Gwen Stefani and No Doubt kick off reunion tour at Borgata by Ed Conran

When a recording artist possesses star quality, it’s usually fairly apparent. That’s typically so well before a singer-songwriter goes national. While having drinks, hot water and whiskey, with Courtney Love, circa 1991, it was obvious that the virtually unknown, yet larger-than-life rocker was destined to become a star. But then there was Dave Matthews. After chatting with the laidback Matthews before an early club show once, I never in a million would have guessed the soft-spoken, unassuming songsmith would become an icon.

And then there is Gwen Stefani, who fits somewhere in the middle between Love and Matthews. It was obvious that the bottle-blonde No Doubt vocalist from Orange County, Calif., wanted to become a pop sensation.

That was part of her appeal during the early to mid ’90s. Tough girls ruled that classic misnomer, “alternative” world. In 1994, the resilient Bikini Kill leader Kathleen Hanna was leading a riot girl revolution. Who would mess with a rocker who was screaming for vengeance?

Well, Hole’s Love beat up Hanna backstage at Lollapalooza in 1995 while she was busy touring behind Hole’s breakthrough release Live Through This. But that’s another story. And there were such female acts as Babes in Toyland and L7, possibly the hardest looking band I ever met. They were the last people you would want to see in a bar fight unless they were on your side.

And then there was the cute, non-threatening Stefani. Shortly after the release of No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom back in the autumn of 1995, 20 or so curious ska-pop fans caught the obscure band at the Middle East, a small Philadelphia comedy club that also hosted rock shows. Bands didn’t care for the venue since they had to haul gear up three floors and, well, it was a comedy venue, so it was hurting on atmosphere.

After a spirited set of ska-pop, Stefani hung out and told the few fans in attendance that she and her bandmates were going to catch Dance Hall Crashers across town. Within months, No Doubt broke through courtesy of Tragic Kingdom. Within 18 months, No Doubt packed 3,000 seaters.

Thirteen years later, No Doubt has sold more than 27 million albums and won two Grammys. The group, which has been on hiatus since 2004, will kick off a reunion tour Saturday at the Borgata. Tickets to the band’s shows are as hot as the glamorous Stefani, who has become a solo sensation.

“The fans have always loved Gwen,” guitarist Tom Dumont said during a late 1996 chat. “There’s just something about her.”

The band’s ska-pop sound is catchy but Dumont is correct. It all emanates from Stefani.

During the mid-’90s, grunge reigned supreme. Musical heroes dressed down in flannel and their tortured souls created bleak tunes. And then there was Stefani, who had much more in common with Debbie Harry than gritty girl rockers such as Corin Tucker of Sleater Kinney fame. Stefani sang of being just a girl or being caught in the spiderwebs. Her appeal was obvious when No Doubt’s ballad “Don’t’ Speak” set a record when it spent 16 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 Airplay chart throughout the summer of ’96.

“Things really took off for us after ‘Don’t Speak’ hit,” Dumont said. “Things changed and a lot had to do with Gwen and the video. If you didn’t think she was a star before ‘Don’t Speak’ she was definitely a star after that video just took off.”

Indeed. Stefani has that certain something that special performers possess. It’s that intangible, which Mick Jagger, David Bowie and Madonna, a distant cousin of Stefani’s, also have in spades. You can’t take your eyes off of those performers when they take the stage. They command your attention. Fewer and fewer younger performers have that connection.

But Stefani and her bandmates, which include bassist Tony Kanal and drummer Adrian Young, possess a great deal of showmanship. No Doubt shows are all about entertainment. Stefani and Co. put on performance clinics.

No Doubt is working on a new album, which is slated for 2010. A tour supporting the disc will likely follow. But how long will Stefani hang with her bandmates before embarking on another solo venture? Both of her solo albums, 2004’s Love, Angel, Music, Baby and 2006’s The Sweet Escape went multi-platinum.

Kanal has worked with Stefani. Dumont spends considerable time with his side project Invincible Overlord. Young plays drums for the band Bow Wow Wow and has worked with Unwritten Law. Young will also keep time for Dilana Robichaux (of Rockstar Supernova fame).

And then there are the extracurricular activities. Stefani is a fashion designer and a mother of two sons, two-year old Kingston and eight-month old Zuma. Stefani has also dabbled in acting. She played legendary actress Jean Harlow in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator.

There’s no doubt that Stefani is terribly busy. How long until No Doubt is on hiatus again? Who knows, and who knows if it’s going to be long term. Fans should just revel in the fact that there is going to be at least two years worth of No Doubt. The group’s return is welcome since No Doubt is one of the more stylish, energetic and entertaining acts on the circuit. The act can be campy, theatrical and boisterous. And then there is the band’s music, which ranges from celebratory to poignant.

It’s not a bad package from a band that once hoped to be on the cult level ala the aforementioned Dance Hall Crashers. No Doubt went much further and the group is back for a long run.

‘It’s a song that says you don’t have to answer back,” Gwen says. By Jennifer Vineyard

Going solo wasn’t as easy as Gwen thought it would be.

She’d originally intended to just take a break from No Doubt and make a fun little dance record. But, encouraged by her label boss and others, she’d decided to swing for the fences, and now that she was deep in it, the album suddenly didn’t seem like it was going to be all that much fun — and it definitely wasn’t going to be little.

Stranded without her longtime bandmates and plagued by writer’s block, she nervously turned to a host of producers, songwriters and musicians for creative help. This strategy proved useful, but it had a downside: The music came so easily to everyone else that it made her feel insecure — and jealous. “I’ve had a hard time with my ego,” she said, “because it gets bruised.”

After a whole year of work on the album that became Love, Angel, Music, Baby, she had 20 songs in the can. But Gwen still had a nagging feeling that something important was missing. “I could have put the record out,” she said. “I had so many songs. But I knew that I kind of had this missing vibe on the album.” And she knew she would have to find it.

Who could help her? She’d already worked with every big name she could think of — and after one bout of panic, she’d already resorted to calling in No Doubt bassist Tony Kanal.

So she decided to give it one more try with Pharrell Williams, a man she felt was on her creative wavelength, even though a tentative get-together with Williams early on in the album’s production had been a bust. “We didn’t have a great session,” she recalled. “It didn’t have the sparkle.”

This creative strikeout nagged at her. “I was like, ‘Geez, I can’t believe we didn’t end up doing something great together.’ So I called Pharrell, ‘Dude, it’s crazy that we didn’t do a track together.’ The next thing I know, I’m on a plane to New York, booked for seven days in the studio — another week of torture.”

Although she was nervous, their first day together was an immediate success. “It was like having a baby,” she said. “I went in there, it was 4 p.m., and by 11 p.m. we had a song.’ ” The next day they had the same experience, popping out another song with equal ease. “We wrote this second song, and both of us loved it. It sounded like an early, early No Doubt song.”

With two songs finished (neither of which made the album’s final track listing), a tired but happy Gwen was ready to wrap it up. “But Pharrell said, ‘Don’t leave yet.’ And he started playing me his solo record.”

Gwen’s green-eyed monster — the one with the bruised ego — nudged her in the right direction. “I was like, ‘You are a fricking genius, I can’t believe I’m sitting in here with you, right now, and you have those songs! We have got to write another song!’ ” Gwen recalled, adding with a smile, “I’m greedy!”

So the pair hunkered down to write their third song in three days. And this time, they finally found the missing vibe.

Gwen had been thinking about what some No Doubt fans might say about her solo effort. “The fans were probably like, ‘Why is she doing this record? She’s going to ruin everything,’ ” she said. “And I didn’t know why I was doing it either.”

So Stefani and Pharrell stayed up all night and came up with a reply — that Gwen didn’t have to have an answer for what she was doing, not for the fans, not for anybody. The song was, of course, “Hollaback Girl,” and it introduced a new phrase into pop culture. As Gwen recalls, “We looked at each other when we wrote that song and we were like, ‘That’s it!’ It’s a song that says, you know, you don’t have to answer back. To me, it is the freshest attitude song I’ve heard in so long.”

Pharrell was impressed. “Gwen is like the girl in high school who just had her own style,” he said. “Everyone went to high school with that girl — that girl who’s just different, right? And she’s really cute with it and you can’t really say anything about it. You just like it, and it’s her.”

Those who didn’t like Gwen and her cute style only inspired her more. “One time, this person was talking sh– about me, saying I was like a cheerleader,” she recalled, “and I was like, ‘You know what? I am a cheerleader. Watch me onstage.’ So I wanted a song like that, that was like my ‘Just a Girl’ song for now. It feels good. It’s a slap: It’s a slap on the bottom, it’s a slap on the face.”

Stefani and Williams extended her slap into a storyline, in which “Hollaback Girl” was a high school throwdown, something that could be a cheer at a football game, with fighting words, chanted lyrics, and a marching-band beat, kind of like Queen (“Another One Bites the Dust” is quoted in the song). “Pharrell had some really funny lyrics he wanted me to do,” Gwen said. “Usually I’ll come up with a lyric, and sometimes he’ll have a hook that he wrote that has a word or some lyrics already, but we’d change it because I was like, ‘I’m not saying that!’ ”

“Hollaback Girl” wound up transcending musical boundaries, leaping across all radio formats and cultural barriers and being downloaded more than a million times.

“You can feel the energy around ‘Hollaback Girl,’ ” Gwen said. ” ‘Don’t Speak’ was kind of like that. You go to different countries and they feel this song, even though they don’t know what you’re really saying. ‘Hollaback Girl’ has this feeling, this massive thing. Like: ‘You know who I am? You like my song? Cool, thanks!’ ”

Even more importantly, Stefani felt that the song was a personal triumph, proving that “if you push, you can come through with a song that captures a moment,” she said. “People can try not to like it — they can try real hard. But it’s going to be at least a guilty pleasure. Even after you die, that song will live on.”

Whether with No Doubt or solo, pop’s blonde bombshell is hardly “just a girl”

Do you remember what you were doing in 1985?
I remember exactly what I was doing. I was in high school and in love with this guy named Matt. He was on the drum line. I had a bob haircut and wore black-and-white tights and little mod-style outfits, listening to Madness or the Specials. I was hard-core into ska and thrift-store shopping, and making my own shit – trying not to be like everyone else.

How would you like to be remembered?
The Greatest Hits tour we did last year? Every song we played every night was a hit. And until you have a hit, you don’t know what it feels like to play a song like “Just a Girl” or “Don’t Speak” and have a crowd of 14,000 singing it back at you. So I think we’re just proud to have been able to sustain a career and move with the times and still be on the radio. That 15 minutes of fame is real, and so to be able to have anything longer than that is totally a blessing.

Even though your solo record was so successful [Love. Angel. Music. Baby spawned four hit singles, including "Hollaback Girl"], do you still think of things in the context of No Doubt?
Completely. Because Tony [Kanal, No Doubt bassist and Stefani's ex-boyfriend] was such a huge part of that record creatively, even though I only did three songs with him. So I feel like the band hasn’t really gone away. This year went like a flash, and before I know it, I’m going to be sitting with those stinky boys trying to write a record.

Which song are you most proud of?
I wrote “Simple Kind of Life” [on 2000's Return of Saturn] completely on my own, so I was really proud of it. I wrote it on guitar, and that was a big deal for me.

What are your favorite records of the last 20 years?
I don’t have records in order like that. I’m not a collector. My older brother was the guy that would buy every version of a single, so I didn’t need to. We lived in the same house. I was the girl who got bored in the record store. I like hits. I like things that stick in my head. So for me to get into a whole album, that doesn’t happen all the time. There are a few. I listen to Prince’s Under the Cherry Moon [soundtrack] a lot. UB40’s Rat in the Kitchen. The Police.

Any regrets?
I regret not really how to play an instrument. I regret that I have to rely on other people to write songs for me. I can play guitar well enough to write a song, but not enough to be free. I guess it’s not tool late to learn, but you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

But your voice is your instrument.
Definitely. If you said to me “Would you rather be able to play piano or write lyrics and melodies?” I’d say I’d rather be able to write lyrics and melodies. I’ve never considered myself a great singer. I think my voice has become so familiar that people have come just to accept it for what it is. To be honest, it’s kind of nasally and piercing, and I have no range.

What’s been your biggest thrill?
Being free – not having a job but still working all the time. That freedom of creativity, and getting paid for it, so you don’t have to worry if you want extra guacamole. You can afford it.

In 1996 Spin ran a story on No Doubt with just a photo of you on the cover [the band tension it caused inspired the video for "Don't Speak"]. Now’s your chance to talk about what you thought of that.
Having four people in a picture is hard to shoot and make look good. It really is. One person with blond hair and lipstick really stands out on the shelf. We all understand it now. But when we got the call, we didn’t think we were going to get the chance again, because we thought we were at number 15 in our 15 minutes. So we were really upset, and it pulled us apart. But we’ve been able to travel the world and take a million pictures together, so it seems kind of funny now. [Laughs] But I still feel bad about it – Marc Spitz

Equal parts punkette and starlet, gwen Stefani is about to go super-stellar. Scorsese’s new star and pop’s hottest hybrid, she’s far from just a girl, says Charlotte Sinclair. Photographs by Lorenzo Agius. Styled by Andrea Lieberman.

Gwen Stefani is half way through our cover shoot when there’s a security breach at the country house that’s serving as our location. While on a tour of the building, a group of blue-rinsed ladies stumble into the music room where Gwen is being photographed. If the peroxide blonde with flowers in her hairs stirs recognition in the octogenarians, it probably owes more to their memories of Forties starlets than any familiarity with the sexy, stylish, stiletto-wearing tomboy who fronts the Californian rock band No Doubt. Gwen is non-plussed, and smiles graciously, arching a perfectly penciled eyebrow at the group as they are ushered outside outside onto the lawn, their chorus of interest (‘Goodness, wasn’t she pretty?’ and ‘Who was that?’) drifting in through the open window as the shoot resumes. The renegade OAPs could be forgiven for their ignorance, but Gwen Stefani – whose currency as a bona fide rock chick, fashion icon and budding actress is already soaring – is about to hit the big time.

A few days previously, I was led into a closed room as St Martins Lane hotel to listen to exclusive tracks from Stefani’s new solo album, Love Angel Music Baby. The clandestine circumstances say much about her exalted status. With the kind of secrecy usually reserved for top-selling global artists such as U2 and Madonna, I was allowed only a supervised listening of three of Stefani’s new tracks, the words of which I had to frantically scribble down before the lyric sheets were snatched back at the end of the session. There was no question of taking the CD home. The album is her ’side project’ – her first record without the No Doubt boys (ex-boyfriend and bassist Tony Kanal, guitarist Tom Dumont, and drummer Adrian Young). As well as representing her solo debut, it marks her initiation into a more mainstream sound.

‘I had a very clear idea of the kind of record I wanted to make, as far as style and sound goes,’ says Stefani later. ‘I wanted to sound like Prince, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam and Club Nouveau.’ But the change in direction is not a snub to No Doubt’s sound. ‘It’s not like, “Gi, I’m Gwen Stefani and this is me; these are my true feelings because I’ve been compromising all these years,” ‘ she says. ‘That was the true me the whole time.’ The songs, upbeat dance tracks with a strong Eighties influence and plenty of attitude, include her first single, ‘What You Waiting For?’, produced with Linda Perry (who has written songs for Christina Aguilera and Cortney Love), and ‘Bubble Pop Electric,’ a frenetic beat-filled track produced with Andre 3000 of OutKast. The Neptunes, Dr Dre and New Order are among other collaborators. Gwen’s voice switches from a tremulous vibrato reminiscent of Kate Bush in ‘Cool’, a wistful song about past love, to a throaty Debbie Harry growl for such lines as ‘I’m itching, wish you could come and scratch me’ in ‘Bubble Pop Electric’.

Stefani’s half-street, half-sweet image reveals the contradictions in her. With an English husband (36-year-old Gavin Rossdale of the rock band Bush), a Primrose Hill pad whose elegance equals her own, and wholesome moral principles, commited Catholic Stefani has a classic, ladylike appeal. But equally, she’s a down-and-dirty riot-grrrl from Anaheim, CA, who has spent the past 17 years playing with the boys and sporadically dying her hair blue. ‘Being a girl in a band,’ she explains, ‘means that I want to do my own hair and wear cute clothes – but, when I get on stage, I want to rock out.’

Gwen has garnered a solid fanbase with No Doubt (with whom she has sold more than 25 million records and won three Grammys), but this temporary break from the band, plus her designs for burgeoning clothing line L.A.M.B, and a small but potentially career-break acting role as Jean Harlow in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, mean that everyone is watching Stefani now. As Missy Elliot, with whom she performed at the 2004 Brit Awards, says: ‘When Gwen does this, it’s not going to be just another record; it’s going to be an event.’

However, if she’s feeling the pressure, it’s not showing. It’s a yawning, sleep-fogged Stefani who walks into the old manor-house for our shoot. Pushing open the huge oak doors into the Tudor hallway, wearing a white tracksuit and trainers, she says in her surprisingly little voice: ‘This place is ridiculous!’ ‘Ridiculous’ and ’sick’ (Californian teen patois for fabulous) are trademark Stefani words that, sprinkled into conversation along with ‘dude’, ‘crazy’, and ‘magic’, make her sound younger than her years. She is someone who is visually defined by her make-up – the indelible slash of red lipstick, the long black Cleopatra kohl line on her eyelids – so her bare face comes as a shock. She stands in the dim and dusty hall, her skin clear and almost translucent, and her face dominated by huge brown eyes. A sliver of her famous washboard stomach flashes at her waist as she pushes away a strand of white-blonde hair from her eyes. ‘She ruined her hair on tour with bleach and hair pieces,’ says her stylist and friend Andrea Lieberman. You’ve got to admire Stefani’s commitment to peroxide. She even dedicated a song to her ravaged locks on No Doubt’s last album (the dancehall-influenced outrageously catchy Rock Steady), called ‘Platinum Blonde Life’: ‘I want a platinum blonde life/So I keep bleaching out the color.’

Against the back drop of faded glamour, Gwen plays the imperious and errant lady of the manor for the camera. She sings along to one of her new tracks, ‘It’s My Shit’, standing on the lawn in a floor length silver sheath dress.’ ‘Damn,’ she shouts over herself. ‘This song doesn’t match my dress.’ Stefani plays her part with élan, at one point standing in a revealing silk basque, throwing her head back, her hand on her forehead in mock faint, as 16 spectators look on. ‘Oh my God!’ she yells cheerfully on seeing the Polaroid. ‘Dude, I look like a mannequin. I had to wear this dress yesterday that was so tight my kidneys were squashed to hell,’ she adds. ‘It was amazing.’

Gwen Stefani has been experiencing a renaissance over the past couple of years. At 34 years old, she has become the kind of celebrity whose presence in the front row of a show lends instant kudos to the designer; gossip columnists adore her. At a time when Chloë Sevigny and Sarah Jessica Parker are revered for their offbeat fashion sense and quirky looks, it’s no wonder that Gwen, who can carry off dancehall-inspired ragga wear and Louis Vuitton prom dresses with equal ease, has become a style leader. And all without losing a shred of musical credibility. A collaboration with Moby, the ghetto-fabulous parody ‘South Side’ brought her to a new dance audience in 2000. Moby said: ‘She’s incredibly technically proficient and just a really remarkable singer.’ And last year’s hit, ‘Let Me Blow Ya Mind’, produced with rapper Eve, gave her approval with the hip-hop crowd, and further cross-genre appeal. The Eve video, the first for which Stefani used a stylist (‘Before that I always did everything myself’), also launched her new look: a slicker, slimmer Gwen whose colourful style had been refined with ‘that bling R’n'B lustre’, according to Danny Eccleston of Q magazine.

Sitting in a dusty armchair in an attic room filled, appropriately with vintage costumes, Gwen Stefani is voluble, launching straight into the story of her album. ‘I’m just going to go for it, OK?’ She is refreshingly honest and artless throughout, readily admitting her insecurities in going solo. ‘I don’t really know why I’m doing this record, either,’ she says. ‘I’m just as scared as the fans are for me, and I have been uptight about the whole thing. But I just want to do it.’ Stefani also understands how exacting her standards are. She tells me about a quarrel with Linda Perry over a song they wrote called ‘Wonderful Life For Him’ about Stefani’s first high-school crush, who died a few years ago. ‘I wasn’t finding the right way to say it, and Linda wrote these lyrics and it was the last straw. I was PMS-ing and just wanted to break out in tears,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘So I left and didn;t go back. But months later when I listened to the song again, it was beautiful – so I ended up recording it.’ She smiles, contritely spreading her hands.

A highly ambitious perfectionist, last year she launched herself into a punishing, itinerant recording schedule. ‘I wanted to take time off to get inspired but I was really feeling the clock. The ongoing joke between me and my husband,’ she says, rolling her eyes, ‘is that we went on vacation to the South of France when I got off the Tragic Kingdom tour. That was seven years ago. And there was our five-day honeymoon, which was the only other vacation we’ve ever had.’ And what of Rossdale? The pair met on a No doubt tour in 1995, when Stefani was 25. After a somewhat shaky courtship (during one break-up, Stefani famously dyed her hair pink, cut a fringe and got braces on her teeth), they married in 2002, once in St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden (‘by a Church of England vicar who was Gavin’s religious-studies teacher’) and once in LA; Gwen wore a John Galliano dress at both ceremonies. ‘It’s great to be married,’ said Gavin at the time. ‘It makes us feel our love is a lot deeper.’ I ask her how she copes with having a long-distance relationship. ‘For years, we were apart, which I think is a great thing when you’re creative people. Anything more than three weeks is really screwed up, and causes problems. But we know that it’s not going to be like this for ever,’ she says. ‘I think marriage goes in spurts. Sometimes you just can’t take it anymore and then, all of a sudden, you’re in love like you just met again.’ Babies are high on Gwen’s list, although when she will find the time is another matter. Fans have expressed concern about whether the couple will have enough time to devote to raising a child. ‘We’re just as worried about it as they are.’ says Stefani. ‘But it’ll happen when it happens.’

Stefani was born in 1969, into a musical family; her childhood memories are of her parents playing Bob Dylan and folk records. In 1986, she was asked to sing with her brother Eric and friend John Spence’s band, No Doubt. When Tony Kanal joined, he and Gwen started dating – he even took her to her senior prom. ‘My mom remade Grace Kelly’s dress from Rear Window for me to wear,’ she says. She has been with the band ever since. (‘I’ve been famous since I was 17 – I could go into Tower Records and be recognised,’ she says proudly, giggling.) But the band nearly collapsed when Spence committed suicide, and Eric departed. It was then that Gwen found her voice as a songwriter; in 1995 the band produced their hit album Tragic Kingdom, which sold more than 16 million copies. ‘Before, I was this Gwen, the little sister or girlfriend, and I was satisfied with that. I thought I could never have any kind of effect on anyone. Then I learnt I could write songs – I realised I had a talent and a power.’

This creative period also coincided with her break-up with Kanal. ‘Suddenly, I was this independent person who was happy and didn’t have to depend on my lover. Before that, I never really had anything of my own.’ The two have remained friends; the lament that resulted from the experience was the No Doubt hit ‘Don’t Speak’. Gwen really can write. Some of her lyrics are beautiful – for example, the phrase ‘Born to blossom and bloom to perish’ in Beauty Contest’. And with references to Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes and Janis Joplin on No Doubt’s second album, Return of Saturn, Stefani proved herself to be anything but the dumb blonde.

It was the video for ‘Don’t Speak’, in which Gwen is seen moaning plaintively into a microphone, swaying barefoot in a blue polka-dot dress, that kicked off her reputation as a style leader. ‘I got that dress at a thrift store, five years before we shot the video,’ she says. ‘It smelled so bad that I never wore it. It’s a beautiful fabric, that really old rayon that just hangs beautifully.’ Her knowledge of how a fabric hangs is genuine. ‘It’s in my blood. My grandma made all my mom’s clothes, and my great-grandmother always sewed. Then, all through high school, and in the band, I made my own clothes,’ she says. ‘I used to make corset-style drop-waist dresses with a cheerleader skirt. Underneath I wore my boxer shorts, fishnets and Dr Martens. For years, though, I never wanted to talk about my style because I was more concerned with music.’ However, she now confesses that ‘the visuals on this record are as important as the music.’ She now understands the importance of image innately. ‘I had a very clear idea of how I wanted to look, and I prepared for it.’ She relates the story of her first ‘fashion moment’ with the gusto of a true addict. ‘I bought a Vivienne Westwood corset for $800 – with my own money – and wore it in a video. Then I got to meet her, which was like meeting the Queen. I was just like, “Aarrgh!” ‘

Stefani’s style aesthetic serves as a welcome foil tot he homogeneous Britney look predominant in the music industry. Gone is the unpolished grunge look; in its place is subtle overstatement with lots of colour. Knuckleduster rings and hound’s-tooth check culottes mix with McQueen gowns. Her body is taut and muscular, all traces of the ‘chubby child who had to join the swim team’ erased. ‘I’ve always had to work at it. I have a trainer, and when I’m at home I work out five days a week.’ Standing in a Dior dress with built in hips and a bustle, she says: ‘What was the point of all that dieting? On tour, we all went nuts. We were training all day and by the end of it I was like, “Damn!” I didn’t even recognise my own body. I just wanted to do the show naked.’ And does she feel the pressure to stay thin? ‘Beauty Contest’ has the lyrics: ‘How’d my vanity get such a mess/Reduce myself, I’ve got the strict restrictions.’ Gwen sighs. ‘Even if I wasn’t famous, I’d still feel the pressure because I think we all do.’

Doubtless, she forgives John Galliano for the extra Dior-enhanced curves. Her relationship with him is prolific, and culminated recently in Gwen wearing Dior in the video of No Doubt’s cover of Talk Talk’s ‘It’s My Life’, directed by David LaChapelle. ‘I got invited to my first Christian Dior show, and I cried,’ she says, slipping into ditsy LA speak. ‘I could not believe that someone made that look up.’ The respect is mutual. Galliano says: ‘She has a great energy. I love her personal style – she carries it off with such aplomb.’ Gwen leans forward conspiratorially in her chair. ‘I had John over to dinner the other night. It’s so weird; he was describing the whole couture show that he had just done and then today I’m wearing the dress!’

I ask Gwen if the white angora sweater she’s wearing is Westwood. ‘No, it’s one of my fall pieces. I think it’s gorgeous.’ She’s talking about L.A.M.B (which stands for Love, Angel, Music, Baby), the name of her fledging clothing and accessories line – as well as that of her new album – and yet another feature in her cap. Stefani clearly thrives on multitasking. Her design partner, LeSportsac’s CEO Tim Shifter, had his first encounter with Stefani at a Dior catwalk show. ‘Flashbulbs went off and the paparazzi started going crazy. At that moment I really understood what star she has. She is creative, full of ideas, and really has a sense of what her fans want.’ For Gwen, it is a far more selfish endeavor. ‘I’m not trying to impress anyone except for myself. I sit there and say, “What do I want to wear?” Then I make it.’ She giggles, as if she can’t believe her luck. L.A.M.B bestsellers include her punk-inspired bags with metallic zips. More than a mere vanity project, her bags are selling well. ‘For a while, I thought, “Why am I doing this? I just don’t have the time.” But Andrea helped me, and I’m going to keep getting good at it because I want to do it for ever. I’m not going to be dancing around for the rest of my life.’

An awareness of the limited longevity of the female of the female rock star could explain Stefani’s interest in film roles. ‘I’ve never acted but I always wanted to. I’ve tried out for films before [including Fight Club, Chicago and Girl, Interuppted], which is humiliating but fun.’ Having harboured a fascination with the Forties actress Jean Harlow for years, Gwen was ‘on the floor’ when Martin Scorsese sent her the script for The Aviator. ‘I was like, “You’re fucking kidding me!” ‘ she yells. Scorsese had seen Herb Ritts’ photographs of Gwen styled as Harlow, and asked her to come and meet him, ‘and dress like a lady’. The part only involved a couple of lines, but she auditioned in front of Scorsese and Leonardo Di Caprio, who plays Howard Hughes. Not bad for a debut. ‘I must have been there for about an hour, talking about the band and everything, and then they called, and I got it.’ Stefani considers it an auspicious start. ‘In the movie, Hughes gives Harlow her first role, in Hells Angels, so for me it’s like Scorsese giving me my first role… And it’s Jean Harlow, which is just so frickin’ weird,’ she laughs, shaking her head.

Stefani’s father, Dennis, in town on business, turns up to wait for his daughter to finish the shoot. As soon as he arrives, Gwen, standing the grounds in a transparent chiffon Lacroix skirt, starts to act the little girl. ‘I forgot to put my skirt on Daddy, don’t look,’ she shrieks. Between shots, she pleads with him not to read the gossip about her on the internet. ‘They even say I’ve had a boob job,’ she says, looking at her flat chest in horror. ‘You mustn’t read it Daddy.’ Theirs is a close relationship, and he appears quietly protective of her, despite her age. ‘I feel very stable because of my Catholic upbringing,’ Gwen has said. I ask Stefani Snr if his daughter has always been a star. ‘No, she’s always been regular. She never dressed sexy as a teen, not like Christina Aguilera. She had a ska tomboy look,’ he says. ‘She only got style when she started getting famous.’ He smiles, proving that celebrities have embarrassing parents.

For now, Stefani is happy – creatively fulfilled and settled in her marriage. She has even befriended fellow Londoner Madonna, although she doesn’t necessarily see her self as the same kind of feminist role model. ‘I always respected girls who were tough and could stand on their own. But I was making a stand. I was just a normal girl who didn’t know what was going to happen next; the normal one, over there, with the fat butt,’ she laughs loudly, pointing to an imaginary, plumper Gwen in the corner. The self-deprecation is difficult to accept from someone so assured. It’s far easier to believe the sass and ego of her lyrics in ‘What You Waiting For?’: ‘Look at your watch now/You’re still a super-hot female/You got your million-dollar contract/And they’re all waiting for your hot track/What you waiting for?’ Gwen’s face splits into a scarlet smile as she hears her own words. A super hot female? ‘Dude, you’d better believe it.’

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.

No one tells Gwen Stefani what to do – thank God! We get to the roots of her rock’n'roll style. By Gia Kourlas. Photographed by Gilles Bensimon.

Gwen Stefani doesn’t like to be made over and why should she? “I always do my own makeup and hair,” she declares. “Every time I’ve experimented, it’s been a disaster.” Once you get past the obvious – that her powerful vocals have been a trademark of No Doubt for 15 years and that she writes most of the music herself – the coolest thing about Gwen is that totally original look. And at 32, she says she’s having more fun with her look – and her life – than ever. No Doubt’s latest album, Rock Steady, is an irresistible dance party in disc form, and Gwen’s relationship with fiancé Gavin Rossdlae of Bush seems pretty rock steady too. Great! Because what we really wanted to grill Gwen about was her personal style, and, lucky for us, she was willing to play along…

Were you a nonconformist in high school?
Well I think that for young kids, it’s all about being like everyone else. So I had to have my sports shirt, and there was the zip-up sweatshirt that I wore every day. But when I hit puberty and found music, all of a sudden I wanted to be unique. In high school I did a lot of sewing and thrift-store shopping. My mum sews 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 made Grace Kelly’s dress from the movie Rear Window.

Wow, really?
My mum made me that dress! [Laughs] It was black velvet with a white chiffon skirt. We also made the dress from The Sound Of Music that Julie Andrews wears when she sings I Have Confidence. It was tweed with a drop waist, and I wore it the first time I was ever on stage at the school talent show.

Do you still have that tweed dress?
I have all the dresses we made.

What happened to the 40s dress you wore in the Don’t Speak video?
I got that at a thrift store, like five years before we shot the video. It smelled so bad that I never wore it. It’s beautiful fabric, that really old rayon that just hangs beautifully. But it’s a real mess!

Did your mom sew pretty much all of your dresses or did you also?
My Mom – but I made a lot of my own stuff, too. I could never do zippers very well. When we were on tour right after the first record came out, I made three or four dresses, which were all from the same pattern that I’d created myself. It was kind of a corset-style drop waist with a cheerleader skirt, and it looked like there was a white blouse underneath. I always made them in cartoon-y bright colours like bright reds, blues and yellows. Underneath I wore my boxer shorts and fishnets and Doc Martens. I had my little vibe going on.

Have you ever thought about starting your own clothing line?
Yeah! I want to. I talk about it all the time, especially now that I’m inspired again. But it’s hard to do a lot of things at once well. That’s why I haven’t had a kid yet. I want to do that well, and I want to be a good wife, but I’m so busy and I have so much passion for what I’m doing… I’m having a great time! [Laughs] So I think that if I do a clothing line, it has to be like everything else I do – it has to be homegrown, it has to be real. I wouldn’t just do it to make money, because I could do that easily. All I would have to do is the say the words – “Here’s my accessory line” and it would be nuts. I love that our fans get inspired and show up to our gigs in home-made gear. That is the coolest thing – I’ll never get sick of that. They inspire me.

Who else inspires you? Let’s play a word-association game with the names of some stylish ladies.
I don’t know everybody, but okay.

Grace Kelly?
Gorgeous.

Stevie Nicks?
I love her. Cool as hell. I relate to her a lot. And there are lots of similarities in the stories of our bands. [Laughs]

True enough. Veronica Lake?
The “Hey Baby” video, because I tried to copy her hair! [Laughs]

Debbie Harry?
Me on the last record. I really tried to rip her off hard on that one.

Jean Harlow?
She was dope-ass, she had those skinny eyebrows and attitude. She was way ahead of her time.

Madonna?
I can’t give you one word. I have to give you a long winded explanation of my relationship with her. [Laughs]

Yes, please.
When I was in high school, I was really into ska music. And I was 15 or 16, so there were lots of rules. If something was really popular, you’re like “I’m not into that.” Madonna was huge, but I was really into ska. I was like Madonna? Whatever.
But I think that, secretly, I was interested. I went to her concert in ‘87 at Anaheim Stadium, because I was in love with Tony [Kanal, No Doubt’s bass player] and his mum worked for the council and got free tickets. So we went and we kissed in the parking lot and saw the show. It was amazing. But I was never really a huge fan of hers until recently. I just look at her body of work now, and I have a whole lot of respect for her. I know what it’s like to be a girl in a man’s world. I’ve met her a few times. She is such a cool girl. The thing is that I relate more to someone like Deborah Harry, because she was in a band. It’s like two different worlds. But as far as paving a little space for some girls could come after her [Expels breath] – Madonna did that.

What do you think of Britney Spears and her image these days?
There’s room for everybody, and there’s always room for pure entertainment. But I’m surprised at how fast she’s moved on. I think when you’re in a band, the cool thing is that you have time to grow. Like I only just started wearing heels and getting more comfortable with my sexual side. Before, my whole vibe was based upon the idea that I wanted to be a guy – but I wanted to wear a lot of make-up. Being a girl in a band means that I want to do my hair and wear cute clothes, but when I get on stage, I want to rock out. But lately I feel that if I show a sexier side – and if you put on high heels, then you automatically do – it’s okay. I’ve earned my way.

It’s like a rite of passage?
Exactly. I feel that some of the younger artists should just hold on to their youth a little longer – it’s like, dude, you have so much ahead of you! But I can’t say anything, I could never imagine myself having commercial success at that age. I would go crazy.

If you hadn’t got into music, would you be a stylist or a make-up artist or something like that?
I was a make-up artist. I worked at a department store at Anaheim Plaza, which was a pretty low-grade mall with dollar stores. Different types of she-males would come in wanting to get their makeup done. [Laughs] It was such a rewarding job to help people feel better about themselves by putting on a little of this and a little of that. But if I hadn’t gotten into music I don’t think I’d still be working at the mall, I would have completed college. I can’t imagine going back now. I learned all the important things I needed because I didn’t want to feel like a stupid person – but as far as art classes go, I’d love to go back.

Your style is so immaculate, so put together. Do you ever just kick back in a sweatshirt and no make-up?
[In wonder] Immaculate! Oh, dude, yeah! Of course I do. On tour, for the most part, I have two outfits that I wear every night on stage. I just rotate the colours. During the day I wear my workout clothes. Publicity time is really fun because it’s all about the clothes, and lately I’m really into it again. I feel all energized. I went to the fabric store to make a skirt for my sister’s wedding and I freaked out! I was like, Oh my God, I haven’t been here in so long! I bought fabric and had loads of pants made up.

What do you think about the way Joan Rivers and everybody else – including this magazine – critique celebrity fashion?
I get totally seduced by it all. I love to open People to see what everyone’s wearing. But it’s different when it’s me. What’s that one I always get in? “When bad clothes happen to good people.” [Laughs] I kind of consider that a compliment. The clothes they consider bad I usually like!

Does Gavin have a favourite outfit?
He has really good taste. He’s influenced me a lot, to grow up a bit with the way I dress. He’s really anti bright colours – everything I am! He doesn’t have a favorite outfit. But I definitely try to impress him. He influences me when I’m shopping. I think, Will he like this?

Do you go for more conservative things now?
Maybe I just don’t go for the really bright colours as much. [Laughs] I have to grow up. I can’t just stay the same forever.

How have you evolved as a songwriter?
With the last album, Return Of Saturn, I decided I just wanted to get really good at writing. I started keeping a journal, and I’d never done that. I got the lyrics and poems of Joni Mitchell, which are just genius – the most beautiful way of putting thoughts down. She really inspired me. And then Gavin told me about Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and I was so inspired by that – and by her journals. But with Rock Steady we wanted it to be a little more free. I tried to make my writing more conversational. I didn’t get into my whole “being inspired” thing – I would be inspired by a day. even a moment. And I didn’t labor over it – I tried to write stuff in an afternoon and then go and record it.

You’ve collaborated with so many great people - Eve and Moby, and now Prince and Sly and Robbie on Rock Steady. Who else would you like to work with?
The Thompson Twins. I would love to make a rap song with those guys. Or have them remix one of our tracks.

You grew up in the ’80s but don’t seem embarrassed by ’80s fashion. Do you really like it?
I love the idea of something that’s really bad becoming really good again. The ’80s were an awesome time for music. And plus it was the backdrop of my life, so of course I love it and embrace it!

Did you have fun on TRL in December?
Yeah. We’ve been on so many times, but we were so excited and nervous. I didn’t think I could get that nervous again! We kind of came off as nerds, but oh well.

Do you consider yourself kind of dorky?
[Pauses and giggles] I’m pretty cool now. I always get really freaked out when I start thinking about how people see me. It’s a weird lifestyle. We have this web fan forum, and you can read everything the fans have to say. There’s a lot of negative stuff, and I don’t know if I’m going to read it anymore. No Doubt’s never done anything that anyone’s told us to do. Like I don’t wear anything that anyone tells me to wear. The whole idea of No Doubt is freedom – creating something on your own. To try to get better and grow. It frustrates me when people get that wrong and think that they own you. The idea of fans is amazing, because they give you your life, but the idea of anyone, a fan or not, trying to tell you what music you should do? I don’t do it for anyone except myself in the first place. It’s an art.

No Doubt’s Gwen Stefani on Britney, learning to walk in heels and the trouble with zippers.

Gwen Stefani is the kind of girl that other girls want to be. She’s in control and in No Doubt… where she writes most of the songs and gets to live out her rock-star fantasies night after night. Then there was that video with Eve, the platinum blonde hair (and life), bee-stung lips and the gawky grace of her sun kissed bod. And did we even mention the fact that her snuggle-bunny is Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale?

But the main reason why we’d want to be Gwen is the mountains of clothes and accessories (so we’re shallow, so sue us) that she’s accumulated over the many years she’s been fronting No Doubt. So although we love No Doubt’s just-released album, Rock Steady, an irresistible CD shaped dance party if ever we heard one, what we really wanted to grill Gwen about is her personal style…

Were you a playground rebel?
Well I think that for young kids, it’s all about being like everyone else. So I had to have my sports shirt, and there was the zip-up sweatshirt that I wore every day. But when I hit puberty and found music, all of a sudden I wanted to be unique. In high school I did a lot of sewing and thrift-store shopping. My mum sews 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 made Grace Kelly’s dress from the movie Rear Window.

Wow, really?
My mum made me that dress! [Laughs] It was black velvet with a white chiffon skirt. We also made the dress from The Sound Of Music that Julie Andrews wears when she sings I Have Confidence. It was tweed with a drop waist, and I wore it the first time I was ever on stage at the school talent show.

What happened to the 40s dress you wore in the Don’t Speak video?
I got that at a thrift store, like five years before we shot the video. It smelled so bad that I never wore it. It’s beautiful fabric, that really old rayon that just hangs beautifully. But it’s a real mess!

Tell us about you adventures with needles and thread
I used to make a lot of my own stuff, but I could never do zippers very well. When we were on tour right after the first record came out, I made three or four dresses, which were all from the same pattern that I’d created myself. It was kind of a corset-style drop waist with a cheerleader skirt, and it looked like there was a white blouse underneath. I always made them in cartoon-y bright colours like bright reds, blues and yellows. Underneath I wore my boxer shorts and fishnets and Doc Martens. I had my little vibe going on.

Have you ever thought about starting your own clothing line?
I talk about it all the time but it’s hard to do a lot of things well at once. I’m so busy and I have so much passion for what I’m doing. So I think that if I do a clothing line, it has to be like everything else I do, home-grown; it has to be real. I wouldn’t just do it to make money, although I could do that easily. All I would have to do is the say the words “Here’s my accessory line” and it would be nuts. But the thing I love about our fans is that they get inspired and show up to our gigs in home-made gear. That is the coolest thing, I’ll never get sick of that. Our fans inspire me.

Who else inspires you? Let’s play a word-association game with the names of some stylish ladies. Grace Kelly?
Gorgeous.

Stevie Nicks?
I love her. Cool as hell. I relate to her a lot. And there are lots of similarities in the stories of our bands.

Veronica Lake?
I tried to copy her hair in the Hey Baby video!

Debbie Harry?
Me on the last record. I really tried to rip her off hard on that one.

Jean Harlow?
She was dope-ass, she had those skinny eyebrows and attitude. She was way ahead of her time.

Madonna?
I can’t give you one word. I have to give you a long winded explanation of my relationship with her. [Laughs]

Yes, please.
When I was in high school, I was really into ska music. And I was 15 or 16, so there were lots of rules. If something was really popular, you’re like “I’m not into that.” Madonna was huge, but I was really into ska. I was like Madonna? Whatever.
But I think that, secretly, I was interested. I went to her concert in ‘87 at Anaheim Stadium, because I was in love with Tony [Kanal, No Doubt's bass player] and his mum worked for the council and got free tickets. So we went and we kissed in the parking lot and saw the show. It was amazing.
But I was never really a huge fan of hers until recently. I just look at her body of work now, and I have a whole lot of respect for her. I know what it’s like to be a girl in a man’s world. I’ve met her a few times. She is a cool girl. She created this space so that other girls could come after her and make their mark… Madonna did that.

What do you think of Britney Spears and her image?
There’s room for everybody, and there’s always room for pure entertainment. I’m surprised at how fast she’s moved on. I wish that some of the younger artists would realise that it’s OK to hold on to their youth a little longer. It’s like, “Dude, you have so much ahead of you!” But I can’t say anything, I could never imagine myself having commercial success at that age. I would go crazy.
I think when you’re in a band, the cool thing is that you have time to grow. Like I only just started wearing heels and getting more comfortable with my sexual side. Before, my whole vibe was based upon the idea that I wanted to be a guy – but I wanted to wear a lot of make-up. Being a girl in a band means that I want to do my hair and wear cute clothes, but when I get on stage, I want to rock out.

If you hadn’t got into music, would you be a stylist or a make-up artist or something like that?
I was a make-up artist! I worked at a department store at Anaheim Plaza, which was a pretty low-grade mall with dollar stores. It was such a rewarding job to help people feel better about themselves by putting on a little of this and a little of that.
But if I hadn’t gotten into music I don’t think I’d still be working at the mall, I would have completed college. i mean, I’ve learned all the important things I needed because I didn’t want to feel stupid, but I’d love to go back to do something creative, like an art class.

You always look pretty immaculate. Do you ever just kick back in a sweatshirt and no make-up?
Oh, dude, yeah! Of course I do. On tour, I have two outfits that I wear every night on stage. I just rotate the colours. During the day I wear my workout clothes. That’s why I love doing photo shoots and TV appearances, because it’s all about the clothes, and lately I feel like I’ve rediscovered fashion. I went to the fabric store to make a skirt for my sister’s wedding and I freaked out! I was like, “Oh my God, I haven’t been here in so long!” I bought a ton of fabric and had loads of pants made up.

Does Gavin have a favourite outfit?
He has really good taste. He’s influenced me a lot, to grow up a bit with the way I dress. He doesn’t love bright colours, which is everything I am! I suppose that I do wear slightly more conservative things now, or maybe I just don’t go for the really bright colours as much. I have to grow up. I can’t just stay the same forever.

Do you think this new, grown-up outlook on life has influenced your music?
With the last album, Return Of Saturn, I decided I just wanted to get really good at writing. I started keeping a journal, and I’d never done that. I got the lyrics and poems of Joni Mitchell, which are just genius – she has the most beautiful way of putting thoughts down. She really inspired me. And then Gavin told me about Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and I was so inspired by that and by her journals.
But with Rock Steady we wanted it to be a little more free. I tried to make my writing more conversational. I would be inspired by a day. even a moment. And I didn’t labour over it – I tried to write stuff in an afternoon and then go and record it.

How do you think you’ve changed in the years since the band started?
Things have changed. We have fans now, which is amazing because they give you your life, but we’re still rebels at heart. Like I don’t wear anything that anyone tells me to wear. The whole idea of No Doubt is freedom; creating something on your own. To try to get better and grow. And I’m pretty cool now. or at least I hope I am!

Tom Dumont launches more hooks for No Doubt’s Return of Saturn. By Kyle Swenson.

The moment the world got smashed over the head with No Doubt’s “Just a Girl” from 1996’s Tragic Kingdom, it was widely assumed the band was an overnight sensation. Not exactly.

The band formed in 1986, watched their major-label debut album flop in 1992, and logged years of recording an performing before its new wave/reggae/ska sound made a blip on the rock and roll radar.

In fact, as Tragic Kingdom was exploding towards number one on the charts, lead singer Gwen Stefani stated on the band’s Web site: “Last year, we were hanging by a thread. We were ready to quit and save ourselves from becoming a bunch of losers.”

But as unexpected as No Doubt’s success was, the reason for the band’s stardom is obvious. Once you hear a No Doubt song, the razor-sharp hooks are instantly mainlined to your brain, where they play in a constant loop. Return of Saturn [Interscope], is another hit machine–full of fluid ballads and up-tempo pop songs, with flavors of hip-hop, reggae, ska, and new wave.

Although it has big shoes to fill, Saturn should continue the pop revolution started by the 15-million-selling Tragic Kingdom. And No Doubt guitarist Tom Dumont is happy to share his insights on how the band created the super hooks that finally launched them off the ground.

What was your approach to tracking on this album?
A lot of the songs were tracked live – bass, drams, guitar, and a scratch vocal. Then I would go in and redo most of my parts. Sometimes it was really easy and straightforward – we’d get a sound in ten minutes – and other times we would spend all day working on a song and it wouldn’t come together. Having our producer Glen Ballard and engineer Alain Johannes – who is an amazing guitar player – there to bounce ideas off of was really helpful. They would yell out their approval when I was doing something good, and let me know if I was doing something that wasn’t cool. A lot of times, I would completely scrap what we had been rehearsing and make up new parts in the studio.

What would cause you to change a part you had already worked out?
I like the idea of seeing what Gwen and I can create spontaneously. On “Ex-Girlfriend,” for example, I came up with these weird transitions between the verse and chorus on the spot. Because of that, I could step out of the way of the bass line when I needed to and support the vocal. It’s like doing a painting with four other painters and I’m the last one to put my colors on.

Do the parts change again when you play live?
Yeah – recording a song is so different from playing it live. Playing live has always been our strongest point, so it’s important that the songs rock. But that doesn’t mean duplicating the album. It means tweaking things.

Like what?
Well, on “Magic’s in the Makeup” I layered so many guitar parts in the studio that I couldn’t do them all live. I can’t possibly play both acoustic and electric, or do two counterpoint lines at a certain part of the song – I have to find a way to simplify it all into one part. The same thing happened on our last album – “Don’t Speak” had this really lush acoustic guitar, which I could never do live. That song also has a classical-guitar solo, and onstage I would usually play it on an electric with a warm, Santana-style tone. So the song was a little less poppy, and it had a little more edge.

Without the benefit of all those studio layers, is it difficult making a guitar part sound powerful live?
Sometimes it’s hard, but in a live setting you can definitely make it work without having everything going on. If you have the melodic and emotional content there in one form or another, it will still work for the audience. We do have two other guys play live with us, covering horn parts, keyboards, and percussion. They both sing backup vocals, too, so there’s a lot being filled in. I would love to have one more guy onstage to fill up the guitar parts.

Do some songs ever not work?
Sure. We tried to do one of our B-sides on a club tour, and the guitar part was too insane – I couldn’t get it to work live. On the record, a noise gate was triggered to open and close by a metronome. As the gate opened, this echoey guitar would come through that was flanged and mixed with a weird, trippy delay. The part sounded like a sequencer, but I couldn’t replicate the sound live, and everyone was disappointed. I suppose I could have plugged into a digital delay and triggered a noise gate with our drummer’s hi-hat, but I’m not super big into using effects live.

Why not?
I feel it’s better to have a simple, pure guitar tone. We have horns and keyboards so there is a lot going on, and the subtleties of the guitar can get lost if I get too tricky with effects. I use a wah and a couple of other pedals, but 90% of the time it’s just straight electric guitar tones from the amp. I love players who can pull out all the effects and do it really well, like Alex Lifeson and Reeves Gabrels. But for me, it’s pretty much just guitar, wah, and amp.

What about effects in the studio?
I have a lot of pedals, but I didn’t use many on the album. We got some effects without pedals by using compressors in creative ways. In the verses of “Magic’s in the Makeup,” for example, there’s this little guitar line that is super-duper compressed with a ’60s tube compressor. You can hear the note breathing in this really trippy way. We did a similar thing in “Don’t Speak.” On the verses, we set up the compressor so that the harder I plucked, the quieter the note was – which is the reverse of how natural sound works. It forced me to play very gently. As soon as I plucked hard, the compressor would just close down the note and suck it in.

Is there a particular way you set up your amp?
On my Bandmaster I usually set the gain at 6 or 7, and the master at 2 or 3 so there’s a bit of grit to the tone. If I dig in and play hard, it breaks up and distorts, and if I back off and play gently, it cleans up. I like that middle ground. On my Soldano – which has overdrive for days – I have the gain at 3 or 4 and the master volume at 3. That saturated overdrive is really cool, but for the most part, I need something more subtle.

So you get most of your distortion from your amps?
Yeah – almost never from a pedal. I’m one of those purists. If one amp can’t do it, I’ll find another that can. The Fender Pro Junior is so cool. I can crank it to 8 and it overdrives perfectly. The Matchless, the Fender Bandmaster, and the Vox AC30 can do it, too. I’ve noticed that if you record with too much of that saturated overdrive, it actually makes the guitar tone sound smaller. The best kind of overdrive is like what you hear on an old AC/DC album – just an SG plugged into a Marshall head.

How did you record the acoustic intro in “Magic’s in the Makeup”?
I played this arpeggiated part once with a standard acoustic guitar, and then I doubled the part with a guitar strung with the octave strings of a 12-string. It’s a strange and beautiful sound. It’s like playing the part on a 12-string, but something about separating them into different tracks gives all this definition and sparkle to the plucked lines. We did the same thing on “Suspension Without Suspense.” Gwen decided to string one of her guitars that way, too, because it sounds so pretty.

What does Gwen’s guitar playing bring to the songwriting process?
She adds a really cool chemistry. She’s not as concerned with music theory as I am, so she comes up with progressions I would never write, and I love that.

There aren’t many guitar solos on Return of Saturn.
Going into it, I had this philosophy that I was going to try to make an album with no solos on it. I’m into this minimalist thing. It’s not that I’m against solos, but I guess because of my heavy metal past, I’ve been toning down that side of my playing for years. It doesn’t always fit stylistically. On the last album, there are a couple of solos where I kind of went off. This time I didn’t want to go, “Okay, time for the guitar solo.” I wanted to put in solos where they would really help the song.

How do you compose your solos?
The way I’ve always done solos is to improvise maybe five takes, and then listen to them and see if I can make a composite. I might say, “Man, I love the first bar of the first take, and the fourth bar of the second take. Let’s edit them into a single take.” Sometimes we would splice a solo together, and then I’d learn it and replay it in one take. But Pro Tools comps work great. It doesn’t sound like there’s any editing going on. “Magic’s in the Makeup” has a composite of two different solos and it’s pretty seamless.

How did you record that solo?
It was with the Guild Polara. The high end of that guitar is brilliant, and the low end is full. I played through my Fender Bandmaster head and a Matchless 2×10 cabinet. The solo is kind of like “Freebird” – there’s a bit of a cheese element to it, but I think it still works melodically within the song.

How did you record the album’s first single, “Ex-Girlfriend”?
That was the last song we wrote for the record, and the process was different from how we tracked the other songs. Most of the record was written on acoustic guitar, sitting in a room with Gwen and a tape recorder. It was really organic. But “Ex-Girlfriend” was different. We wanted to do a reggae-flavored song, and Gwen had a Tricky CD, so we found a song on there that had a cool beat. I recorded the groove into Steinberg Cubase [hard-disk recording software], and replicated the beat using drum samples. That’s how Dr. Dre makes records – he goes to old soul or funk records to find grooves. All the drum loops in there are Adrian [Young] playing drums through all kinds of weird guitar stomp-boxes strung together to create these trippy filter effects. For the acoustic part, Gwen just sang the line to me. I had my acoustic guitar miked with a Shure SM57 routed through an Avalon VT737 tube preamp. I recorded two tracks – one is a harmony to the other.

How did you get that nasty tremolo on “Bathwater”?
I played a hollowbody Guild Starfire III through my Fender Bandmaster with the Matchless cabinet. I cranked the gain to 8, and used the tremolo on the amp. I love that tone. I’ve listened to a fair amount of Reverend Horton Heat and I was trying to cop that attitude. I just wanted a real gritty, tremoloed, pseudo-rockabilly deal.

Pick a favorite guitar part on the album and tell me how you recorded it.
The song “Marry Me” has a couple of my favorite parts. There’s one electric part and one acoustic. The acoustic is an old ’40s Harmony. It comes out sounding pretty full-bodied on the record, but if you heard the guitar acoustically, it sounds kind of nasty and nasal. The acoustic lines were reminiscent of that Lauryn Hill song with Carlos Santana playing guitar ["To Zion" from The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill]. I was trying to get that vibe.

I recorded the electric part at the rehearsal studio when we were making demos. We used [Line 6%1 Amp Farm. That plug-in is amazing - it's really frightening. I just sat with the CryBaby set at a static point and improvised rhythms. It was one of those days I didn't feel like being there, so I took off and got a sandwich. I said to the producer. "Just edit together whatever you like out of my part." I came back and he had made this great little loop for the song. I love that I can filter my improvisations through the producer's sensibility, and he'll pick out what sounds good to him and make the loop. On one hand, it's a really lazy way to do a guitar part, but it's also a really cool way to collaborate.

How was recording this album different from the Tragic Kingdom sessions?
On the Tragic Kingdom album, we doubled so many guitar parts. It's a very dense record. On this record, I wanted the guitars to be more sparse. If I could get away with one guitar part for the song, I would.

The song "New" contains a signature No Doubt riff, similar to "Just a Girl" from the last album.
That song was recorded before the rest of the record, for the Go soundtrack. I used that Guild Polara, and we rented a Marshall and a Soldano, and the engineer blended the two to get the tone. The part is also doubled by a fat analog synth. The idea was to create something somewhere between Devo and the Cars - an angular, jagged line that percolates along. And there's this weird counterpoint - one line is an F [sharp] minor scale, going up F [sharp], G [sharp], A, B, and the alternating part goes down chromatically, starting with F [sharp].

What guitar players amaze you?
Greg Brown, who was on the first two Cake albums. We went on tour with them for a little while and he was my hero, because he played this Guild hollowbody through a 2×10 Silvertone amp with no effects. We were playing arenas and amphitheaters and he just plugged in – it was all coming from his fingers. He comes from a country style that’s kind of foreign to me. That’s why it dazzled me, because I grew up with heavy metal and hard rock. Before Greg, it was Alex Lifeson, Ritchie Blackmore, and Tony Iommi.

How would you advise someone to become a good rhythm player?
You definitely have to lock in your rhythm somewhere between the kick and the snare – the key is to find some kind of synchronization. You also have to listen to what the vocal is doing and support it. There were times on past albums where I played parts that walked all over the bass and vocal, and that’s not an effective way to drive a song. I love being aware of what everyone else is doing and finding parts that help lock down the groove. It’s all about supporting the song, and I find it’s more fun to work with the band.”

Space Gear

Guitars: Dumont says he has “a zillion” Hamers, including a Standard, Newport, and Eclipse 12-string electric. He also owns a Fender Jaguar, a Guild Polara and Starfire III, and a Rickenbacker 12-string electric.

Amps: Fender Pro Junior and Bandmaster, Matchless DC-30 and Clubman 35, Vox AC30, Soldano SLO100 head with a Fender Tonemaster cabinet, Marshall MS-4 Micro Stack, and Fender Mini-Twin.

Effects: Dunlop CryBaby and Uni-Vibe, MXR Phase 90 and flanger, Danelectro Dan-Echo.

Strings: Ernie Ball .010s.

Transcription source: http://www.accessmylibrary.com

No Doubt’s Gwen Stefani’s Happy Sound Delights Millions of Young Fans

Halfway through No Doubt’s feminist-lite hit “Just a Girl,” vocalist Gwen Stefani invites the boys in the Worcester Centrum audience to sing along: “I’m just a girl… I’m just a girl in the world.”

The boys comply, so Stefani gloats – “Haa-ha!”

“Now what about the girls? What about all the cute, sweet, innocent, sexy girls?” she asks. Her voice is sugary and almost Betty Boop. “Okay, girls, ready? It goes like this: `{Expletive} you, I’m a girl!’ ” The filled-to-capacity arena explodes with shrieks and giggles. The girls are self-conscious and red-faced as they repeat after Stefani, but they’re also as defiant as you can be when you’re 12 years old and have come to your first-ever concert with your mom.

So what if the editors of Rolling Stone voted No Doubt the third-worst band of 1996? Does it really matter if its music has been dismissed as bubble gum pop and its frontwoman is regarded in many quarters as a videogenic ditz? No Doubt’s third album, “Tragic Kingdom,” has sold 7 million copies, making it one of last year’s top sellers. With only brief breaks, the band has been touring for 2 1/2 years, graduating from opening act to headliner, from the 5,500-seat Patriot Center for its last local appearance in December to the 25,000-seat Nissan Pavilion, where it performs June 18.

All that touring has helped raise the band’s profile. So has incessant MTV exposure and magazine covers displaying sultry photographs of Stefani. As the band becomes more successful, its audience keeps getting younger. Now thousands of prepubescent and teenage girls want to be like Gwen. They dress like her, copycatting her hair, her makeup and the shiny Indian bindi that dots the center of her forehead. Wherever she goes, Stefani is followed by girls who scream and swoon as if the year is 1964 and she’s the Beatles.

Stefani, 27, is a glamour puss, but she is also a product of the Anaheim, Calif., punk and ska scene that spawned No Doubt. She performs in baggy men’s tuxedo pants and clunky Doc Martens; her ankles are constantly bruised because she cavorts around stage in such heavy boots. In the “Trapped in a Box” video, she crowd-surfs.

One of punk’s enduring legacies is its anti-star democratic ethic, and the teenage girls who adore Stefani do so because she acts like them. She talks like them. She still lives at home with her parents. Stefani has ordinary interests – makeup, boyfriends, pizza – and ordinary concerns, such as the size of her rear end.

“Gwen is someone that girls can look up to and feel like they know,” says No Doubt bassist Tony Kanal. “She is very Everygirl.” Even now, as Stefani lives the charmed life of a pop music celebrity – she’s dating a rock star, Bush vocalist Gavin Rossdale, and recently acquired an agent to handle film offers – she still clings to ordinary aspirations.

Again and again, she insists that more than anything else, she wants a family. “All I wanted to ever do was get married and have babies, have a house,” she says. “So it’s weird that I’m in a rock group.” The “just regular folks” pop icon may be a cliche, but Stefani seems genuinely down-to-earth.

A few hours before the Worcester show, she passes the time in the dressing room reserved for opening act the Vandals, pals from back home in Anaheim. She’s wearing a white ski cap, a scruffy long skirt and a scruffier striped sweater. Everyone is cutting up about diarrhea, one of touring’s less appealing perks. Stefani pulls off the ski cap and shakes loose her dirty, mussed hair. Then she pulls a bobby-pinned clump to her face and sniffs. She grimaces. “It smells like my dog.”

A ‘Loser Band’

The pop-music universe has become so fragmented and fickle that Stefani’s ascendancy should not be interpreted as meaning too much. But it’s safe to assume that the perennial PMS of Alanis Morissette and other angry white females has lost some of its cachet. Stefani co-wrote most of the songs on “Tragic Kingdom,” much of which is about the breakup of her relationship with bandmate Kanal. But unlike Morissette, Liz Phair, PJ Harvey and the entire riot-grrl set, Stefani keeps her fists unclenched.

When she came up with the lyrics to “Happy Now?” (“You had the best/ But you gave her up/ ‘Cause dependency might interrupt”), she called Kanal and recited them for him. “You break up with your boyfriend that you’ve been with for almost eight years, and you’re writing about him, and he’s in your group and he’s going to play the song that’s about him,” she says. “And then you travel with him on a bus 24 hours a day. It’s a really weird situation, but we’ve made it work.”

Kanal has complained that whenever the band plays the breaking-up ballad “Don’t Speak,” he feels as if everyone in the audience is staring at him. “He was the bad guy in everybody’s eyes, and I was the victim,” says Stefani, “which is not fair.” Stefani thinks that people read too much into her lyrics.

For one thing, she’s matured since the breakup, which took place three years ago. “I was a different person then. In that kind of situation, you are totally insecure, you totally are a frightened female,” she says. “You don’t know what to do with yourself, and you just feel like you have no purpose.”

But there’s something else: Stefani didn’t anticipate just how strange it would feel to publicly relive the pain of something so personal. “When the record came out, it was senseless to deny the whole relationship thing, because almost all the songs were about that,” she says. “Later, we started thinking maybe we should have been more quiet about it. But how could we know the band was going to get big?”

No Doubt started out 10 years ago as a bunch of high-school friends who were into the same music: “Two-tone” British groups like Madness, the Specials and The Selecter that revived Jamaican ska during the late ’70s and early ’80s.

At that point, No Doubt included Stefani’s older brother, Eric. (He has since left the band, but not before co-writing many of the songs on “Tragic Kingdom.”) Half the band worked at the local Dairy Queen. “The managers would leave and we’d all eat,” Stefani says. “But I hated it. I got so fat when I worked there. And the benches had wood slabs, and these bars. I had to scrub them with a toothbrush to get the fudge off.”

Within a year, the band’s original vocalist committed suicide. The replacement left to support his pregnant girlfriend. Stefani, who had grown up singing along to “Annie” and “The Sound of Music” soundtracks and sang backup for the band, became the lead singer by default. She was 17.

For the first few years, No Doubt struggled like hundreds of other obscure bands. It evolved from playing ska covers to bouncy, quirky pop that revisits ’80s new wave. In 1991, it was signed by Interscope Records, but the debut album flopped. The band put out a second CD itself, recording half of it in a studio Eric Stefani built in his garage. Over the course of a decade, it grew accustomed to being a “loser band.”

The success of “Tragic Kingdom,” whose title refers to another Anaheim attraction, has taken some getting used to. Part of the problem is that both the media and the band’s audiences are fascinated with Stefani, but less so with the rest of the band – Kanal, guitarist Tom Dumont and drummer Adrian Young. “At certain interviews, people were really rude to them,” Stefani says. Photographers would crop band pictures to delete everyone but the lead singer. Magazines sell better if their covers are adorned with a lone attractive female rather than an entire band.

“At this point, it’s something that the rest of us have accepted,” says Kanal, “whereas when it first happened, the impact was pretty awful. We kind of expected it – the lead singer always gets a lot of attention and a female always gets a lot of attention – but we didn’t expect it to be as intense as it was.” Being the only female band member has its difficulties, such as the awkwardness of changing in coed dressing rooms – “Okay guys! Turn around!” But there are other tensions that set Stefani apart from her bandmates, and they have intensified with No Doubt’s increasing popularity.

“They’ve never been like typical rock guys before, but this tour seems a little different because there are just so many girls,” says Stefani. “I think there’s a fairy princess that goes around and picks all the big-breasted girls and brings them backstage. Then I’m expected to want to hang out with them, and I’m just like, uch.”

Even when she complains, Stefani sounds relentlessly cheerful. “I’m like, where do I fit into this? . . . I’ll just stay in my dressing room and be depressed and not have any friends. That’s like the newest problem, but I think I’m over it. I was feeling really upset about it before I got my period, but I feel better now.”

The sexy-frontwoman gig comes with its own set of occupational hazards. Before No Doubt appeared on the Grammys last winter, Stefani spent weeks fretting about the pounds she had put on during the band’s European tour. “I finally said . . . ‘I don’t care. This is me, and I’m just going to have fun.’ I felt like I looked fine, but then my mom and some other people told me that on KROQ, which is the big station at home, they were saying that I looked fat. On the radio! Like, how sad is that? “You know, it’s confusing for a girl because you want to feel sexy, you want to look sexy,” she says. “But it’s not the most important thing. The most important thing is that people take you halfway seriously as a human.”

Thank Heaven for Little Girls

Meet ‘n’ greet gantlets follow nearly every No Doubt show. After the Worcester set, Stefani sneaks away for a quick workout – “the torture of my life” – and the rest of the band begins the first session without her. Everyone keeps asking when Gwen will arrive, and when she finally does, a squealfest ensues. One girl rushes over. “Can I, like, hug you? Stefani smiles. “Uh, yeah.”

“Gwen, you’re my favorite person in the whole world.” “Gwen, can you sign my T-shirt?” “Gwen, I think you are soooo beautiful.” Stefani’s littlest fans can’t really articulate why they are so entranced with her. A slight girl swimming in an oversize No Doubt tank top explains that she likes Gwen because she has posters of Gwen in her room. Not long ago, says Stefani, “this little tiny girl” asked if she could sit on her lap. Stefani acquiesced, and the girl sat there, deliriously happy, and then burst into tears.

Once No Doubt became the darlings of MTV last year, Stefani couldn’t go to the grocery store anymore. “I end up doing an autograph signing,” she says. “This is fun, you know, but not when you’re, like, buying tampons.”

Every time Stefani returns to her parents’ house in Anaheim, word gets out, and a parade of fathers brings their daughters by with cameras and pen and paper for autographs. “I call them trick-or-treaters. I don’t open the door anymore and I can’t answer my parents’ phone,” she says.

“It really blows my mind that I could be a role model. It’s a little scary because you think, ‘I just am myself, I don’t have any answers to any problems.’ ” But, in a way, Stefani thinks she sets a good example. Because she grew up in a conservative Catholic family, she explains, she’s not likely to emulate the aggressive professional sexiness of performers like Madonna. “I just never felt the need as far as talking about my sexuality, feeling sexy, or wanted to express sex in any way,” she says. “I would be too embarrassed. It always seemed like such a private thing to me.”

Every night, when young girls bring Stefani presents and notes, she marvels about how sweet they are. “Then I feel really guilty because I might say the F-word during the show. “But I don’t think it’s so bad because . . . I’m saying it for a purpose,” she says. “The reason that I’m saying it is to say, ‘Do what you want, no matter what sex you are.’ I think that’s probably not so bad for a little girl to learn.” She giggles.