Gwen Stefani

Scared solo

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

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

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

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

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

Sort of.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You smell fine.
Just stay over there dude.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What was Scorsese like?
Magical.

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

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

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

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

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

Gwen Stefani blows our minds once again. By Peter Davis, Photographs by Richard Phibbs.

It’s Gwen Stefani’s 33rd birthday, and the scene in No Doubt’s dressing room at an auditorium in downtown Los Angeles is cluttered and chaotic. Stefani’s operatic voice booms from the sound check as she belts out the song “Bathwater.” Five large pizza boxes and cases of Coca Cola, Diet Coke and bottled water are stacked near an enormous bouquet of birthday flowers. Drummer Adrian Young’s wife, Nina, strolls by cuddling their toddler son, who has been dressed in a black jumpsuit with skull-and-crossbones buttons. Techies race back and forth, fueled by venti lattes from Starbucks.

“I’m burnt, dude,” says Stefani, who wed Bush lead singer Gavin Rossdale in September, as a blue-haired assistant hands her a cappuccinos. Her sweet voice has a Southern California sufer-girl twang. “I had 10 days to plan my wedding, and now I’m going on tour,” she says. “I have so much stuff going on. In January I’m taking the month off. Gavin and I, we don’t know what we’re gonna do-just hang out and not talk to anybody.”

Sporting a rehearsal outfit of Ron Herman and a blue-and-white mesh tank top, with her long, white-blond hair framing her face, Stefani is just as beautiful as she looked in the photographs of her in her pale-pink couture John Galliano wedding dress. Stefani and Rossdale actually tied the knot twice. The first ceremony, performed by the Church of England, was held on September 14 in London, where the “I dos” were said in front of 130 people-family members and friends like Stefani’s ex, 32-year-old No Doubt bassist Tony Kanal. After a honeymoon on the Italian island of Capri, the pair flew back to Los Angeles, where they repeated their vows privately for a Catholic priest and the couple’s parents. Finally, on September 28, Jimmy Iovine, chairman of No Doubt’s label Interscope, gave the newlyweds the ultimate present: a lavish, enormous wedding celebration at his Beverly Hills home, with guests like Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. “I didn’t know what level it was going to be at,” Stefani gushes, widening her brown eyes. “It was beyond! It was the most spectacular event I’ve ever been to. Everyone’s mouth was on the floor. I didn’t think I”d be emotional the second time around, but I was.”

Stefani’s blonde, bottle-rocket looks have landed her in magazines as different as Vogue and Vibe-proof that the singer transcends all age and racial boundaries. Her ability to transform and reinvent her public persona are sure to give her a career trajectory like another blond pop dynamo, Madonna. Part of her enduring appeal is her daring fashion sense. Raised in a conservative Catholic household in Anaheim, California (home of Disneyland), she has a look that is part cartoon, part Latina home girl. From bindis to braces to Jean Harlow hairdos, Stefani’s changing looks have kept the Gwen-abes busy trying to re-create her style. With help from her mother and friends, she has always designer her own clothes and stage costumes, so it’s only natural that one day she would start her own clothing company. With her business partner, Andrea Lieberman, Stefani is launching Lamb, an edgy fashion line that will hit stores in Fall 2003. The line’s name comes from her moniker for her dog. “‘Lamb’ is anything cute singer explains. “It’s basically the clothes I wear. I want it to be my style, so I can wear them. I don’t know what it will evolve into. I don’t know if people will like it nor not. I don’t know anything about fashion, I’m still learning. It’s just another creative outlet for me to do, and it’s exciting.”

Armies of Gwen clones crowd every No Doubt concert, but Stefani says she is still surprised that she is a role model. “I never thought I would have an impact,” she claims. “I was a really passive person growing up. I had a really creative, talented, hyperactive older brother. I’d do whatever he said; I liked what he liked. Anything he did, I did.” This brother, Eric, started No Doubt in 1986 with singer John Spence, and 17-year-old Gwen provided back-up vocals. Then Spence killed himself with a gun in a public park in 1987. With Gwen stepping in as lead singer, the band (which at the time included Kanal on bass, Tom Dumont on guitar and Adrian Young on drums) recorded Tragic Kingdom in 1995. The record sold 14 million copies (Eric Stefani, who dropped out of the group seven years ago, is now an artist and a contributor to The Simpsons.) Gwen became an instant MTV superstar. “After living at home with my parents and going to college and making this record that I thought no one would ever hear, it was like, ‘Who am I? What the hell in happening?’”

As a teen, Stefani didn’t find many women to look up to in rock music. “I remember in high school, I couldn’t like Madonna,” she admits with deadpan seriousness. “It was high school. There were rules. I was into ska and rockabilly- bands like Fishbone and Madness. It wasn’t until later that I discovered Debbie Harry, who was everything I loved. She was glamorous,and she got up on stage and she rocked. Now, of course, as you get older, you see someone like Madonna, who has a career that lasts and keeps people interested so long, and I have a lot of respect for her.” Stefani complains that when she first started there was little room for women in the mail-dominated world of bands. “Girls were like, ‘What does she think she’s doing up there?’-that kind of attitude. Then it started to turn around to, ‘She’s me. She’s representing me.’ I think it’s amazing to be in a band as a girl. Girls come to the concerts, and they feel like they can relate to you-to the lyrics, or maybe they just like the way I do my hair. It’s really cool that I can do that for them. I love it.”

These days, all anyone wants to talk about is her love life, which has been followed by fans of No Doubt’s pop-ska music for years. Her breakup with Kanal in 1994 inspired the hit ‘Ex Girlfriend.” She says the ballad “A Simple Kind of Life” (from No Doubt’s sophomore album, 1999’s Return of Saturn) – with lyrics like, “And all I needed was a simple man/ So I could be a wife”-has “a lot to do with Gavin.” Today, on her birthday, Stefani reports that she is more mature and ready to start a family. “I want to be a grandma,” she confesses, smiling. “I love my 30s so far. Of course, I’m really vain, like we all are, and I’m probably more vain because I’m being looked at all the time and judged. I”m sure in a couple of days I’ll look in the mirror and go, ‘Oh, my God! Look at that and that and that.’ But turning 30 has been so cool. I just want to live life.”

During the making of Return of Saturn, Stefani was in a deep-blue funk. “I was lost,” she recalls, staring off into space. “The making of that record was a growing phase. You can hear it in the songs. I didn’t know how to write songs when I did Tragic Kingdom. I kind of figured it out. I really wanted to be a good songwriter. I wrote in my journal and cried. Ugggh! It was such a serious mood. You can see it in my style. I had pink hair, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I was turning 30 and going through a weird phase.”

Stefani’s current ebullient state of mind is evident on the band’s latest disc, the up-beat Rock Steady. “There’s a real freshness to [the album], because nothing was planned,” she says. “It was like, be fun – write a song about, whatever, how cute your boyfriend is.” Much of Rock Steady was recorded in Port Antonio, Jamaica, and boasts co-producers and co-writers like Sly and Robbie, Prince, William Orbit, the Neptunes, Rick Ocasek, Nellee Hooper and Dave Stewart. “We had all these different energies,” she says. “When you do a record with all different people, you have to bring it together phonetically. We had no game plan, but everything fell into place.”

The list of artists Stefani has collaborated with is also impressive. She’s scored hit with Eve on “Let Me Blow Ya Mind” and Moby on “South Side.” “Working with Gwen was wonderful,” Moby recalls. “When she came into the studio, I expected her to be a lager-than-life rock star, but she was so sweet and down-to-earth. It was the same when we worked on the “South Side” video. She has this very focused work ethic that is impressive, and she’s a lot of fun to be around.”

Stefani returns the love. “I’m so lucky people ask me,” she says. “The song with Eve had the most impact on me. I’d never worked with a rapper. Doing the video, it was like stepping into a whole other world. I love the idea of different worlds coming together. It was what ska was all about in the first place. And I got exposed to a whole other audience. Even just walking around New York, people who I didn’t think would know who I am were like, ‘Hey, what’s up?’”

On the top of Stefani’s with list for future collaborators is Dr. Dre. “He’s on my label, so I told them, if he ever calls or wants me for anything, I’ll be there!” Although Stefani and Rossdale listen and critique each other’s work, they have yet to cut a track together. “We’ve never been creative as a team like that. I would love to, but I feel shy about it somehow. It’s the one thing we haven’t done together.”

After No Doubt’s tour ends in November, Stefani and the band are going to lay low. “We don’t really have any plans. We’ll do whatever feels right at the time. Right no, I don’t think anyone feels inspired to write a record.” The main thing on Stefani’s mind at the moment is finishing up today’s sound check so she can hightail it home to hubby Rossdale, who is cooking a special birthday dinner. No Doubt will soon be on the road, playing big stadiums with bands like Garbage and even opening a few dates for the Rolling Stones.

Stefani finishes her cappuccino and sighs. “Being a performer and being on tour is really repetitive,” she says, rolling her eyes. “It’s not very creative. I really enjoy writing a record more than touring. Performing is fun, but it’s like, hey, so is eating ice cream. You don’t want to do it every minute of your life. It’s like, okay, something else now, please.”

Transcribed by Tabitha for No Doubt Scrapbook. What a star!

Hella Great

With a new baby, an impending wedding and a breakthrough hit single – “Hella Good” – it’s no wonder the members of No Doubt are feeling fine in the summertime. By: Cara Lynn Shultz

The members of No Doubt are screaming for their lives. They’ve been electrocuted, blasted with fire, and now they’re plummeting off the side of a 10-story building. At the last minute they’re whisked to safety by… Spider-Man? That’s right. Singer Gwen Stefani, 32, bassist Tony Kanal, 31, and guitarist Tom Dumont, 34, are spending a rare free afternoon at Universal’s Islands of Adventure in Orlando, cramming eight rides – including the virtual reality Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man – into a 90-minute field trip. (Drummer Adrian Young, 32, is off playing golf.) After going on one stomach-churning roller coaster twice, Tom asks the operator, “Don’t you have any Snow White rides?” Everyone laughs, but he’s got a point – they could use a break.

Since forming in California’s Orange County in 1986, No Doubt has ridden a career roller coaster that challenges even Universal’s wildest ride. There’s been the slow build to the top (hitting a peak with 1995’s multiplatinum Tragic Kingdom) and the sudden drop (2000’s critically acclaimed but commercially weak Return of Saturn), but now the band has thrown everyone – including its members – for a loop with its fifth record, Rock Steady. A juggernaut of New Wave, Jamaican dance hall and rock, the disc charmed critics and courted a new legion of fans with hit singles like “Hella Good” and “Hey Baby.” On the personal front, two of the tightly knit foursome have had or will experience life-changing events: This past February, Adrian’s wife, Nina, gave birth to a son, Mason. And in September, Gwen and her longtime boyfriend, Bush singer Gavin Rossdale, are set to marry.

TEEN PEOPLE: Will your wedding be like the one you dreamed of having when you were a teen?
GWEN STEFANI: In high school you’re really detailed, but now – I have no time to think about the candy almonds on the table. We’re getting married in London, and Gavin is taking all the wedding-planner meetings without me because I haven’t been able to be with him.

TP: What have you decided on so far?
GS: We’re getting married in the Church of England by a priest who was Gavin’s religious-studies teacher. But we are going to get blessed by a Catholic priest.

TP: Where does religion fit into your life?
GS: As a teen I was a Catholic girl from a really great family. I wasn’t having sex – that wasn’t the way I was brought up. And I pray, because if you take the time out to be thankful, it calms you down. My mom tells me, “Pray and you find peace.”

TP: Do you want to be a mom?
GS: I feel very romantic about the idea because I think Gavin’s going to be the most incredible dad. I’m excited about seeing him as a husband first. But if I got pregnant tomorrow I’d be like, “Yeeaahh!”

TP: How did you learn to trust each other – especially given the careers that you both have?
GS: Yeah, all those boy fans that I just want to get with! [Laughs] It doesn’t matter who you are – if I worked in the same McDonald’s as Gavin, and he worked at the fryer, there are going to be trust issues. Is he flirting with the girl behind the French fries? But we’ve been able to trust each other. I mean, we’re going to marry each other!

By now, Gwen’s pre-Gavin romantic history is a familiar tale: Girl meets boy (Tony Kanal), girl loses boy (in 1994), girl and boy are in a rock band and become superstars. OK, maybe it’s not that common a tale, but Gwen and Tony’s whirlwind romance was the stuff that songs are made of – hence the most poignant tune from Tragic Kingdom, “Don’t Speak.” Gwen wrote the heart-wrenching ballad after Tony severed their relationship and her brother Eric, the band’s keyboardist and songwriter, left the group to pursue a career in computer animation. (Eric worked on TV’s The Simpsons for two years). “Before that, I was a really passive person,” says Gwen. “My brother – I was his puppet. He would just kick me around, like ‘Gwen! Come in here [and sing for us]!’ When he left I had to start writing songs. Then Tony breaks up with me.

“I know it sounds cheesy,” she continues, “But I found out everything about me through those songs. 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. It was like, ‘I’m Gwen. Do you know who Gwen is? Gwen loves Tony.’”

TP: What were you like as a teenager?
GS: I was rebellious in the sense that I wasn’t into popular music. It was like, “I’m into ska, nobody knows what it is. I’m cool; you’re not.” I wasn’t a cheerleader, never had a lot of girlfriends – just one best girlfriend.

TP: Mostly you hung out with the boys in No Doubt. What do you cherish about each?
GS: Adrian is the punker. If Adrian wasn’t in the band, we could go way too far into cheesy. Tom is a really lovable person. Tony cares about everyone. I am so lame at practical stuff, like frequent flier miles, so Tony made a card with all my numbers on it and stuck it in my wallet.

TP: You’re such a style icon. Were you into fashion in high school?
GS: I was chubby, so I joined the swim team because I wanted to get skinny. I’d wear things that covered up what I didn’t like about myself, like baggy pajama pants because I liked the old-men prints. And in Orange County I was surrounded by gangs like the Chola girls who wore Dickies, tank tops and tennis shoes. The gang thing is so sad, but those girls had wicked style.

TP: Word is you’re going to start your own clothing line. True?
GS: I figure that since Andrea [her stylist] and I already design my own stuff, we might as well make a line out of it. But it won’t be out for another year.

Yep, she’s got style. That along with her dramatic, Every-girl lyrics led to the boys getting left in the dust when the band first kicked down the door to fame. It’s easy to understand why: Nearly everyone who comes in contact with Gwen falls in love. “She is the sweetest person,” says Eve, who collaborated with Gwen last year on the hit “Let Me Blow Ya Mind.” “She sent me an earring that says ‘Eve’ with a heart and a gold chain with a paw print.” (Gwen also adores her fellow blonde superstar: “I had never worked with a girl before – let alone a rapper,” she says, “but Eve’s fantastic.”) Moby, who has also worked with Gwen (on his 2000 hit “South Side”) agrees: “I was expecting this larger-than-life rock star, but Gwen was so nice and down-to-earth.”

Meanwhile, No Doubt’s fans – particularly the female ones – have little trouble focusing on Tom, Tony and Adrian. At their sold-out show in Orlando, Adrian stepped onstage clad only in boxer shorts. “Take it off!” screamed a girl. He smiled, but kept his undies on. “I used to be a hard-core partyer,” says No Doubt’s resident nudist (he flashes his behind in the “Hella Good” video). “But Mason needs me. I am more cautious about everything now.”

So is Tom – particularly about the press. After one magazine article mentioned that his bandmates like to call him “the douche” when he drinks, he now faces the unfortunate stigma of being labeled some kind of booze hound. “I don’t like giving the impression that I’m a drunk,” says Tom. And he’s not: Instead of doing shooters at a bar, you’re more likely to find him surfing or hanging out with his girlfriend, Mieke, whom he met at an MTV party last year. “I know a good thing when I see it,” says Tom.

Tony’s still waiting to spot his good thing, but he’s in no rush to settle down. The most business-minded member of the band (he used to be its manager), he puts No Doubt first, his personal life second. “I think it would be very hard for someone to put up with me,” says Tony. “But when I find the right person, it’s gonna be all good.”

He may have more time to look. With half the band settling down, they hint that this could be their last extensive tour. “I’m not going to live a life where I am gone all the time from my kid and my wife,” says Adrian. “But I don’t know if I will be faced with a decision to make.” Instead, he employs the same one-day-at-a-time attitude that has always kept No Doubt going. “I don’t know if we will be together in 10 years or even next year,” says Tom. “We just take it as it comes, and that’s the best way to keep it going.”

And for now, it’s going hella great.

Hip chick and No Doubt’s front woman Gwen Stefani gives us the lowdown on music, marriage and what it takes to get the flattest stomach in pop.

Who didn’t have Hey Baby stuck in their head for, like, weeks? No Doubt’s number two smash (their first biggie since 1997’s Don’t Speak) is so hip-swingingly addictive that it’s still being played like crazy on the radio. And as for Gwen Stefani’s smash collaboration with Eve (Let Me Blow Your Mind), well, it just goes to show she’s one of the hottest divas around. With bags of talent, a shiny, new ghetto fabulous look and fiancé (she’s getting spliced to Bush lead singer Gavin Rossdale), she’s poised to take on the world, despite her protests that she’s just “a normal girl from Orange County.”

To kick off, let’s talk about the new album Rock Steady. Do you think it’s the kind of record people want to hear right now?
“Well, I think we were just in a really good mood this time around. And the mood we were into was something that you could dance to, a little sexier, a little Jamaican dancehall-ish. So it was just a fun record to make, and the chemistry as far as the band goes, couldn’t be better. Although I had a fight with Tony [Kanal, No Doubt's bass player] yesterday. Just a little one – we made up afterwards.”

Why did you fight?
“Cos we were exhausted and had a rehearsal at 10pm after all day working, after working for seven days straight! Time zones and all that. But we’re doing awesome.”

And the new sound surely coincides with the new following you’ll have since working with rap artist Eve?
“It’s weird how it’s such a coincidence, cos the Eve thing was so separate from what we were gonna do on the album. Except maybe for working with Dre [who produced Let Me Blow Ya Mind] where, production-wise, I tried a couple of things with my voice, cos he really worked me in that studio! But the thing was fun cos it was like a cultural collision that turned out great.”

How do the other guys in the band feel about you doing solo work?
“They were the ones who said, ‘Do the Eve thing’! We’re best friends, so if they see me do stuff and, not only that, be successful, they’re really happy for me. We’ve been through so much together and we’ve made so many commitments to each other. It’s weird how we don’t realise it at the time but No Doubt was always number one, and the girlfriends and boyfriends came second. Now the first one to get married is Adrian [Young, drums]. And I’ve got engaged. I don’t know if you heard?”

Of course we’ve heard!
“It seems everybody knows, which is, like, so weird. But I’m the second one to go and it’s obviously going to change things for the band cos the band is like we’re married to each other, y’know?”

Did Gavin’s proposal come as a surprise?
“Well, no. I think we always wanted to get married. The idea of going out with each other was that we were gonna have a family together at some point, but there was always distractions with work and living in two different countries. But we’re very excited it’s got to this point. It’s been a long journey and hard work, but it’s been totally worth it. I feel so different! I didn’t know it was going to feel like such a relief, y’know?”

Have you set a date?
“No. I wanna do it this year and so does he. But we both have records out and it’s going to be difficult. But you know, it’ll probably be over here somewhere. [Rumour has it they may wed on London's Primrose Hill!] One thing I do know is that your wedding is either big or small – you can’t have a medium sized one.”

Which way are you veering at the moment?
“Probably big – there are too many people I wanna share it with. It’s funny, but last year was a great year for us, and people that I’ve talked to are really into the vibe. And to go back to your first question – this record is definitely a good diversion to life. It’s not saving the world, but it’s a throw-it-on party record. The band’s always been about fun, y’know?”

But you lyrics have always been quite heart-on-sleeve. Does it feel weird having people know so much about you?
“Well, when I first started writing on Tragic Kingdom [the 1997 album], I went out with Tony for eight years, then he split up with me and I had this story to tell. I never thought anyone would actually hear it! Then, for two and a half years, everyone asked about these lyrics and us. It was very exposed and we really used our sense of humour to get through it. But I try not to censor myself. I’m not writing about anything weird. I’m just a normal girl from Orange County. I have nothing to hide – I’m trying to be a good person!”

Do you enjoy being a style icon?
“It’s cool! I always made my own clothes and did my own thing in high school and it’s lasted. Being in the band is a good excuse to play fancy dress every day. If you spend a year making an album, it’s really fun at the end of that to get all dressed up and say ‘Look what I did!’ It’s just another creative outlet, but it’s the music that really drives me.”

You wouldn’t set up your own range then?
“I would, but it wouldn’t be just do a t-shirt and put a label on it, or have a some company launch a ‘Gwenline’. I’d have to do it myself and, currently I don’t have time.”

Does being the band’s front woman mean you’re conscious of keeping in shape?
“Yeah, I’m very normal in the sense that I get fat really easily. I come from an Italian background and my whole family history is, like, large women [laughs]. Then, when I was in sixth grade, my mom put me on a diet.”

What age is sixth grade?
“Right before you hit puberty. The doctor said ‘She could go either way – watch her!’ So I did all the exercising and dieting, but I think as I grew I kind of stabilised.”

Did it ever get serious?
“Oh yeah, I think everyone goes through that at some point. And I think in the last few years I’ve been able to maintain a healthier lifestyle. I’m very athletic because my stage show is all about moving around, so I work out a lot on tour. But I have the same issues as everyone else. Whether people were looking at me or not, I’d still feel the same way, but I think there’s more pressure, like, ‘Oh shit, that’s coming up, I wanna be able to wear this…”

Like a wedding?
“A wedding, whatever.”

Or an awards bash. Do you enjoy that whole celebrity party circuit?
“It’s fun to meet other artists, and talk to them.”

Which artists do you admire most?
“I really like Bjork and I’ve copied her look loads. I think she’s amazing, very talented, creative and totally unique. I love Outkast, as well. We were lucky enough to work with so many of our idols on this album and Outkast did the remix of Hey Baby, so I guess they like our vibe, too. I kind of see our bands as in some way similar as I don’t think either of us would fit into one kind of a genre. Ours is really just like a fruit salad of music – so many influences and everything just folds together.”

The new single Hella Good is out soon.

Gwen Stefani and No Doubt are back. But maybe not for very long. She talks to Caroline Sullivan

The dressing rooms at Top of the Pops are uniformly tiny cubby holes with barely enough space for a dispirited pile of weathered ham sandwiches, let alone people. Jennifer Lopez supposedly commandeered 15 of these rooms last time she was here. No Doubt have two and, despite being the band’s sole woman, Gwen Stefani has democratically crammed in with bassist Tony Kanal, while guitarist Tom Dumont and drummer Adrian Young are sharing a cupboard down the corridor. There’s not even room for their entourage of two – their manager and her assistant – who find themselves relegated to an anteroom wistfully known as the Star Bar.

On seeing the 10ft x 6ft space where she’ll be spending the next three hours waiting to perform No Doubt’s new single, Hey Baby, Stefani flops into a chair and laconically asks: “Can we turn down the lights?” It’s not a slur on the decor, even if the dressing room has apparently been furnished with cast-offs from a Warsaw office block. She was up late last night, celebrating her first London gig in three years, which went particularly well. The light is dimmed and Stefani cautiously removes her sunglasses. At 32, she still has the peachy skin of a 20-year-old, and her tiredness is hardly visible. “Better,” she says, sliding into a roughly horizontal position.

“As comebacks go, up there with Elvis,” panted last week’s NME, which is over-egging it, but it does convey the unexpected enthusiasm generated by No Doubt’s return. Until recently, they seemed destined for pop-footnotery, remembered only for the leaky 1997 hit Don’t Speak, and the accompanying 12m selling album, Tragic Kingdom. Subsequent singles and an album in 2000, Return of Saturn, underperformed, as the euphemism goes. Few would have bet on their making one of the splashiest returns of recent times, charting at number two with Hey Baby, and unveiling a new album, Rock Steady, to highly favourable reviews.

Much of the new-found interest is down to Stefani herself. Fifteen years after joining the band formed by her brother in Anaheim, California (home of Disneyland, hence the sardonic play on Magic Kingdom), she has suddenly been deemed of-the-moment. Chiming with the current taste for unconventional female stars such as Chloe Sevigny and Sarah Jessica Parker, her camp, goofball blondeness and tremulous vibrato are now hip, causing her to be reassessed by many who had never taken her or the group seriously.

“Any perception of you is weird. You have your own life and reality, and anything people might think of you is their own perception,” she says, uncomfortable with personal celebrity in a way that pop’s other Italian Catholic princess, Madonna, would find inexplicable. She shoves her sunglasses back on. “It’s like when you don’t see someone for a while, and they say, ‘Your hair’s grown’, or, ‘You’re so skinny’, and you don’t realise it about yourself.”

Stefani’s activities are now routinely reported in gossip magazines, which run shots of her undulating through awards ceremonies and restaurants. Her chum Marilyn Manson boasted of deliberately peeing on her toilet seat, presumably a form of Hollywood greeting. She even bagged a front-row seat at Vivienne Westwood’s fashion show, a sure sign of someone who gets her calls returned. Often, she’s pictured with her rock star fiance, Gavin “Big in America” Rossdale, but where photographers once aimed to get the best shot of Rossdale, it’s now Stefani they focus on.

One reason, perhaps, is that she undersells herself. She belittlingly claims to be an “ordinary, suburban” girl from “a goody two-shoes” family who lived at home till she was nearly 30 (not all that unusual in Italian-American households). “I didn’t travel at all till Tragic Kingdom. I’d been to Italy, like, 15 years before. One of the best parts of the band is meeting people.”

One reason she was attracted to Rossdale, she has said, is that he wants a wife and children. She’s protective of her London-born boyfriend, whose derivative grunge band Bush sell by the million in America but are less successful at home. He’s only her second boyfriend, and their five-year relationship has been bumpy. He was often “linked” with women such as Andrea Corr and Natalie Appleton, and he and Stefani broke up several times. During one separation, she wrote a bitter song called Ex-Girlfriend, which brooded: “I always knew I’d end up your ex-girlfriend.”

According to Bush biographer Karen Shook: “I got the impression Gwen does that female thing of thinking that she’s so normal and he’s so deep.” On cue, Stefani muses: “My boyfriend told me to read The Bell Jar, and I got totally into Sylvia Plath’s saga and journals and Ted Hughes. She died across the street from our house in Primrose Hill. The purple house.”

The couple’s paparazzi appeal is obvious. Stefani is the sunshiny yin to his studiedly dark yang. She thinks their relationship was predestined and talks of seeing him on TV before they met and knowing they would be together. “I didn’t have a choice; I met him [while supporting Bush on an American tour] and fell for him. We got engaged on New Year’s Day. We had a night out on London and woke up at three in the afternoon and he asked me. I’m so happy.”

Her only other relationship, with bassist Tony Kanal, ended with his leaving her after seven years, a crushing experience that inspired Don’t Speak. “I’d never envisaged moving on after breaking up with Tony.” She glances at Kanal, next to her, and fondly pats his knee. “I’m grateful to have him as a friend.”

Her new-found coolness could turn out to be fleeting, but there is a sense of having permanently crossed a line. On one side, the zany frontwoman of an achingly naff Los Angeles ska band (ska was mysteriously popular in southern California when No Doubt formed in 1987) – on the other, the confidently stylish leader of a quartet that’s suddenly had its lease on the charts renewed.

Jostled along by Jamaican dancehall rhythms, Hey Baby is good enough to almost erase the drippy memory of Don’t Speak, which was number one for three long weeks in 1997. Its parent album, Rock Steady (the title is another nod to Jamaica, where it was partially recorded, accounting for its joyous pop-reggae slant) is by some way the best of their five LPs, including Tragic Kingdom.

Like most women who front male bands, Stefani innocently professes surprise that she gets the lion’s share of the attention. Echoing Debbie Harry (who wore badges proclaiming “Blondie is a group!”), she refuses to be interviewed alone, and was outraged when American music mag Spin computer-erased the other three from a cover photo.

Kanal, though, is resigned to it. He tells a story about Prince flying the band to Paisley Park to play on one of his songs. When they arrived, it was Stefani alone who was ushered into the studio, while Kanal, Dumont and Young ended up twiddling their thumbs outside. “We expected to work with him, but it didn’t work out that way,” he shrugs. But Prince did make up for it by producing the Rock Steady song Waiting Room.

“But this record is all about having fun!” Stefani quickly interjects, pushing her outsized wool beret off her forehead in a conciliatory gesture. Kanal waves his hand in a what-the-hell way and props his feet on a low table. Born in London of Asian parents who emigrated to California when he was a child (“In LA, people think I’m Mexican, black, Hispanic – never Indian”), he has a phlegmatic British attitude to his place in the No Doubt scheme of things. Just as well – fashion magazines approach Stefani to model, and other musicians seek her out for the tomboyish sass she imparts to a track. She has worked with golden boy Moby as well as Prince, but it was her guest vocal on rapper Eve’s hit Let Me Blow Ya Mind (rarely off the radio last summer) that zapped her to iconic coolness.

I tell her about hearing Alan McGee raving to friends in a restaurant that the song was the best thing he’d heard all year. She leans forward, pleased. “Dr Dre called and I went down and sang. The band were like, ‘Go for it!’” She casts a sidelong glance at Kanal, who grins encouragingly. “It was fascinating to go into Eve’s world, so different from anything I’ve done before. When I left I was like, ‘Whoa, I’ve just worked with Dre!’”

It provided an entree to an audience that had probably never bought a No Doubt album. As Danny Eccleston of Q magazine puts it: “She’s taken on board that bling bling R&B lustre, which gave her a sense of being culturally aware of that world. She looks very modern now. She’s always been colourful, with those cropped tops and crazy shoes, but now R&B is like that, and she fits in.” Her biggest problem these days seems to be accepting that she’s first among equals in No Doubt, but a couple of years ago she was depressed and shellshocked by two years of touring the blockbusting Tragic Kingdom, then facing the poor performance of Return of Saturn.

“I had a very hard time making Return of Saturn. Tragic was all about [Stefani and Kanal's] relationship, and then I went on tour for two years. I felt like I was fine when I got home, but then I went into a depression, which has never happened before. Compared to most people, I wasn’t really depressed, but I was figuring myself out. Saturn was my coming-of-age album.”

She makes light of it now, but in an interview with the journalist Emma Forrest at the time of Saturn’s release, she confessed to feeling “insecure and jealous and paranoid”. Asked about it now, she frowns. “I never said insecure or paranoid. I’m not that way at all. I never said that.” (Forrest maintains: “She definitely said it. I felt great empathy for her. She seemed so sad.”)

Cheerful again, she says something very Stefani: “I’ve blossomed so much with this album, but I remember something I said in Jamaica. I was sitting on a raft and talking about how we’ll make one more album and then I’ll get pregnant.” At this moment, she’s every inch suburban Gwen, even getting misty as she says: “I mean I’m 32 and I think about babies a lot. “

Gwen’s still in love. Adrian’s having a baby. And the hip-hop world is on the phone. The long and surprisingly happy life of No Doubt by William Shaw

Self-doubt and heartbreak used to be Gwen Stefani’s twin muses. When her lover dumped her after seven years, she told the world about it. The drama had a neat twist since the jilter happened to be her own bass player, No Doubt’s Tony Kanal. Last year, when the band put out Return of Saturn Stefani continued beating up on herself. Now the 31-year-old singer is suffering a masochist’s worst misfortune: requited love. “Real love”, she says dreamily. She leans forward in a wicker chair and fingers her gold ankle bracelet. Hanging from it are the five letters that denote her Bushman: G-A-V-I-N.

No Doubt is in Olympic Stadium in gray and chilly London, where Mark “Spike” Stent – knob twirler for U2, Madonna, and Bjork – is polishing the band’s fifth album. No matter where Stefani is, though, a part of her is forever in Orange County. She blurts “Omigod” at the slightest provocation; she says “fuck” a lot, too (which could be attributed to shacking up with an English rock star). And when she talks about her own group, she’s pure Cali: “Like, I can’t believe we’re still doing this. It’s so rad. ”

In London, Stefani stays with Bush’s Gavin Rossdale at his house in Primrose Hill. Her colleagues – bassist Kanal, guitarist Tom Dumont, drummer Adrian Young – rent a flat in Earl’s Court. After fifteen years on the same tour bus, No Doubt remains one of the few bands that conform to the romantic ideal. They hang out. They visit London nightclubs together. They actually like one another.

That attitude has served the group well. For much of its early career, No Doubt operated in enemy territory, ambling along as Fishbone also-rans. Then, when every other group was churning out post-Nirvana grunge, No Doubt turned in the relentlessly poppy Tragic Kingdom. Their label despaired. The album sat on the shelf so long, the band thought it would never come out. Months after its release, the editors of Rolling Stone were voting No Doubt the third-worst band of the year. It took just over a year for Kingdom to crawl up and conquer the charts.

Which is why last year’s Return of Saturn was something of a novelty: the first No Doubt album to be released to immediate approbation. Giddy, No Doubt opted to change its own rules; instead of functioning as a hermetically sealed unit, they decided their fifth album would be a series of collaborations. They’d already experimented with Prince at Paisley Park. They’d go on to spend 2001 with a dizzying selection of their favorite artists. Kanal – a major fan of Jamaican dancehall musicians – took the band out to work with reggae veterans Sly and Robbie. Stefani lined up a session with Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics. Ric Ocasek of The Cars and Madonna’s William Orbit added a few ideas. The band capped the year with hip-hop heavy Timbaland. The fresh blood was reviving, but there was one snag: “This record was too man-heavy”, Stefani says. “You work with someone like Timbaland, and suddenly you’re being lectured. And you’re like, ‘Dude, I’ve been doing this for fifteen years’ “.

With this album, No Doubt abandons the ska band pretense. In fact, Stefani has become a major hip-hop fan. Earlier this year, she guested on Eve’s “Let Me Blow Ya Mind”, the video of which resulted in newfound urban cred and an MTV video award. She also turned up in Moby’s “Southside” clip. Don’t expect another guest appearance, though. “I don’t want to be like I’m the fuckin’ side sausage”, she says, even if working on the Eve track did earn her the chance to pull Dr. Dre in on a track, too. Now, as the release deadline looms, the group’s trying to whip a massive pile of experimentation into pop.

Today, the group is trying to make sense of a new song, a striking but decidedly eccentric piece of soul called “Waiting Room”. They’ve been wrist-slapped for waywardness ever since 1992, when their first A&R man said they needed “focus”. So much for focus. In the studio, Kanal proudly plays the latest version.

Later, I tell Stefani how much I liked it. “You heard it?” she asks. “I hate that you heard it. It’s not done.” That night they’ll work until four in the morning.

It’s late. She’s tired. She lowers herself onto a chair. Suddenly she realizes something is wrong. The fly on her cargo pants is wide open. “Sorry”, she says, zipping it up. “I’m just a scumbag”.

A few days later, No Doubt is having its photo taken at a bar in London’s Convent Garden. For a scumbag, Gwen is retentive about she and her band present themselves. This afternoon, she’s decided that diamante and hair spray isn’t quite it. “I look like a 35-year-old who works in a bank”, she declares, ordering a change. She swaps the rocks for two massive ghetto-fabulous gold rings that were made for a her by a friend in LA. The one on her right hand reads ROCK and on her left, STEADY – the title of the new album and a declaration of where they stand.

“Omigod!” she exults suddenly. “Adrian’s having a baby! Adrian’s having a baby!”

It’s true. Adrian Young’s wife is four and a half months pregnant. Gwen is ecstatic, if a touch jealous. She wants babies badly. No Doubt’s slow-but-eventually-spectacular rise meant that she had to put a lot of things on hold. Tragic Kingdom interrupted her education; she was majoring in art at Cal State.

“I’m good at it” she says of that first love. “I feel kind of sad ’cause I left on tour and that was gone. But I always envisage myself six months pregnant and painting. ”

She pauses for a second, then starts laughing. “I’m going to be a pregnant painter”, she declares, as if she’s trying to pick a fight. “It’s going to happen. You watch”.

Gwen Stefani: “I love this headline so much, I’m going to kiss it.”

So says Gwen Stefani, and who is Blender to argue? But what else does this ska-singing, rock star-dating, Eve-supporting California mega-blond find sexy? And what does she think of our list of the 50 sexist artist of all time? Blender turned up on the doorstep of her Los Angeles home to find out…

DON’T GET HER WRONG — Gwen Stefani is flattered to be named one of the 50 Sexiest Artists of All Time by Blender. It’s just that she thinks someone else should be on the cover. A certain short, reclusive genius from Minneapolis. ‘Prince,” she nods firmly. He makes the sexiest music. Total make-out music.”

Mightily carnal as Prince’s catalog is, though, the blond lead singer of No Doubt is being far too modest: Valley girl—cute, aerobics-instructor fit and movie-queen glamorous, Stefani is mamongmusic’s sexiest and most like-able stars. “She’s like a homegirl,” attests rapper Eve, who recruited Stefani to sing in the chorus of her Top 10 hit “Let Me Blow Ya Mind.” “You’d want to hang out with her.” Stefani’s other recent Top 10 partner, Moby, concurs. “I expected osomereally self-involved rock star, but he’s lovely and down to earth. She’s the reason hip-hopo for ‘South Side’ got played so much.”

While No Doubt’s 2000 album, Return of Saturn, posted only modest ales, Stefani has given her career a hiphop-style jump-start via turns in other people’s videos. It’s been a deft move, as the 31-year-old has catapulted herself back onto pop’s A list in time for the lease of No Doubt’s new album, scheduled for November and tentatively tied Rock Steady. “I’ve been in a good mood,” she affirms, “so there’s a lot of happier songs.”

Grabbing a lime Popsicle from the freezer, she scoots across the kitchen or to give Blender a tour of her Hollywood digs. All archways and pressed tin, it’s a tasteful Spanish-style abode with manicured courtyards, a tiled pool and a trickling waterfall. Amid all this pop-star elegance sits a large silver pagoda on a hill overlooking the pool. It’s a prop from No Doubt’s “Simple Kind of Life” video, she explains, leading Blender to the shade of a large umbrella.

For the past three months, Stefani’s been sharing her home in the Hollywood Hills with her longtime beau, chisel-cheeked Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale; his band has been recording its new album in Los Angeles. Stefani and Rossdale hooked up five years ago when No Doubt’s breakout single, “Just a Girl,” was climbing the charts and the band was touring as Bush’s opening act.

Despite living eight time zones apart, they’ve been a couple ever since. It’s quite an achievement. Mind you, No Doubt’s last disc resembled a concept album about dreamy grunge boys who can’t seem to commit. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Stefani has rediscovered upbeat pop just as Rossdale has shown a newfound willingness to cohabit.

The tousled Englishman, though, is absent today; he’s out working on his tennis game. But Tony Kanal, No Doubt’s bassist (and Stefani’s ex), has dropped by, looking relaxed and handsome in a vintage Live Aid T-shirt. But all is not quite right — something’s amiss with the top of his head. A tufted blond stripe runs skunklike down the middle of his otherwise dark hair. It’s a rather unorthodox “look.” Understandably, Kanal is a little anxious.

“It looks great,” Stefani offers.
“You mean it?” Kanal replies, “I had a mohawk that didn’t work out. We had to fix it.”
“No, it’s excellent,” Stefani assures him.
Kanal grins broadly. Male ego suitably soothed, the agreeable bassist lopes off for a dip in Stefani’s pool. Stefani and Blender are alone at last. The blond chanteuse shifts her chair into the shade, settles herself and sticks out her tongue. It has turned bright green. Blender takes this as a signal that our gracious hostess is ready to begin. So, in the immortal words of Salt-N-Pepa, let’s talk about sex…

Ready to face the world?
Yeah, it’s fun. I love talking about myself. And it’s yummy right now in the heat.

Extremely. Is that a bruise on your wrist?
No, that’s a steam burn from the tea kettle. It doesn’t look like a burn, huh?

Does Gavin have you drinking tea now?
No, but you have to remember that Tony and I went out for eight years, and he’s English. He moved here when he was 11 so I always used to drink tea at their house. I can drink tea all day, but Gavin has one cup right when he wakes up, and that’s it.As an expert witness, what makes musicians sexy?
I don’t like the word sexy. I get embarrassed. It was only recently that I felt comfortable wearing high heels. But I’m more of a woman now. I’m not so girly. It’s hard to talk about what’s sexy, because it’s all about someone’s particular point of view.

Right.
I guess you’re asking me what my point of view is, huh?

Yes. From your point of view, why are musicians sex symbols?
Music is sexy, that’s why. If I’m listening to a Prince song and I hear “Is the water warm enough? Yes, Lisa” [a famous snippet from Purple Rain’s “Computer Blue”], I just think of making out. In a song like “Simple Kind of Life,” for instance, when I say, “You seem like you’d be a good dad”: That’s intimate. It brings out emotions, so it’s sexy.

Who’s the sexiest performer out there? Aside from Gavin, naturally.
My all-time favorites are Suggs from Madness and Angelo Moore from Fishbone. Those two guys have melted my entire life.

What makes Suggs and Moore so luscious? Their dorkiness, their silliness and their energy. [Pauses to think] And obviously, Chris Cornell looks hot as hell, but what really makes him sexy is his voice and his talent. It’s like when Gavin played me his record. I was like, “Wow, honey. You’re hot.” ‘Cause it was good.

Who’s sexier: Elvis Presley or Jim Morrison?
Elvis. I love that whole ‘50’s look.

Kurt Cobain or Robert Plant?
Kurt Cobain.

What can a regular guy like me do to be more rock-star sexy?
Don’t shave, don’t shower, don’t care. Be really stinky and wear the same clothes every day. I think what makes a man sexy is not being self-aware. That’s what’s really cute to me.

As a self-aware girl, what have you learned over the years about how to be sexy when you need to be?
Everybody wants the perfect body, even though there’s no such thing. You just have to be happy with what you’ve got. When I look at the video for “Don’t Speak,” all I see is my stomach rippling like a jelly doughnut in slow motion during the live performance. I asked my girlfriend who directed it, “Can you cut that part out?” And she said, “No. That’s all the guys in my office are talking about.”

So is my jelly-roll stomach sexy?
I don’t know. But they thought so.

Well, your stomach is flat as a pancake. Have any “gentlemen’s magazines” ever approached you?
One time, a guy said he worked for Hugh Hefner and gave me a card. I thought it was funny. But sometimes you walk down the street and there are catcalls and guys yelling at you and you’re just like, pfffft. And the next morning, you walk down the street and no one whistles and it’s like, “No one thinks I’m hot today” [pouts]. When the band started, I was in this all-guy band in Orange County, and there weren’t a lot of girls in bands. So my goal was to get up onstage and to not have guys say, “Show me your tits.”

What about the “Lady Marmalade” girls in lingerie? Some think the hottie thing’s gone too far.
There’s room for everything, but when you start so young where do you on from there? When I was that age, I was in a band, but I had my dad saying, “You’re not wearing that.” As soon as I was on tour, I was showing my belly button, because he couldn’t tell me not to. You flaunt what you think is your best quality to try to get attention. Maybe I’ve lived too long, but some of these younger girls seem like too much too soon, even lyrically. I watch my niece going, “Oops, I did it…” and gyrating, and I’m like, “You’re only 5 Stop it.” But then again, I go around in a bathing-suit top. I don’t have a boob job, so I can get away with it. My niece and I look pretty much the same in a bathing-suit top [laughs].

Is there an outfit you wear to feel sexy?
If I wear high heels, I suddenly feel like I’m that girl. . . ‘cause it makes you walk like that [attempts to wiggle seductively in her chair].

Have you ever listened to your own music while you’re making out with someone?
I don’t think so.

How about Gavin’s?
[Quickly] I think we made out to his music one time. But you know what we used to make out to? The Goo Goo Dolls, because they were the opening act when we were on tour together.

I saw the two of you sneak off to Gavin’s tour bus together — you were ridiculously cute. Five years later, have you and Gavin merged books and records?
We still don’t really live together. He lives in London, and I live in Los Angeles. While he’s been here making a record it’s been perfect, because we get to really spend time together for the first time in five and a half years. He’s leaving next week, and it’s going to suck.

Is marriage in the future for you and Gavin?
I hope so, yeah. The funny thing is we talk about it, and that ruins it all for us. Some guy in England, not even in an interview, said to Gavin, “Are you guys going to get married?” And Gavin said, “Of course I’m going to marry her.” And I swear to God, I was getting calls from Germany, France, everywhere around the world, going, “Oh, my God, congratulations!” My mom called me. It kind of spoils it if Gavin’s planning a surprise.

How is life different being in your thirties?
I love my age right now. Being 28 sucked. And 29 was really hard for me, and I don’t know if that was just coming off the Tragic Kingdom tour, or if it was just that age. you get older, it’s not that you’re so smart, it’s just that you don’t have to worry about the stuff you used to worry about. And there’s so much to look forward to — I still need to get married, I still want to have a family, major things.

TOMORROW IS A big day for Gwen Stefani it’s her father’s birthday. Her family is driving up from Orange County for a celebrity barbecue, and there’s grocery shopping to be done. Pulling on her shoes, she begins to scribble out a shopping list. “I’ve volunteered to make the birthday cake,” she beams, before explaining that this is the limit of her culinary abilities. Usually, this kind of thing is very much Rossdale’s department, and sure enough, he will be handling the rest of the menu.

“We’re a perfect couple,” smiles Stefani, staring back from the house. “He cooks, and I eat.”

With thanks to Mike McKeaney of ND Universe