she arrives; miniskirt, bustier, barely anything when she’s been trussed up. She mucks in readily, a trait that seems to be left over from her early no-money, no-fame days in No Doubt. Following their first live performance in 1987 – second on stage on a bill of 14 ska-punk acts – they cut their teeth as a back-of-the-van band. In fact, more than half of their 17-year history has been spent playing to increasingly loyal locals in their hometown of Anaheim, California. Stefani was 26 when the single “Don’t Speak” broke through in 1996 and she suddenly found fame; an instant MTV image with her peroxide cover-girl hair and bright red lips. Even with the massive success of “Don’t Speak”, she had to maintain a get-on-with-it attitude. That song, and the rest of Tragic Kingdom, the album from which it came, was about the break-up of her seven-year relationship with No Doubt band-mate Tony Kanal. Which meant performing songs each night about the man standing on stage right next to her. Not how you’d want your public-eye career to begin.

Now she’s used to living in the celebrity realm, there’s this balance – hard worker and star. The latter sees her living a transatlantic life between her homes in Los Angeles and Primrose Hill in north London, which she shares with her husband of two years Gavin Rossdale, of British band Bush. Being a star also means she can snap; eight hours into the shoot, after she straddles a chicken coup in a thigh-slashed dress and the evening rain starts to fall. She’s polite but firm: that’s it, shutdown, let’s get in the car. And she’s still smiling.

After the drive, and after our drink, Stefani is having late-late dinner with Rossdale, and is ready in a bust-enhancing Vivienne Westwood construction, the tomboy thing of her early-career image now curving out to a more romantic feminity. But don’t think she’s demure – her “dudes” and “woahs” are all said wide-eyed, Golden State-style. Her new album is called Love Angel Music Baby (the initials spell out Lamb, the name of her clothing line) and she says it’s “a silly dance record”, something she’s made while No Doubt relax after the success of last year’s cover version of Talk Talk’s “It’s My Life”, which recently won best pop video and best band video at the MTV Video Music Awards. Yet for the silly record, her co-writers and producers are among the most important musicians in America today: Andre 3000, Pharrell Williams and Dr Dre. The motive: to create a dud-free album, full of what Stefani calls “ABC songs” – easy-to-understand dance hits that are immediate, addictive, crazy. The result is one of the most ultra-hyped and ultra-anticipated.

It’s pure coincidence that The Aviator is released at the same time, ending her years of searching for a suitable film role. Before she was cast in The Aviator, she went through relentless auditioning. “Something I really tried out for was Fight Club “When I got the script I thought, ‘I can’t do that, it’s too nasty.’ But when you meet the director David Fincher, he makes you think it’s the most incredible women’s role ever. And then you’re suddenly like, ‘Ohmygod, I fucking want this part.’”

She didn’t get the part – it went to Helena Bonham Carter. For all subsequent attempts, the script hasn’t been right, she hasn’t been right, or her attention and schedule has been focused on music. But in January 2003 Martin Scorsese spotted a bus stop poster for US magazine Teen Vogue with Stefani on the cover. Balls were set rolling for her to try out for the part of Jean Harlow in The Aviator, Scorsese’s biopic of Howard Hughes. “They sent me the script and I was 15 minutes looking for the part.” She acts out flicking pages backward and forward. “I called and said, ‘I don’t see Jean Harlow in here.’ It was on one page.”

Actually, it was one line. Undeterred, she went to try out for Scorsese, where she was back down the ladder of fame. “It was so humiliating because you get used to being a star, and there are all these other girls at the same hotel. They are trying out for other parts, and they all know who you are. It’s really awkward.” But Stefani persevered and got the role, which involves attending a premiere on the arm of Hughes, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. “It was really familiar, because my scene is walking on the red carpet,” she says. There was another reason why the fact-based role wasn’t too tricky to perfect – Stefani’s brief part of the script was taken from real-life film of Harlow. “Let’s face it, dude, I had footage of her actually saying it.”

In the movies, there are hundreds of people who can influence the outcome of the final cut. With the music, Stefani is fully in control, and when we meet she is still pushing herself to the limit. Even though she’s already got more than enough tracks, she’s hot from the plane after a last-minute recording session with Pharrell in New York, where they wrote and recorded three songs from scratch, (“I said, ‘Dude, why the fuck isn’t Pharrell on the record? He’s going to be so bummed when it comes out and he’s not in it’”) and has only just got her head around the Dre track (the revelation came to her on a treadmill). She still sounds battered from going head-to-head with Andre 3000. “It’s so hard to work with another artist that you’re a fan of when you don’t even know them,” she says. You have to walk in cold, and he’s coming up with all this shit, and my ego was all bruised up, rolled up in the corner.” She blows a raspberry to show just how bruised up she was. And just to make it clear, the shit Andre was coming up with was good shit, not bad shit.

American pop in the 21st century is full of guest appearances, so Stefani’s hook-ups are no great surprise. But the calibre and power of her collaborations belie her status – hot as a member of a four-piece band; potentially unbeatable as a solo artist. Some are repeat performances – Pharrell and his Neptunes partner Chad Hugo co-wrote No Doubt’s 2002 single “Hella Good”, while Stefani appeared with Eve on the Dr Dre-produced track “Let Me Blow Ya Mind” in 2001. Meanwhile, some are fresh meetings: the first single from the album, “What You Waiting For”, is a collaboration with Linda Perry, formerly of Nineties band 4 Non Blondes, more recently the woman behind the credible rise of Christina Aguilera and Pink.

According to her definition, it’s not a solo album. “If I was doing a solo record it would a be, this-is-the-real-me, and I’d be on the guitar playing my heart out to everybody.” No disrespect to Stefani, but the fewer this-is-the-real-me records inflicted on the world, the better. So why does she see it as silly? “When we were growing up, Tony and I were into Prince, Club Nouveau, Wendy and Lisa, the Family, the Time, and there was this one song by Debbie Deb called ‘Lookout Weekend’ that was a huge part of my life,” she remembers “So I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be good to do a stupid Eighties dance record like that?’ The idea just snowballed.”

I try to make her see the discrepancy – that she calls these records a huge part of her life, then describes the genre as stupid – but the point doesn’t stick. Maybe that is the point – their beauty is in their stupidity. “I’m a singles girl, MTV, I don’t even listen to albums,” she admits. “My husband is the opposite, the guy never listened to the radio in his life. And I’ll be like, ‘Can I please put on Radio 1 for, like, five minutes, and listen to what crap is on there?’” However much pop music is enjoyed and venerated after its release, it is because it is seen as throwaway at its inception that it is without hubris. It’s a continuation of humility that has run through her whole weird career.

The story of No Doubt is a tragi-comedy. “We never made records, because we couldn’t afford to make records,” she says. We’re now sitting in Home House, the London club where she and Rossdale held the UK leg of their wedding ceremony in September 2002. A fortnight later, Stefani wore her Galliano gown again for a reception at the LA home of her record label boss, Jimmy lovine. Now, she’s reminiscing about more spendthrift times. “We couldn’t afford to make a demo. We used to rent the mic at two bucks an hour, then get to Taco Bell afterwards to make some cents. When we got signed to Interscope in 1991, we had to learn how to make records. The first record we made was shit because we didn’t know how. I thought you jumped around like you did on stage.” This first album, No Doubt, provoked little interest when it was released in 1992 – jumping around on stage was still clearly their forte.

Two of the founding members are no longer part of No Doubt. Singer John Spence committed suicide in December 1987, seemingly because of depression, after which the band called it quits, then quickly reformed. Gwen’s brother Eric left in 1994 to become an animator on The Simpsons. Over those years, the four-piece which now makes up No Doubt formed solid bonds as they became a cult in the local community. “Even when I was 17 I would go into Tower Records in Anaheim and people would go, ‘Look who’s over there.’ But it started to get crazy. I’d be going to college, and the day before we’d played there, and they’d banned us because so many people showed up, and we weren’t even on the radio. I remember in class the next day, people going, ‘Can I have your autograph?’ I’d be all, um, ‘I’m trying to learn.’ ”

This knowing amateurism has its benefits. We’re talking about how the skittish, stuttering rhythm of the Andre 3000 track on her album, ‘Bubble Pop Electric”, resembles the goofy ska sound of nascent No Doubt. She thinks it’s true of a track she did with Pharrell – “You started It”. “The chord changes are really weird,” she says. “And with No Doubt we used to always write them like that, not on purpose, jut because we didn’t know what we were doing. Those kind of songs are so powerful because the changes are so weird, but once you get used to them, they’re addictive.”

Indeed, although her band was often on the same bill as punk bands, her home life was more than a bit nerdy. “My parents were strict,” he says. “I’m the girl who when I went to Tony’s prom, I had to be home by midnight. If I was walking to college, they’d drive by and say, ‘You’re not going to school like that.’ ”

Three years before Tragic Kingdom, the first record to get them serious attention, and cushioned by obscurity in the world outside Anaheim, Stefani wrote a raw song about her break-up from Kanal. “Don’t Speak” wasn’t the first single off the album – it was preceded by Just A Girl” – but it was the track that blew the band way beyond their previous level. The aIbum eventually sold more than 15 million copies worldwide, introducing the band to the masses at a painful time for them, but a juicy time for the public. “A lot of things happened to us as friends and as a band, like writing an album about your boyfriend you never thought anyone would hear,” she says. “Suddenly he’s being beat up by everybody, them saying to him, ‘You blew it, dude.’ And in interviews all four of us would sit there, and they’d ask, ‘So tell me, why did you break up with him?’ for freaking years. And me, I was like, ‘Woooh, I can’t believe I got this new life, and all this confidence, and all this change.’”

Does she regret the break-up now? “No, nooooo way.” Her second “no” is very long. “I don’t regret Tony breaking up with me. That was what made me who I am, that gave me the power to have passion and drive.”

The band seem to have survived because of their hard-fought past. Indeed, their history meant that although the subsequent two-and-a-half-year tour was the first time most fans had seen them live, the band were no beginners, adding to the buzz. “We’d been playing nine years, so we were pretty good at it,” she remembers. “We’d go on stage, look at the audience and think, ‘You’re not going to fucking stand there and look at me, and not get off right now.’ So when we went on stage, it was like, ‘Fuck you, you’re going to fucking like this.’ We would kill it every time, and people liked it, because they like to be beat up a little bit.”

Post-Tragic Kingdom and the ensuing years on the road, Stefani went back to California, finally moved out of her parents’ house and bought her own place in LA. There followed another album in 2000, Return Of Saturn, but it was 2oo1’s Rock Steady that consolidated their position worldwide with the hits “Hey Baby” and “Hella Good”. Follow this with last year’s greatest hits album The Singles 1992-2003, with that Talk Talk cover, and you’ve got a pretty satisfying, if loopy, career so far. Which brings us to the solo album. Oh, and to films.

She wants to do more movies, but it’s hard to see how it’ll fit into her work pile-up. Any major album like her solo project needs a year set aside for promotion. Then there’s No Doubt, a band ruled by egalitarian meetings. Soon they will get together again to talk about their next step. Then there’s her marriage: she says she plans to have babies. Then there’s that women’s clothing line, but since this is a men’s magazine, I’ll spare you the details.

“We’re so lucky the way it’s unfolded,” she says. “Although, fuck, I wish I had a couple more years to do things, because it’s starting to get crazy now.” But this seems to be the pattern of her life: no breaks, just keep going. “We’ve been eating our cake for ages,” she says, “going, ‘Fuck, I can’t believe we’re still eating.’”

Love Angel Music Baby is released on 22 November. The Aviator is released on 26 December.

Gwen Stefani

Scared solo

When Gwen Stefani got the call that Linda Perry was ready to write with her, the first thing she did was bury her face in a pillow and cry. All she wanted to do was sleep. And now she was going to have to get up and get creative.

When she arrived at Perry’s house, nothing she did seemed fast enough. Stefani would go into another room to try to write some lyrics, and when she came back, Perry would already have the whole song nailed. “Dude, slow down. This is my record. Let me be a part of it,” Gwen thought.

This was no isolated incident — recording her solo album ended up being a largely terrifying, maddening and ego-shredding experience, no matter who she worked with. Not exactly what the No Doubt singer had initially envisioned.

Stefani had decided to do Love, Angel, Music, Baby — which she calls her “dance record” or her “collaborations record” — when she was on the Rock Steady tour with No Doubt. One day, she happened to hear the old Club Nouveau song “Why You Treat Me So Bad” and immediately was transported back to high school, when she used to go dancing at Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California. She turned to No Doubt bassist Tony Kanal and said, “Wouldn’t it be fun to do music like that?”

Or not. It looked like this ’80s flashback fantasy would have to happen outside of her band. So she made a list of influences she wanted to explore in an updated way — Prince, Lisa Lisa, Debbie Deb, the Time, New Order, Depeche Mode, early Madonna. And then she made another list of musical idols she’d like to do some exploring with. The game plan was simple, but strict: Love the ’80s, but make them modern. The concept for a solo record was born.

Sort of.

“If I was doing a solo record, it means basically pouring my heart out, the real Gwen,” she said. “Like the years with No Doubt, that was just No Doubt, this is me.” In some ways, the new album “is actually less of me, because I’m letting all these other people into my world and trying on their clothes, their music and melodies.”

The list of those people was long — Dr. Dre, the Neptunes, Andre 3000, New Order, Nellee Hooper, Dallas Austin, and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis were among the producers and musicians with whom she collaborated. Perry made the cut primarily because she’d put Gwen in a headlock at the Grammys, looked her in the eye, and told her they could make beautiful music together.

That was a good start, but Stefani didn’t have a “huge game plan” for how she wanted to get there. “I know one thing,” she said. “You can try not to like this album, you can try real hard; but it will at least be your guilty pleasure. It’s like the ABCs — you can’t get them out of your brain. I wasn’t trying to go for an art record or a deep record. I just wanted to make you feel good for a moment and forget everything else.”

There was just one problem — she wasn’t feeling so good herself. Instead of the big cast of contributors helping to take some of the pressure off, it only made her feel worse. In fact, it scared her stiff.

“I think every record No Doubt’s made had its own challenges,” she said. “But this one, for me, was the hardest. When you’ve never really written with other people, you’re exposing yourself, taking your clothes off, saying, ‘All right, here we go, this is me, this is you.’ And then there’s the whole fan thing going on, when you’re a fan of the person you’re working with. It’s humiliating and intimidating even if they’re sweet and excited, because you’re drowning in their creativity.”

Stefani’s ego got a beatdown during her first writing sessions with Perry. The freelance songwriter/producer tried coaxing Stefani out of her shell, but it wasn’t until their second day and second song together that their sessions turned fruitful — by writing about Stefani’s very fear of writing (on “What You Waiting For?”).

“I’ve never been a creative writer,” Stefani explained. “I’ve been a writer from the heart, whatever’s happening at the time, usually a love thing. I wanted to be one of those writers who picks up a story or a theme. It doesn’t come to me naturally, but it was one of the things I wanted to conquer.”

Easier said than done. Soon after their initial success with “What You Waiting For?,” Stefani freaked out when she was trying to write “this deep song” about a friend who had passed away, and Perry came up with the lyrics before she could. “That’s my territory,” Stefani thought. Upset, she told Perry she had to leave. “I went in all glossy-eyed, and she’s like, ‘You’re a freak. Go.’ ”

So Stefani bolted from the studio and went to visit Kanal, who played her some new tracks he happened to be working on. This made her jealous at first, she said, until Kanal revealed that one of the tracks was for her. They turned that into the Salt-N-Pepa-inspired song “Crash” that very night. “I’m sitting there crying about my ego,” she said, “and I go from, ‘I feel so bad, I suck so bad, I’ll never write again,’ to writing a song, the exact song I wanted to write.”

Pumped up, Stefani canceled everything and locked in with Kanal instead — only to run into writer’s block. “We totally thought we were on to something,” she said. “But we didn’t write anything for two weeks straight. We thought, ‘We are the biggest a–holes ever in the world.’ It was just frustrating and embarrassing to sit there and think we could write songs.”

Six months later, she and Kanal took a second look at some of the earlier tracks they had tossed, and one of them, a “Lisa Lisa/ Prince wannabe song” called “Serious” pleasantly surprised them. This moment made her realize she was being way too hard on herself, letting her ego interfere with the songwriting process. She decided to change that.

“I don’t want somebody writing something better than me on my own record,” Stefani admitted. “But at the same time, it’s not about that. If I were to write the chorus of ‘Yesterday’ by the Beatles, and that’s all I wrote, that would be good enough to be part of that history. It’s like this whole thing with your ego: ‘No, I did that part,’ ‘No, I did this part.’ For the most part, people don’t care. And I wanted to take that away.”

She found that change freeing, and as she began working with other writers and producers, songs came more easily. She even started mixing things up a bit, turning one session with Dallas Austin into more of a party by inviting Linda Perry (whose studio was across the street) to join them.

“They both worked on the same records, Pink, Christina Aguilera, and they never knew each other! So when Linda called to say, ‘I have this mix for you,’ I was like, ‘Come over,’ ” Stefani recounted. “Dallas didn’t even know what she looked like. So she walks in, and immediately they start talking about all their stuff from the past, and everybody starts having a drink, and the next thing you know, we’re playing the tracks and Linda’s getting really excited. ‘Oh my god, you have to use my mellotron!’ And she’s punching Dallas in the arm, ‘Come on, dude, we have to write a song!’ ”

Within 45 minutes, the three wrote the new wave rocker “Danger Zone,” on which Stefani gets her Pat Benatar on, ripping her lover for trying to keep “all of your secrets, all of your lies.” Her session with Austin was even faster on the sweetly nostalgic “Cool,” a midtempo track he was trying to write about remaining friends with an ex — something she could relate to. This time, the lyrics took her all of 15 minutes to write.

“When he started to play it for me, I was like, ‘Wow, this is my song,’ ” she said. “I was never intending to do personal songs, you know? But when he told me about the track and where it came from for him, it just triggered something in me. It really captures a feeling and kind of puts an end to a chapter in a really nice way.”

The song “Long Way to Go,” which is about an interracial relationship, came courtesy of another collaborator who made Gwen feel insecure: Outkast’s Andre 3000.

“He’s crazy talented,” she gushed, “like totally get-down-on-yourself talented. I didn’t have a lot to offer. If I’m super honest, it makes me look stupid, that I’m sitting next to him, feeling all blank brain, hoping I can come up with something good. And meanwhile, he keeps writing away. But you’re in with Andre, so even if you don’t get all your ideas in there, you’re going to make something great.”

Later on, Stefani had an idea for a melody that evolved into the curiously catchy “Bubble Pop Electric,” in which Andre’s alter ego Johnny Vulture takes her out on a date. “It sounds so weird and it’s so Andre,” she said. “If I could be a boy, I would be him.”

Her confidence restored, Stefani, having co-written some 20 songs, figured the sessions were over — until she decided to give the Neptunes another chance. She hadn’t felt a spark the first time they got together for the project, but then she reconsidered and booked seven days with Pharrell Williams.

She decided during those sessions that she needed an “attitude song.” “I need something about how the [No Doubt] fans probably are like, ‘Why is she doing this record? She’s going to ruin everything.’ ” Her response is the b-girlish “Hollaback Girl” — the third song in three days she cooked up with Pharrell.

But her speedwriting streak ended when she tried to finish up the album with Dr. Dre. Stefani had previously worked with Dre, along with rapper Eve, on “Let Me Blow Ya Mind,” and she had been hoping to recapture a little of that track’s magic. But after she played Dre the songs she had been working on, he rolled his eyes.

“He was like, ‘You don’t want to go back there,’ and I’m like, ‘Yes, I want to,’ and he’s like, ‘No, you don’t.’ ”

Still, Dre found something for Stefani he thought would work — a dancehall reggae reworking of a song from “Fiddler on the Roof,” “If I Were a Rich Man,” which, transformed into “Rich Girl,” had already been a minor hit for Louchie Lou and Michie One in the early ’90s. All Gwen needed to do was update the track with Eve.

“I was helping with her rap, she was helping with my part, and we made the demo for Dre, and he basically told us to go rewrite the whole thing again. And I was like, ‘Oh, no, what am I going to do?’ ”

Eventually, during a brainstorm while running on her treadmill, Gwen got it. At a dinner party another night, Stefani ran into 50 Cent, and in swapping Dre stories, she discovered that the rapper/producer was strict with everybody, not just her. “You kinda go with him last,” she said. “You get the doctor in.” If she had gone in with Dre first, she realized, she might not have had the confidence to keep at it as long as she did — completing enough tracks for two albums over.

“What I learned is that you can get a lot done if you push yourself,” she said. “I made all my dreams come true of working with these people, even though I have so many insecurities. I still have this whole ego issue, and it’s all bruised up and messed up. But at the same time, the record is so spectacular, and I can say that without bragging because I worked with so many talented people.

“I totally feel like I am Alice in Wonderland right now,” she mused. “It’s been such a journey. It’s been so magical. I don’t even know how I got to this point, it’s been such a maze. I’ve been dropping down this hole for a year. But now, I’ve landed.”

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!

Thanks to a radical hip hop reinvention and a series of credible creative hook-ups, Gwen Stefani has emerged in recent times as a major music player. Now, on the eve of her solo launch, the iconic blonde talks about boys, girls, celluloid dreams and making “a little dance record of her own”. Pop goes the superstar!

Somewhere within Gwen Stefani there must be an element of sadness, dourly gestating, imprisoned, waiting to break free. Not that you’d know it from the woman herself. You won’t get so much as a breath of negativity from eight straight hours in her company. Spending time with Gwen is like mainlining a curious, buoyant cocktail of Sunny D and liquid seratonin; it’s as if helium has magically found it’s way into the air-conditioning. She oozes essence of zesty, goofball, feelgood California. She’s got a succession of quickfire, cheerful punchlines beamed straight in from The OC script office on some delirious repeat edit and raises an iconic eyebrow by way of saucy punctuation for each one. If I had a dollar bill for every time I heard the word ‘dude’ coming from her big, smiley, slasher Hollywood mouth, I’d most probably have a couple of hundred bucks by the day’s end.

Everyone’s jaw drops when Gwen enters the room, but she magnanimously deflects this awed reception, partly by running around on vertiginous, clip-clop Westwood heels, showering ‘hello’ kisses all round by way of introducing herself – as if she needs to – and partly by ‘yo, duding’ anyone that will listen. Which is mostly everyone. She breezes into the photographers studio at 12:30pm. By 5 o’clock in the afternoon I figure that the whole room has fallen in love with her. Not bad, given that half of them are women, gay or variants of both.

When God was dishing out the good looks, it is fair to say that Gwen Stefani was somewhere near the front of the queue (she skipped the semester when he was alloting angst). She bagged the bright, starry eyes, the Jessica Rabbit waistline, the stretch-to-infinity legs, the neat, cherubic and suddenly explosive pout and added her own bleach later to blend into a perfectly fitting state of white blonde.

Thus, the camera loves her. And, boy, can she work it. Whether paddling down the backstreets of Kentish Town, stopping traffic by flashing her Dior Couture hooped underskirt, handing out balloons to local kids with whom she is causing an evident stir – at any given point she draws an audience of somewhere between ten and thirty gobsmacked onlookers from nowhere – or reclining on her back in the middle of a busy road, she seems preternaturally hotwired to stardom. “Loving your work, Gwen,” shouts some itinerant laddo from an open window. Is he referring to her records? Or the fact that she has just strutted starrily down his street, mostly in her underwear? It’s never quite established. But Gwen’s an expert at this game. She plays it right back to him. “Loving yours, too” she says, blowing the lucky chap a kiss.

Later she will says that this is her work, that “I want to be at the centre of something incredible.” She can play the loveable ditz better than anyone you’d care to imagine. But underneath it all, one suspects, is a steely determination to turn her brand into something approaching legend. The eve of her solo launch for world domination – or as she, somewhat disingenuously put it “just making a fun little dance record of my own” – is a fascinating moment to watch Stefani. Gwen, you see, is that oddest of breeds. She is a joyful celebrity. She appears to have been born to it. If only they cut all of them from this mould.

What was little Gwen like?
I was always, um, a little… [dithers a while, stirring soya milk and honey into her tea]

Was she going to be a superstar?
No! Dude! The only fantasy I ever had about that was after I was already in the band. When I was in High School I thought that a really cool job would be to sing jingles. I do physically like singing. I thought I could do it. So that was where my ambition was at. I thought ‘dude, you can sing. Hey, you could do Kentucky Fried Chicken commercials.’ That sounded like fun.

Before she acquired the illusive status of being famous for simply being Gwen Stefani, Gwen was famous for fronting No Doubt, an unusual, ska-inflected poprock operation. I had always, wrongly assumed No Doubt to be named with a knowing wink to the obviousness of their English musical heritage, a nod to the whole ska thing. In fact, the explanation seems far more literal. It is because they, and their startling front woman, appear to have no doubt. Even in their fallow periods, No Doubt have exuded a unique and singular, can-do confidence. I’ll be honest, the first time I heard tell of the group I winced. Then I saw them and gasped. They looked like they’d been assembled by an angry marketing meeting of chunky, godless businessmen clutching phallic cigars and mopping sweat from their thickset brows with fancy Hermes hankies in a Bel Air production office. The foxy chick and the almost Bennetton-ad racial assortment of backup dudes. Mohawks, skaters, punks, babes, Ragga, pop, rock, ska, even a short sharp brace of metal and the odd hip hop inflection. This cacophony was surely dreamed up to appeal on every level, at every single junction of the record-buying demographic. It was as if ’80s MTV had imagined the group into life, willed them into being.

Yet for two partially flunking albums – their self-titled debut in 1992 and Beacon Street Collection in ‘95 – they managed to keep only heads above water. LA college kids with piercings and Acupuncture bootees kept them just about in business. There were tours with The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Ziggy Marley, but still Gwen would only get stopped while shopping at Tower Records on Sunset Strip and asked about the band. She was approaching huge in her native LA, a bona fide sensation in Anaheim – unbelievably appropriately, CA’s feeder town for Disneyworld that was her childhood home. But in most of the speaking world she couldn’t get arrested. Then came along Don’t Speak, the first of two monumental, turnaround, upward swings in the imperial curve of being Gwen Stefani.

Gwen was 26 when Don’t Speak gave her her first international smash nine years ago. She toured its parent album Tragic Kingdom in support to the then-huge Bush, where she met her husband their handsome, English rake of a singer, Gavin Rossdale. If for a while they had appeared to be wipe-clean, parent friendly Kurt and Courtney, her inflating success bubble put Gwen in the bridesmaid’s role of a direct run of iconic pop blonds from the previous two decades. Exactly where Courtney always threatened yet never quite managed to be. Debbie Harry was approaching 30 and three albums old when she first cut through to circuit-dominating pop supremacy. Madonna – that other Catholic, Italian-American bleached pop goddess that Stefani is so often compared with – was 27 by the time of Holiday. It is suggested to Gwen that the ’70s gave us Harry, the ’80s Madonna, and the ’90s Gwen. She looks aghast.

“That’s crazy, dude. That’s crazy. Don’t even say that shit. Listen, I’m having a freaking fun time and I love what I do but to even talk about me in the same breath, you know?” Three days before we meet, Gwen had been to see Madonna on the London leg of her career-defining Reinvention tour. “It was amazing. It was actually quite embarrassing how close I was to her. It was so fun. people were so happy. I was so elated. I haven’t been to a concert like that in years.”

Beneath the wonder, there is a serious consideration here, as to how far Gwen can go. If Gwen is gently cautious about voicing it, Madonna herself, ever a champion of the young bucks biting at her ankles, spotted it. They have socialised together. “She’s been really nice. It’s something not a lot of people know about Madonna – how supportive she is to other female artists.” Gwen has a theory on their connection: “My mom’s Irish/Scottish and my dad’s pure Italian, but his dad came from Rome to Detroit, so I tease Madonna that me and her are related. Because my grandma’s sister’s husband is Ciccone. But I don’t think so. Maybe.” The thought is clearly a thrill, however far-fetched.

Twelve million copies of Tragic Kingdom, and its follow-up Return of Saturn later, a brace of Grammies collected, and the second pivotal moment in the making of a modern icon occurred. Gwen had been experimenting with solo vocal work, already, and had bagged an American smash with Moby on the single Southside. But it was her duet with crop-headed Dr Dre prodigy, rapper and impecunious scion of all things street Eve on Let Me Blow Your Mind that upped Stefani’s ante into being something other than a pretty frontwoman of the American record industry’s favourite globe-trotters.

Did she feel the shift? “Aha! Sure I did. Just like everybody else did. I am under no illusions that the record turned me around. being able to rock into Eve’s world and get lost in all that coolness. I mean, I dreamt of Dre. He’s always been on my label and I always dropped things to people that knew him, like, ‘dude, if you ever want me to do any vocal thing, anything. I’ll do it’. So I got the call about the Eve track, but I didn’t have much to do with that track. I went in. He beat up my vocal, I left and I remember I was really liking walking into another, completely different world. But it turned out so incredible and it was such an incredible thing to be part of. It really opened our world up to all these other people. We had a whole opportunity out there of people that would work with us. It was awesome. That’s how I met Andrea, too.”

Andrea is a crucial figure in the Gwen operation. They share a closeness amongst singers and their stylists probably only rivalled in the celebrity cannon by Kylie and her creative directing shoulder, William Baker. Andrea, a Bronx girl by both nature and nurture also looks after Jennifer Lopez – it was she that selected the olive green heavy print, Versace/tit tape Oscar ensemble that was to redefine red carpet attire forever – but Gwen is more than her client.

“She’s my girlfriend first,” says Andrea, “I love working with her and hanging out withe her.” Gwen puts it even more succinctly “She’s the East Coast me,” she declares. Their bond was instant and thus their working synchronicity was nailed instantly too. A fashion plate was beginning to weld itself onto the public conscious. Stefani became eternally prefaced in print by the seldom scientifically or precisely used words ’style icon’. And she earned the plaudit with glowing ribbons.

By her own admission, coolness is not Gwen’s forte. She blanches when I ask her to rate how cool she is on a sliding scale of one to ten. “No way. That is so mean. I could never do that. I just don’t think like that.” Nevertheless, she has become a benchmark for the scintillating ambitions of the coolerati since her seismic shift. No Doubt’s first and, thus far only post-Eve album, the most perfect pop/rock configuration Rock Steady, attracted a new elite into the fold. Nellee Hooper, William Orbit and Sly & Robbie joined in the production credits. Just to prove the band itself was one step ahead of the fashion curve, they invited Ric Ocasek, frontman of The Cars and new wave renaissance man par excellence, out of retirement to harness a couple of moodier rock moments. The result was astounding. If Don’t Speak had been both blight and blessing for No Doubt – who really wants to be a one-hit wonder, however wondrous the one hit? – Rock Steady established them as one of the late-blooming giants of the world stage, both commercially and creatively. It was their belated tipping point moment. They achieved heat.

By the time it’s come to a full blown solo foray, everyone wants a piece of Gwen. The cast list of collaborators on her debut is dizzying. Andre 3000, Wendy & Lisa, Pharrell, New Order, Linda Perry, Dr Dre, Dallas Austin and long-time No Doubt co-writer and one-time boyfriend Tony Kanal are all along for the ride. Outside of her currently enviable musical predicament – Stefani’s solo album is the most hotly anticipated of the season, and not without reason: it’s dynamite – she has been directed by Martin Scorsese in the Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator, opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. Her and Andrea’s fashion line, L.A.M.B, is finally reaching its full potential (“Look at my cardigan,” says Gwen, showing off a piece of her own work “it looks like camouflage, but look closer. It’s lambouflage”). Multi-tasking is in Gwen’s DNA. She is rocking so hard now, a free-wheeling boulder couldn’t interrupt her progress. Thus her opening gambit as we sit down to talk properly comes as something of a surprise…

Do I smell? I’m so sorry. I mean, I have all this crap on me and I’ve not showered and I’ve been running around and, um, I’d stay away from me if I was you.

You smell fine.
Just stay over there dude.

Honestly, there’s nothing! Why do the solo thing now? Is this it for No Doubt? Has it run its course?
People for years have always been saying ‘oh, she’ll go solo.’ Listen, I am not going anywhere. My fears are the same as any No Doubt fan’s fears. I really do not want to fuck that up. I’ve been doing No Doubt for 17 years now. I talked to Tony about it and said I didn’t want to threaten anybody or anyone’s situation here, but I wanted to try something else. He was really into it. They were all supercool about it. I already said that I wanted to make a family… oops. I wanted to make a movie, and I did want to make a family, too, by the way. All these things that I wanted to do and, lets face it, I’m on time check here. They understand that. It’s different for them because they’re guys so they’re all cool. I was thinking if I don’t get this thing done now then when’s the No Doubt record going to get done? When am I going to have a baby? Fricking hell, this clock is going quicksville.

It’s a pop record, right? A proper pop record?
Sure. Me and Tony come from totally different backgrounds, musically, to Adrian and Tom. They’re really into punk and heavy metal and ska and Tony and I didn’t really listen to that stuff when we were growing up. We listened to all the ’80s stuff. When I met Tony I was 17. He turned me onto Prince, The Family, Time, Club Nouveau, Debbie Deb, Lisa Lisa, all that stuff that was totally a huge part of our childhood. Early Madonna really figures here. White Lines. I had all that shit, and even though you didn’t necessarily admit it, it was a totally huge part of our musical upbringing. It felt right to go there again, Cyndi Lauper, Duran Duran. I graduated Sixth Grade in ‘87, you know?

Have you only ever had two boyfriends in your life?
Yes, I had one boyfriend in high school who was my kissing boyfriend who I was completely in love with. We went out for six months. The thing about him that’s weird to talk about is that he actually died. Recently, you know. Just two years ago. I didn’t know him for years, though I actually wrote a song for him on this record called Wonderful Life. He was one of those guys that was the naughty, naughty boy who had total character but was always getting into trouble. He was in and out of high school all the time.

So the boy that all the girls wanted to date?
Yeah. One time he was back in high school and he just turned into Robert Smith overnight, which I obviously found very attractive. I was obsessed with him for years, then he broke up with me. It wasn’t like… It was Ninth Grade, he was the second boy I kissed. But Tony was my real boyfriend for eight years. We broke up then I met my husband and we’ve known each other for almost nine years.

What attracted you to Gavin?
Probably physical stuff, you know. It was very physical to start with.

What were your initial impressions?
We got to meet the guys and we went into the room and all I’d ever heard was ‘Gavin this’ and ‘Gavin that’ and I saw this guy and it just hi me like something out of the blue. I was like ‘whooo!’ He is shockingly handsome. We went out for dinner last night and I was thinking ‘gee, you are hot’ and then I thought ‘and I’m married to you! Whoa!’ It’s really good. Then he was on tour with us and it was kinda weird. All my band are my friends and none of them wanted me to go out with him. He had a little reputation for being the typical rock star guy.

But he’s a nice boy?
He’s an amazing person. He’s such a nice guy. Obviously, I wouldn’t have gone out with him if he wasn’t.

There was a little rock’n'roll mythologising around him though?
Sure. I mean, probably some of that shit was true but he was a guy like anyone is. It’s not like you’re born a rock star.

Why do all these people want to work with you now?
Linda Perry had come up to me. She approached me, which is wild. She came up to me at the Grammys and put me in a headlock. We were the first girls to sign to Interscope, so I’ve kinda known her for years and we were always drawn to each other.

Is she not a little scary?
She is, dude! She was right up in my face telling me ‘we’re gonna write songs together’. She totally confronted me about working together and she’s the hottest hit maker. You have to remember that I’ve never worked with a woman before and this girl can play any instrument she picks up, she can run the board, she produces, she writes, this is the coolest, most awesome person to be around. She’s on fricking fire from the moment we walk into the studio. My ego was already curled up and in the corner by the time she’s pounding out these tunes but it just clicked. There were times during the process of doing this that I hated myself because whoever I was sitting next to was so incredible.

Are you aware when you’re in the presence of genius?
To be able to sit next to Andre 3000 and see how he writes lyrics and comes up with shit is amazing, let me tell you. For me coming in as a fan, it can be horrifying.

Aren’t you aware that those people are fans of yours too? That’s why they’re there?
Everybody that I’ve worked with seems to be really into it, which is very flattering. I can’t believe it. I didn’t want to put something out unless it was incredible. I said that from the beginning and at any point I could have just pulled it.

Jean Harlow, lets talk…
I just saw it in New York. I saw my clips. It’s sick.

What was Scorsese like?
Magical.

Not frightening?
The exact opposite. I was obviously scared out of my mid, but he’s the most welcoming, comforting kind of guy. Almost to the point where you think ‘have you got to make me feel this nice – haven’t you got a film to direct here? He basically saw my picture from a Teen Vogue shoot on the side of a bus stop by Herb Ritts. It’s all Herb’s fault! I’d done the whole Marilyn on the beach kinda thing and Martin saw it and asked me to try out for the Jean Harlow part and I tried out and got it. The thing that’s crazy about this… I mean, it’s a small part but I’m not calling it a small part. I’m with Leonardo DiCaprio, directed by Martin Scorsese, playing Jean Harlow. I can be on screen for, like, one second and that is not a small part. That is huge, dude.

Are you pleased with it?
Oh boy, am I?

Is this the first time you’ve acted?
Yep. You know what’s crazy about it is I’m playing Jean Harlow just after Howard Hughes has given her her first major movie role, right? And I thank Howard for giving me this amazing part. So I sent Marty some flowers when he cast me with the exact same words on it. It’s kinda symbiotic, you know?

How many people will you be thanking in your first Oscar speech?
Dude, the list will be endless…

One last thing. How happy are you right now?
Ecstatic, basically.

Well, No Doubt’s greatest hits, anyway – which is what they’ll be playing on their last tour before Gwen Stefani drops a solo CD. By Chris Willman.

Shooting what little breeze there is on a hot, insufferably still LA day, Gwen Stefani suddenly feels the need to cull a statistic from a bandmate. “How many times do you think you’ve thrown up in your life, Tony?” she asks. Tony Kanal looks like he’s not certain he wants to play this game. “I’m not sure it’s a lot,” the bass player answers with a nervous chuckle. Better to focus on the immediate future. “This time,” he insists, “it’s gonna be much more mellow and healthy.” Fifty points if you’ve already figured out our subject of the day: rock touring. Their little O.C.-teem-ska-band-that-could, No Doubt, is hitting the amphitheater circuit in June, pairing up with blink-182 for one of the summer’s most anticipated tours. (One of the most economical too: Ticket prices top out in the mid-two-figure range, or about $250 cheaper than it’d cost you for a similar seat to see Madonna.) It’s a nationwide victory lap in honor of their recent blockbuster hits collection, The Singles 1992-2003, whose new song, a cover of Talk Talk’s “It’s My Life,” afforded them yet another top 10 smash (their tenth). This could be the optimal point in their history to catch the band: They’ve been together long enough to almost count as seasoned elder statesmen – 17 years, which is about 170 in rock years – but, being still in their 30s, they’re vigorous, scrappy, and in no danger yet of outgrowing their audience.

Which is not to say they haven’t outgrown a few youthful vices. In “Hey Baby,” one of the several massive singles from their triple-platinum 2001 album Rock Steady, Stefani immortalized her bandmates’ old post-show romantic pursuits, as ironically observed by her from across a crowded bacchanal. But any would-be female band-aids hoping to be party to that decadence this summer may walk away disappointed, since, with everyone in the group either married, engaged, or seriously involved, that song is primarily a historic document.

”I’m sad for Tony on this tour a little bit,” Stefani says, offering sympathy for her bassist and ex-boyfriend Tony Kanal’s lost youth. ”Because these guys used to party so hard. Basically they would start drinking at around five to get rid of the hangover from the night before. Then they’d have an after-party every night, bring a DJ booth and lights and songs and everything, with whatever backstage passes got out to whatever girls. And it was months of that, every single night. The nights we didn’t play, they would go to clubs.” Those years may be gone, but, to crudely paraphrase ”Casablanca,” they’ll always have porcelain.

Speaking of toilets (and we do promise to move along), now is as good a time as any to offer a word of warning for anyone planning to catch No Doubt this summer. If you’re buying beer before their set, be sure to ask for a child-size cup, because there will be no bathroom breaks. Which is to say, you won’t be getting any of those less familiar album tracks that usually signal fair-weather rock fans to make the traditional dash for the loo. The whole set list will come off that best-of. ”It’s really exciting to be able to go on a tour where every single song we’re gonna play will be a single,” enthuses Stefani. ”It’s gonna be like this” – whereupon she strikes a James Bond pose, spraying the room with firepower: ”Bang bang bang bang bang!”

The catch? They’ll be out on the amphitheater circuit for a mere month before Stefani heads back indoors to reload, since she’s still got a long-aborning solo album to get done and released before year’s end.

The tour, in fact, was never supposed to happen. The group had planned to be on hiatus all year, but current events were set in motion in early 2003 when the band initially decided to “put a B-sides record out with a bunch of cool stuff for die-hard fans,” Kanal says. Then came the bright idea to – hey! – throw in a disc’s worth of A sides, along with a couple of DVDs, and make it a boxed set. The final result of this evolutionary process was two separate projects: Boom Box, a limited-edition set, and the single-CD Singles collection, which has moved almost 2 million copies.

“We just wanted to celebrate that we’ve been in a band as long as we have,” says Stefani of the hits collection and commemorative tour. ”None of us were expecting to go out right now, but it’s funner when you don’t plan it and it just happens.”

“Tony, your hair is so white!” yells Stefani, commanding Kanal’s attention from across a bank of lights at an outdoor photo shoot. This would seem to be a textbook case of the pot calling the kettle platinum, but she’s right: Kanal is looking fair enough that you wonder if maybe he’s the member Martin Scorsese should’ve picked to play Jean Harlow in The Aviator, the Howard Hughes biopic starring Leonardo DiCaprio (to be released in December). “It’s like a fluorescent bulb,” she marvels, moving closer for a blonde-on-blonde comparison. “Is my hair that white?”

Meanwhile, drummer Adrian Young has turned whiter than either dye job, thanks to a six-foot boa constrictor that has just been introduced to the circus-themed set. Young’s performed live in nothing but a jockstrap, so it’s clear he lacks any phobias about public nakedness, but he’s got one about snakes, and his request to move to the farthest edge of the shot is granted. Stefani, for her part, digs the boa (though it proved to be too uncooperative to make the final photo). For a good half-hour she has it around her neck. Asked what 25 pounds of pure muscle coiling round your shoulders feels like, Stefani – looking altogether too relaxed – says, “It’s like… a massage.”

Maybe they could take the boa out on tour to help work out those post-thrashing neck cricks – or, in Stefani’s case, to relieve her daily noon pre-tour workouts. “It’s ruined my day,” she complains. But perhaps this buff rock icon doth protest too much, since moments later she’s telling her fellow band members, “I want to be working out with you guys on tour!” The guys smile faintly, as if trying to replace the mental image of a StairMaster with a picture of Jim Beam.

Or it could be just the genuine smile of a recently acquired domesticity. Kanal, 33, will be bringing his girlfriend on tour. Guitarist Tom Dumont, 36, is newly engaged. (He’s the one who, with his new bushy ‘n’ bearded look, might as well be a member of Phish. ”I’m the not-rock-star of the group,” he says.) Drummer Adrian Young, 34, is married and has a 2-year-old son; he’s also one of the few avid golfers to sport a full Mohawk, which helps ensure he gets accosted every time he leaves the house. (”I wear hats, every day, but it doesn’t matter,” he grumbles.) And as everyone probably knows, Stefani, 34, married her longtime beau, Bush-man Gavin Rossdale, in 2002.

You might think marriage would have taken a bit of the bloom off Stefani’s incurable romanticism – that maybe she wouldn’t mind getting out of the house and living the single life for a few weeks this summer. You’d think wrong, you heartless cynic. ”It’s gonna suck” being away from Rossdale, she says, ”though it always makes it very exciting when you get back together again. This is the first year in our relationship we’ve ever really hung out this much – like, every day. I love waking up together. And also making records at the same time [while living] in the same house, so that’s a first too.” She describes a typical working-couple setup: ”We go off to the studio and don’t see each other all day long, and then we’ll see each other at night and it’s ‘Oh, how did it go?’ It’s rad – I love it.”

At this point, it may be some of our more love-soured readers doing the throwing up. But Stefani is the rare distaff rocker who can fully indulge a girly-girl side, with all the romance and glam that might entail, and still seem like one of the boys. She and her band have always been crafty about striking intriguing balances. Starting out as a bunch of ambitious Anaheim teenagers in an unremarkable late-’80s ska band, No Doubt matured into the goofy but pop-savvy alt-rockers behind 1995’s 8-million-seller Tragic Kingdom. Five years later, maturity was the unexpected order of the day with a confessional follow-up, Return of Saturn. In December 2001, they came back with a well-regarded return to immaturity – and successful step forward into dance music – with the electronics-shaded Rock Steady.

Their next album should mark a pendulum swing back toward writing on guitar and piano and away from dance beats. Or so they say now. It’ll probably be a long, long time before anyone hears it.

In a makeup chair between shoots, Stefani is telling her assistant about the tracks she’s been recording with Outkast’s Andre 3000, a number he wrote called “Long Way To Go.” They’re set to resume work on the song later today. “We sing [in unison], but because his voice is so cool and mine is so geek,” she worries that “it sounds like I’m singing backup on his record.” Tonight she’s going to try to talk him into doing it as a true duet, trading off lines.

Stefani describes her first solo album as a dance project, a CD made up of electronic beats rather than the band tunes she’s accustomed to with No Doubt. Dallas Austin is on board, as is Beyoncé producer Rich Harrison. But in some ways it doesn’t sound like a huge departure: Nellee Hooper, who co-produced Rock Steady’s best cuts including “Hella Good” (their most club-friendly hit), is producing some tracks. And Kanal is co-writing and producing two others. Since No Doubt has been so successful in reinventing themselves, couldn’t she have purged some of the creative impulses within the context of the band?

Well, no. “The music I wanted to make for the dance record is something I could not do with No Doubt,” she maintains. ”It would exclude members, because it’s programming, it’s electronics. But it’s cool, because everyone’s been supportive, and there’s no plan to quit doing what we’re doing.” The others concur, noting their own sideline activities producing new artists or playing in other bands – including, in Young’s case, a recent touring stint with reunited new-wavers Bow Wow Wow. ”We’re not sleeping together,” says the drummer. ”We can cheat on each other. It’s cool.”

Perhaps the most ironic part of Stefani doing a solo album is that the lyrics are much less autobiographical than the material she writes for No Doubt. “There are some weird twists to the themes, but it’s not heartfelt, deep, painful subject matter. I sing ‘baby’ a lot which I haven’t done before,” she says with a laugh. So she had to go solo to get impersonal? That’s why I don’t call it a solo record,” she responds. “I call it a dance record. A solo record to me is like heart-pouring-out, ‘Finally here’s me! This is what they’ve been holding me back from!’ That’s not what this record is. I want to make a record that’s a modern version of the ['80s] stuff I grew up on that made me feel really happy, that you can dance to in the club.”

For now, Stefani has set aside her disco ambitions to concentrate on moving the big crowds they’ll soon encounter in amphitheaters. Which should be a cinch given their arsenal of hits. ”There’s something really fun about going into the opening chords of “Don’t Speak,” to hear that crowd roar,” says Dumont, asked to pick a live favorite. ”But from the musical side of things, “Ex-Girlfriend” and “New” are songs that are kind of intricate, where there’s a lot of detail and subtlety in the way you navigate the songs, but at the same time they’re very rocking and aggressive.”

“Sunday Morning” is one I love playing,” says Kanal.

“Just a Girl” is always a winner, even though it’s not my favorite song to play, because it’s hard and you get tired,” Stefani says. ”But people get so excited. If you’re playing a festival and not doing too good, then all of a sudden you play that song, it’s an instant win-over.” And her own favourite? ” ‘Rock Steady,’ but we’re not playing that on this tour. Right?

“We could throw it in a couple of shows,” Kanal offers.

“But it wasn’t a single,” Stefani points out.

“You never know what kind of shows we might do,” he says guardedly, a little less prepared than Stefani to have a band meeting in public. So there you have it: They might throw in an album track or two and break the all-singles edict. Nonetheless, No Doubt fans, while the band members do their pre-tour workouts, you might want to work on steeling your bladders. Because even if “a real love survives a rock-steady vibe,” a full tank of Bud might not.