‘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.”

What better way to give you the goss on Gwen Stefani than to let you ask her the questions yourselves?

If you’re making a solo album, does that mean No Doubt are breaking up? Vicky, NSW

“No! The music I wanted to make is something I couldn’t do with No Doubt. It would exclude members because it’s dance and electronics. But it’s cool, because the band has been so supportive, and there’s no plan to quit what we’re doing. I don’t want to call it a solo record, I call it a dance record. I wanted to make a modern version of the ’80s stuff I grew up on, music that you can dance to in a club.”

How did you start the band? Melike, Vic
“My brother started the band and I just did whatever he told me to do. The whole thing was very exciting. I was just blossoming and I remember thinking, ‘I might be good at this.’ We spent three years in our backyard making the first album and didn’t think anyone would ever hear it. You believe that it will never come out, let alone get on the radio and sell 15 million copies. The whole thing was magical and scary.”

Who was your all-time fave pop star? Eve, Vic
“I never felt strong growing up. I didn’t know where to fit in. All the women in music were angry and I didn’t really feel like that. There wasn’t really anybody, until I discovered Blondie. She was sexy and she wasn’t ashamed to be rocking out and, to me, that’s having it all. Because we all want to be sexy, even guys.”

What’s the deal with your fashion label L.A.M.B? Roshni, WA
“I figured that since my stylist and I already designed my own stuff, we may as well make a line out of it. This is truly my look. My designs are going to be based on everything that I’ve ever worn, from my first punker pants to what I wear now.”

I read you had body image problems. Is that true? Emily, NZ
“As a teen, my weight was a struggle for me, like all girls. I don’t like to talk about it because it’s boring. It’s something we all deal with. There is even more pressure on me, I think, because everyone comments on my body. I spend a lot of time thinking about it: I admit that. But it’s such a shame because there are so many other things we can focus on. I have to work very hard to look as good as I do on tour. I get into my healthy fitness rage, and as soon as it’s over, I’m like, ‘Hurray! Let’s go get pizza’.”

What’s your fave No Doubt song ever? Ashleigh, NZ
” ‘Just A Girl’ is always a winner at concerts, even though it’s not my favourite song to play, because it’s hard and you get tired. But people get so excited. If you’re playing a festival and not doing too good, then all of a sudden you lay that song, it’s an instant win-over. I love ‘Rock Steady’.”

How did you meet your husband, Gavin? Sarah, WA
“We were introduced to each other by friends and he looked so familiar to me; there was just something about him. The first thing I said to him was, ‘You’ve got gorgeous eyes’. Both Gavin and I feel blessed that our friendship has remained. I mean, really, how rare is that?”

What would people be surprised to know about you? Linda, SA
“That I’m really self-centred. I really am. I’m also pretty lazy. I love to sit around and watch TV, eat ice-cream, not work out and basically be a slob.”

Were you the cool girl at school? Christina, NSW
“I think I’ve been able to fool a lot of people, because I’m really a dork. I didn’t think I’d have an impact on anyone. I was a very passive person growing up. I did whatever my brother told me to do, and I was never a leader. I didn’t need to be.”

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.

With the Super Bowl and then later with the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame was it a dream for you to get to play with Sting?

Gwen: Yes, that was a dream. Actually, the Hall of Fame was more like a nightmare because I’m not a public speaker, that’s not what I do. It’s one thing to get up in front of people and sing, it is something else to get in front of Elvis Costello, Elton John, The Clash, The Police, Ric Ocasek and all these other amazing artists and speak. I had to write a speech which is not something I do very well. I literally got a D in speech in college, I nearly failed. So it’s not my thing. I was really nervous about speaking, I didn’t want to but Sting asked me. In my heart, I wanted to do good but I didn’t understand why they choose me. I was really nervous. It turned out ok, but I haven’t watched it and I don’t think I ever will. It was really amazing to be a part of that night. Sting is a really cool person and we had a lot of fun at the Super Bowl. Walking down that catwalk towards him singing “Message In A Bottle” was such a surreal moment in my life, like a dream. The Police were a huge influence on me, they were one of my first concerts. I really respect and really love their music.

So did you guys have a say in playing with Sting at the Super Bowl?
It was one of those things where they said “we want you guys to play the Super Bowl and we want you to do “Just A Girl” and we want you to do “Message In A Bottle” with Sting. It was suggested to us. It was a “do you want to do it or not” kind of thing.

So you guys would never want to turn something like that down right?
It seemed like a good idea to me. It is really fun to be at a phase in our career where we can play a song like “Just A Girl,” it was such a staple song for us but it’s so old now. Do you know what I mean?

Well, they play it on flashback lunch on KROQ sometimes if you’re lucky
It’s so weird. I think about a year ago we would of never wanted to play “Just A Girl” but for some reason it just felt right – people like that song, it would be exciting and amongst all of the sports of the day it was a good statement for me personally, you know “just a girl.” It was a really incredible feeling to be playing for so many people at such a big event and with Sting. The Hall Of Fame, that was really scary. I felt honored to be asked to do it and meet the band because I never met the other guys. The night before I went over to Sting’s house for a dinner party with everybody that ever worked with them over the years. They had a really tight knit family of people that they worked with and they were all there, everybody was making speeches and it was really cool to be involved. That made me even more nervous. (laughs)

Do you guys have any plans for shows or events for the rest of 2003?
Well, we were supposed finish things up in December of last year. Then they said “do you want to do the Super Bowl?” and then they said “you guys are up for a Grammy do you want to play?” Those were two extra things that we were not planning on doing which were huge. So much work went into both of them. Then we all just decided that it’s been 16 years, we had such an incredible journey on this last record and since we’ve never taken a break in 16 years we decided to take one. We’ve always been working towards something or in the middle of something and I think everybody needs to recharge. Making Rock Steady was spectacular and for me personally the shows were some of the best shows of my life. I met so many cool fans that just really put it all in perspective of how great my life is and how amazing it is to be able to sit in a room writing songs. But I think there needs to be some kind of time like when I went off and did projects on my own like with Eve. Those kinds of things are really good to do because I they take you outside of your comfort zone and make you see things from a different point of view. When you’re in a band for as long as we’ve been, I think it’s really good to shake it up. Cuz what kinda record would we make next? You know? It would be too soon to know but if everybody goes off and does their own thing they will bring more back to the band. I know Tony and Tom want to produce because they’re liking getting so hot at it, I mean they’re really talented so they’re going do that kind of thing. And Adrian is playing golf, etc. Everybody is going to do little projects.

So you’d be open to doing some outside projects?
Yeah. I’m just going to write songs. Tony and I are going to write songs but not necessarily for anything in particular and without any kind of pressure or goal. Just to really try and live in the moment and enjoy life, because the thing is that it goes so fast, you know? And when you’re on tour for a year all of a sudden your year is gone and you realize you haven’t seen your family or done real life stuff. You have to force yourself to do that too slow it down a little bit. For me personally, this whole last week all I’ve done is lay around. I had to force myself to go “Ok you’re not doing anything. You’re going to lay around, eat candy bars, make out with your husband and be a sloth.”

Well, you totally earned it you have been busy.
Yeah and I wanted to do that really bad because it makes me feel like my life will slow down. It goes so quick, it’s so amazing everyday some great thing happens. I don’t mean to be bragging but honestly there are so many great things going on, it’s just so exciting. I just want to slow down the pace a little bit. I’m always moving and I’m always traveling. I went to the Hall Of Fame and that was like such a whirlwind you know because there was so much pressure for me. I stayed for a couple of days to work on LAMB, my clothing line, which is super fun but I don’t know what I was thinking. It is so much work, it’s exactly like writing a song – you have nothing, then you do a drawing then you get a sample and then you know you have to create it. It’s a whole process and exactly like the creative process. It takes a lot of time and effort but I ended up staying there for five days doing that and then unexpectedly they called and said “Hey, do you want to go down to Florida and work with some people who want to write some songs.” And on a whim I was like “okay,” my husband is at home in the studio, he would probably be cool if I go. I went down there and it was just at that point I was burnt. I said “You know what you are? Burnt toast. You need to go home and you need to get really, really, really bored.” Otherwise, I have nothing to say or give creatively, you know?

Do you feel like the Grammy win was a redemption?
It felt great. It felt spectacular. Winning always feels great, I don’t think you really care that much until it actually happens and then you realize how much you care. Whatever it means, it just means that Tony’s dad, who’s always like “you’re gonna get a Grammy someday,” was right. It feels really great for everybody around us and everybody that has been so supportive. It’s like when we win, I know that all the people that have supported us they’re winning as well. Because they believed in us, we were their band and we were the band that represented them. I know what that means because it was the same for me with the bands I loved growing up. So it feels like everybody that’s into us wins when we win, it’s very exciting and a really, really great feeling.

Do you think you have more pressure to win more Grammies now?
No way. The thing is that when we make music, we just make it for ourselves first. We make it because we like to sit down in a room with nothing, then all of a sudden you have a song, that song documents a certain time period which gives you a certain feeling and then it’s really fun to throw it out there and see if people respond. If they get something out of it, then it’s even more rewarding so that’s always secondary. Taking a break is a little scary because if you’re not swimming the whole time then you’re going to sink. There is just so much out there, it’s a real competition.

Is marriage life better then you imagined?
It’s pretty great. Well, I always dreamed about it when I was younger but when I got into the reality of life I just didn’t see how it was ever going to work out. You have to be so selfish when you’re in a band and you’re an artist. Now we really got it down, it’s really fun for us. Everyone is different but for us it’s very romantic, it feels very settled. It’s comforting and we’re loving it. It’s really great to just be home in London right now. I’m living here full time at this point and it’s very inspiring here because I’m kind of plucked out of my whole lifestyle. I’m just starting to song write, work on my clothing line, be lazy and be a wife which is really fun, you know?

So is LAMB just going to have girls stuff?
Yeah. Just girls stuff.

Is it going to be at stores like Hot Topic?
No. There were so many choices with it and the thing is that for years I’ve been offered different things to do. People always ask me if I’m going to do this and that. I always felt like if I wanted to do it, I would want to do it for real, put a lot of time into it and I never really had the time to do it. A guy came to me and he wanted to do it with me and I found this girl to do it with me it started falling into place so I decided to go ahead. But I didn’t want to do it like it’s an art project. What I’m saying is that it’s not supposed to be like all of a sudden it’s going to be in Target. I could easily do that because all I’d have to do is oversee it, look at some pictures, approve it and then all of a sudden it’s like mass produced in all these stores. But that’s not really what I’m about. I want to create something. I want to create a vibe with this line like a lot of the designers I admire. They have something they say with their clothes. Because of the amount of like money it’s will cost to make the pieces it’s probably going to end up being like more of a boutique thing like a Fred Segal. It is going to be a little higher priced and that’s only because if the quality and the amount of work that goes into it, there is no way to make the clothes for less.

So it’s not mass produced?
I don’t know, it’s hard to say how many because it depends on the demand. I’m going to make clothes that I personally would wear. I’m definitely making the clothes for myself first. I will not make one thing that would be like a cheap item that I think “Oh, I know what kids would want.” You know what I mean? It’s definitely not that. Every single sample that I have gotten back so far I’ve been wearing around. It’s really very selfish that it’s all about me – making clothes for myself, but then they’re going to become available. I guess what happens is different buyers come along, they decide if they want to buy it for their store or not, it gets marked up and then whoever buys it buys it. Maybe it’s a big flop, I don’t know. I’m not trying to think that far ahead right now. I’m just trying to create and it’s super fun. I’ve found all these old patterns online from the 1930’s and 1940’s and I literally sit around with hundreds of clippings from different clothing magazines saying “God. I would love it if I had this kind of a shirt or jacket” or whatever it would be and then creating it and deciding I’m going to put loads of words in it. There is a whole meaning behind LAMB which I’m not ready to reveal yet. I have to wait because it’s not done yet there is only so much I can actually talk about the clothing line.

Did you see all the homemade stuff at the shows?
Yeah it was crazy. That’s what I’m talking about this tour, I met so many insane fans that just really, really inspired me and they really made me feel like rewarded for all the effort. I want to just put a shout out to the Bush site where they post all these photos of me and Gavin. They started doing it when we got engaged and they got all the way up to 100 posts. You can go in and see hundreds of pictures of us and I just want to say thank you so much to those kids because I am collecting all of those shots. You can imagine it’s so fun to have all of these files and pictures of me and my husband for when we’re old and we can be like “Look that was us walking down the street. I’m just really grateful for them.

With thanks to Gwen-Stefani.us

What is it about No Doubt diva Gwen Stefani that makes her one of those “I wish she were my best friend” kind of girls? How about her amazing sense of style, killer voice and real-girl hang-ups? Yeah, she may be “just a girl,” but she’s rock’s reigning queen of real. And with her band’s new album, Return of Saturn, you’re guaranteed to get up and groove once again as Gwen goes off on everything from breakups to makeup. By Alexa Joy Sherman.

As No Doubt’s Gwen Stefani sits in her record label’s offices in LA, finishing off a plate of Chinese food, she dispels a major myth (and, no, it’s not that all girls are on a diet): You can’t take those fortune cookies seriously. “All your financial goals will be reached in 10 years,” she says, smiling as she reads from the slip of paper. The message is a little late, considering No Doubt’s last CD, Tragic Kingdom, sold, oh, about 15 million copies. And as Gwen sits there looking like a thrift-shop princess in a big, corduroy overcoat that’s almost the same color as her slightly faded pink-and-platinum ponytail, she tells us that, although she always wanted to be in a band, she hardly expected to be in one this huge. “I never had any goals that big!” she says. “I just wanted to be able to move out of my parents’ house.”

Mission accomplished. Gwen and the guys have certainly come a long way from their Orange County, CA, home, where a teenage Gwen spent a lot of time on the fringes trying to figure herself out. “I didn’t have a lot of friends in high school; it was mainly just me and my best girlfriend,” she admits. “I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life.” When she wasn’t doing laps for the swim team or struggling through maths class, Gwen was at home, making her own clothes and developing an over-the-top fashion style that her teenage fans, “Gwennabes,” later adopted. “When I hit puberty, I decided I didn’t want to look like anyone else in school,” she explains.

Even though Gwen was happy to be doing her own thing, it was her big brother, Eric, who helped her find her calling. “He was the cool older brother. He was really artistic, and I just lived through him,” she recalls. When he bought home a record by British ska band Madness, Gwen was hooked. “After I discovered music, I basically hung out with the rockabilly, ska and punk people,” she says. “We thought we were pretty cool, especially compared with the cheerleaders and jocks.” When Eric joined a band called No Doubt in 1987, Gwen tagged along to rehearsal and eventually found herself taking center stage as the lead singer. Even though Eric later left the band, Gwen and the guys – Tom, Adrian and Tony – have been a solid chart-topping unit for years now. “We’ve all become really good friends. We’d spend time together even if we didn’t work together,” says Gwen.

But that doesn’t mean it’s always been smooth sailing with the boys. Bassist Tony Kanal broke up with Gwen after they’d been together for seven years, which has fueled some songs penned by Gwen in the past. “In high school, I was so in love with Tony,” she gushes. “I used to drive across town to his school just to look at him. What an idiot! I was so weird!” But, she quickly points out, “I wasn’t a high-maintenance girlfriend. I was just intense and in love and I didn’t have any outside passions. I’ve since learned that you can’t find your happiness through someone else.” She’s also quick to add that the single “Ex-Girlfriend” is not about Tony – nor is it about her current boyfriend, Gavin Rossdale.

Gwen and Bush heartthrob Gavin have been going strong for more than four years now. Considering the spotlight they live under, they’ve kept their relationship pretty low profile. “It’s hard to be in a band and have a relationship,” she says. “I’m going to be so busy for the next few months that I’ll hardly get to see him.”

One thing that hasn’t been low profile, though, is Gwen status as a strong role model for girls and a trend-setting fashion icon. “It’s so funny that my clothes and my look have become a part of how people see the band. My clothes in the ‘Just a Girl’ video were what I wore to college that week, and I did my hair like that every day,” Gwen laughs. In fact she even admits, “A lot of my clothes are just what I wear to hide things I don’t like about my body. I wake up and think, Okay, what’s gonna make my butt look smaller today? I have the same issues as any girl.”

What about the metal mouth she sported at the VH1 Fashion Awards? “I’ve always wanted straight teeth and I finally had the money to do it,” she says. And the pink hair? “I did that when I was feeling frustrated while we were recording the album. I think I make big changes in my appearance when I’m depressed or going through something emotional.”

It’s that “I’m just like any other girl” attitude that makes Gwen seem so genuine. “Everything I do is just a personal choice,” she says. “I’ve learned that the more you are yourself and the more unique you are – to the extent that no one else is anything like you – the more powerful you are.” Spoken like the real-girl goddess we’ve always known her to be.

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

Snap! Crackle! Pop!

No Doubt thought they were ready for anything. Then they got famous and suddenly their singer was no longer just a girl. By Chris Heath.

Gwen Stefani tilts her head down, and her eyes look up, her lips purse, and sometimes an unwatched hand fingers her bare midriff, her expression is somewhere between that of a coy teenage “shall we?” and a cartoon bird looking up, up and away above the wall, wondering if maybe – just maybe – it could fly that high. Wondering if this time it’ll escape its garden prison and flutter to freedom. Pop music history is made up of complicated combinations of dates and troubles and events and dreams and miseries and ambitions (and we will discover plenty of these in the tangles tale of No Doubt), but it’s also made up of single, momentary glances that we will never forget, of the occasional flicker in some singer’s eye.

Most of the time, Gwen Stefani seems exactly as she says she is: The girl from Orange County, the one who grew up liking makeup and “The Sound Of Music” and pretty clothes and girlie hairstyles. The girl who still lives at home and who readily admits that consequently she hasn’t grown up in all the ways that harsh adult independence requires. The girl who never realized she wanted to be a singer until long after her brother Eric had persuaded her to stand on the stage and had imagined “Gwen Stefani, pop star” into existence. The girl who is still so nervous about her spelling that she carries a little computer spell-check machine in her bag. The girl who was in a pop group for six years before she realized she might have a few firm feelings of her own that she wanted to sing about. The girl who worried about her weight and says mean things about herself. The girl who is devoted to the idea of No Doubt, the band, and who is nervous – especially in these new days of “Hey, there’s the blond girl over there!” fame – of sticking her head above the parapet. The girl who treats her success as a happy mystery and forever reminds people that two years ago the band was on the verge of quitting “because we were afraid we were going to become losers if we kept on.” The girl who the callow cultural commentators call (and it’s meant to be mean) “the anti-Courtney Love.” The girl who announces in just about every interview that if this all ended tomorrow, she’d think, “Wow, that was great!”

But there is another Gwen Stefani – less modest, less reticent and a thousand times more than a pop star. It seems to me that this is a Gwen Stefani that she herself may only vaguely be aware of, and that is part of the charm. This other Gwen Stefani is the one who turns up now and then under the gaze of the video camera or in a crisp moment of control at the front of the concert stage, and who rules all of this by instinct. The one who is a master of naive manipulation. You never actually meet her, but you see her. The one with the head down, eyes up, world watching.

A quick trip to the Holy Land part 1

No Doubt know little of Israel, but Israel knows something of No Doubt. Following the slow American triumph of their Tragic Kingdom LP (released in October 1995, it finally reached No. 1 in December 1996 and has sold 6 million copies), it has been warmly greeted worldwide as a record that speaks the international language of pop. And in all of these countries, No Doubt’s third American hit, “Don’t Speak,” is the sad sing-along ballad of now. When No Doubt wheel their luggage through Tel Aviv customs, it may well be the sight of Gwen Stefani that sets off the uniformed official, but by the time he finds the words, it is to No Doubt’s bass player, Tony Kanal, that he delivers his offering.

“Hush, hush, darling,” the beefy Israeli croons.

Tony smiles – Wow! We’re in Israel, and they know the words to our song! – but it is not like him to linger over the full irony of this moment. He and Gwen Stefani were a couple for seven years, and “Don’t Speak” is one of several No Doubt songs that articulate the heartbreak at the relationship’s end. When they were written, back in Orange County when No Doubt were known by only a few thousand fans of the California ska scene, those words – hush, hush, darling – were addressed by Gwen to Tony. Better not dwell on it. (Yet.)

Let’s meet the band why don’t we?

Gwen Stefani is the singer. Her hair is dyed blond (it’s naturally light brown). Sometimes people mistake her for Madonna, and sometimes this annoys her because when she thinks of Madonna, she thinks of sex. And – this is the point – when she thinks of herself, she does not. Internet gossip asserts that she is (1) pregnant, (2) engaged to her boyfriend, Bush’s Gavin Rossdale, and (3) a transsexual. She insists that none of these is true. (A short Gwen Stefani anecdote: When she was 5, she was in ballet class and needed to pee really bad. She was too embarrassed to say it. So she peed on the floor. She was in tears when her mother arrived. “Isn’t that so sad?” Gwen says.)

Tony Kanal is the bass player. His hair used to be blond, but now it’s dark. He is Indian and has a British passport. Each time he re-enters the U.S., they pull him over and quiz him. They can’t figure out what he is. (These days it ends differently. “Then they say, ‘What band are you in? No Doubt? Are you the one with the horns?’ “) For a while he was the band’s manager. He is famous within the band for being excessively anal. (A short Tony Kanal anecdote: One day, Tony, who was sending out band mail, complained to bandmate Tom Dumont that the stamps wouldn’t stick. “Show me what you’re doing,” Tom said. Tony picked up a stamp, licked it, and licked it again, and licked it again. “That was the perfect description of his personality,” says Tom. “He wanted to make it stick so bad, all the glue came off.”)

Tom Dumont is the guitar player. He fiddles with his nose incessantly (Gwen sometimes complains about this to No Doubt audiences). “It’s not boogers I’m going for; it just itches,” he explains. He doesn’t look much like a pop star until he puts on his sleek yellow-tinted glasses just before he steps up onstage. He plays a flying-V guitar. One day he will pull me aside to lovingly show off his guitar in detail. “I just like the sharp angles, and they’re not cool,” he will say, and his pride is particularly eloquent. (A short Tom Dumont anecdote: In the old days, he used to tell Adrian Young that if they sold, you know, 3 million records, he’d get a tattoo. A few months ago he realized that he was going to have to break his word.)

Adrian Young is the drummer. His hair used to be dark, but now it’s blond. He once dreamed that vampires were killing him and that Starsky and Hutch were trying to save him, but they couldn’t. He claims never to have masturbated to orgasm. He has the old No Doubt logo tattooed on his upper right thigh. He used to be the most party-friendly member of No Doubt, but he has been trying to curtail his drinking since his girlfriend told him he was starting to smell like an old man. (A short Adrian Young anecdote: He used to have red devil horns sculpted from his own hair, an idea he took from an extra on the “Just A Girl” video shoot. One day he got an abusive letter from the original Horn Boy, accusing him of being a fraud: You claim to be part of the dark side, when you’re just a big fake, you’re just a big rock star. If you have any integrity left, you would write me back, even if you think I’m an asshole. So Adrian wrote back: “First of all, you are an asshole” – pointing out that he’d always given the kid credit. But awhile later, in Amsterdam, he asked for Tony’s clippers. His horn days were over.)

A quick trp to the Holy Land part 2

The night before their Tel Aviv concert, Gwen Stefani stays in her room, writing in her journal about how she doesn’t have any self-control. And then she turns on the Holy Land TV and discovers the seer and savior of our vicious, uncertain times talking about the very same thing. “It inspired me,” she says later. Oprah, that is.

The day after their Tel Aviv concert, No Doubt visit the Dead Sea, guarded by a man carrying a small Uzi. The men of the band float on top of the sea; Gwen refuses, blaming “one of those real premenstrual headaches.” At the Dead Sea gift shop, she buys a present for her boyfriend. Some glycerine soap. Afterward we drive into Jerusalem and visit the holiest sites of Judaism and Christianity. Leaving the Wailing Wall, Gwen is asked for her autograph. On the Mount of Olives, they all, except for Tom, ride a camel. Gwen is wearing a strange outfit for a day off around one of the world’s principal military hot spots and religious hubs: a camouflage-pattern jacket and, beneath it, a light-blue top that repeats two motifs over and over – a brown cartoon teddy bear and the red-ink phrase FUCK OFF! (These are gifts from her boyfriend: “He’s like my stylist now. He hates the way I dress. Well, he didn’t like it when I had my yellow vinyl bondage pants.”) When she is on the camel, three middle-aged men chat with her, their banter a lazy mixture of flirtation and condescension, then one of them hollers: “Where did you get that stupid outfit?” When she dismounts, she spots something on the Mount of Olives sidewalk. She points it out to Tony. A used condom. He videos it.

The night of their Tel Aviv concert, there is no stage set, just a few microphone stands festooned with flowers. They play most of Tragic Kingdom, a couple of older songs, a snatch of the Specials’ “Ghost Town.” No Doubt’s next single, “Sunday Morning,” which erupts delightfully from its opening harmonies into a thumping combination of Motown and pop cheese, is especially spirited. (Anyone who can stand onstage in 1997 proudly performing a song with woah-oah backing vocals – keen aficionados of this harshly neglected form will already be thinking of Kim Wilde’s “Kids In America” – deserves your careful consideration.) The greatest moment of both pop bazoom and Stefani- star theater comes during “Just A Girl.” These are the words Gwen wrote in 1994 about being surrounded by boys. The phrase “just a girl” made her laugh, and she asked her friends and her sister for everyday examples of the way girls were patronized. The recorded version works through simple, sustained sarcasm – I’m just a girl, all pretty and petite / So don’t let me have any rights – but onstage the song explodes. Halfway through, she asks for the boys – just the boys – to sing along with her. The she gives them their line: I’m just a girl! And they sing it. Funny. Cute. Next she asks for the girls. Or as she put sit, scrunching up her body and voice in an imitation of insecure femininity, “What about all the sweet, cute, little girls? Sweet, little, tiny, sweet girls. You want to sing?” And she gives them their line: Fuck you, I’m a girl!

As she leads them back into the song’s center with the lines “I’m just a girl in the world ’cause that’s all that…” – her voice begins to erupt – “…you’ll let me be,” the theater explodes. This is not sophisticated, gender-liberating art, but as pop music it is rousing and potent.

When “Just A Girl” was becoming No Doubt’s first hit, they played a show at the Costa Mesa, Calif., Virgin Megastore. Gwen drove there with her mother. “Are you going to say those curse words onstage?” her mother asked. She’d invited some relatives down.

Gwen had been thinking about it already. “I wasn’t planning on it,” she said, “but you never know what’s going to happen.” But when she was onstage, the whole thing welled up inside her – her mother not wanting her to do it because she’s a girl and it would be inappropriate… and as if anyone could have stopped her then… Oh, my God.

“Fuck you, I’m a girl! Fuck you, I’m a girl!”

And it felt so great.

Gwen’s mom was so mad. She didn’t speak to her daughter for a week, not even when Gwen left to go on tour, in tears at the airport.

But Gwen Stefani still sings the song, and she still sings it the way she wants.

The unfairness of life, etc.

The problems that failure brings at least have the advantage of familiarity; most of us have a lifetime in their company. The problems of success are less expected, especially as they trip you at a time when you expect to be floating on the cushion of your own achievement and happiness.

The principal problem in the land of No Doubt is simple to state and nearly impossible to resolve: Four people have fought together to make all this happen; most of the time it is only one of them who is feted and fawned over and praised. In Tel Aviv I watch the other members seethe as they line up together and a photographer comes closer and closer until, quite obviously, only Gwen is within his viewfinder. In London, after Gwen has lost her voice, I hear them explode as it is explained that if Gwen doesn’t attend their press and radio interviews, nobody will be happy. (“Has it got to the point,” Tom rages, “where we mean nothing? Yes or no? If Gwen doesn’t speak, we mean nothing?”)

The reasons for this are simple and complicated, good and bad. She is the singer. She writes many of the lyrics. She is a girl. She is blond. She is… head down, eyes up. And so people photograph the four of them and crop three of them out. People talk to the four of them and print only what she says. (Me, too, to a degree. I talk to each band member at great length, but as soon as I start writing, it is her voice that shouts the loudest.) “I understand it intellectually,” says Tom, who seems the most entertained by all this but who also is fairly unashamed of the discomfort it causes him. “But I just feel like I’m second-class, I’m shit compared to her. I feel I’m just a lesser person, I don’t look as good, and I’m not as bitchin’ as she is in everyone else’s eyes. I think a certain part of me – the reason I wanted to be a rock star when I was a kid, I thought that would be a way for people to like me. And now that I get here, I’m not getting the payoff that I was always expecting.”

“Nobody understands what it’s like, and I do understand,” says Gwen. “And they probably think I don’t understand.” It makes her feel guilty. She’s got a lot of what she wanted, but because of all this, she can’t always enjoy it. And every time someone singles her out or snubs them, or wants to put her and only her on a magazine cover, it causes a little more damage.

Faced with this, No Doubt did something rather interesting and brave. They made a video about it. It was Tom’s suggestion. He said to the video’s director, Sophie Muller, that although he knew “Don’t Speak” was about Gwen and Tony’s split, he’d always felt it could also be about the band’s breakup. Maybe that should be the video. “I said ‘Are you sure?’ ” says Muller, who loved the idea. “They were, ‘We need a bit of therapy at the moment – let’s do it.’ ” The result highlights situations in which Gwen gets all the attention and the others get increasingly pissed. “We weren’t in a situation where we really had to act,” says Tony. Acting out the problem didn’t solve it, of course, but maybe it united them and made them laugh. No Doubt’s personal tour-pass laminates in Israel are moody photos of each band member from the “Don’t Speak” video. “I tried to get the ones,” says Gwen smiling, “where we hate each other.”

Ironically, the night before the video shoot, two members – Tom and Gwen – came close to walking out of the group. They had a late-night band meeting by the pool at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

This is Tom’s version: They had just canceled shows because Gwen’s voice had given out. “I said, ‘I think we should cancel everything; you should stay home, you should heal and get better.’ It ticked her off, and finally she said, ‘Well, I’m gonna do whatever I want, and if you don’t like it, you can just quit the band.’ ” It hurt him a lot. He nearly said “Yeah, and I do quit.” So nearly. But then he thought, “I’m never gonna quit. Especially if someone tells me to.” He remembers it well.

This is Gwen’s version: She had been in Los Angeles all day, preparing for the video. She’d driven back to Orange County and then – much too tired – had driven back to Los Angeles for the band meeting. She had nearly fallen asleep time and time again on the freeway. And all they wanted to talk about was whether it was her face or the band’s on the cover of a magazine. Didn’t they get it? She’d nearly died on that freeway. She was so angry. She remembers it well.

A little history: secret kisses, suicide, baby seals

Stefani is an Italian name, though the most Italian thing they ever did was make gnocchi. Eric, Gwen’s older brother, was the musician. Even then, Gwen was obsessed with getting married and having children. Eric would get her to sing along while he played the piano. Their first original song was called “Stick It In The Hole.” (They were young. It was about a pencil sharpener, she says. And it sort of was, but Eric knew it was naughty, too.) “My brother made me do it,” she says, and that was how it was to be for many years to come. “Growing up, my brother was the one with all the talent and all the focus. I had him, so I didn’t have to do anything, you know?”

After they both got into the British ska explosion (Madness, the Specials, the English Beat, the Selecter), he persuaded her to take the stage for the school talent show and sing the Selecter’s “On My Radio”. She wore the tweed dress her mother had made her, copied from the dress Maria wears in “The Sound of Music” when she leaves the abbey and sings “I Have Confidence in Me.” (“The Sound of Music” was, and is, Gwen’s[ greatest obsession.) Eric roped her in again when they formed a real band, at the end of 1986. She sang alongside a black punk called John Spence, who could do these amazing backflips and who modeled himself on Bad Brains’ H.R. “No doubt” was something he often said, and that became their name.

Tony joined that spring. The first time she saw him, stepping out of his silver car, carrying his bass, wearing Mexican sandals and baggy pants, his hair sticking out over his forehead, she immediately knew. Still, it took a few months. One night that summer, No Doubt played at a party. There was a keg, and everyone got drunk. She took Tony for a walk and tried to kiss him. “he was,” she recalls, ” ‘No! The band! The band!’ ” Eventually he acquiesced. “He thought it was a one-night kiss,” she says, “but I was, like, in love” It was after that when she realized she didn’t even know what nationality her new boyfriend was. “What are you?” she asked. “Chinese,” he told her.

They couldn’t share their joy with anyone. “Oh, boy,” says Tony. “It was a secret of immense proportions.” But, naturally, there were suspicions. That Halloween, Tony dressed as a girl – dress, makeup, the whole caboodle – and arrived at the party before Gwen. Some of the band took an opportunity to deliver a warning: “if we find out you’re going out with Gwen, you’re dead.” He denied it, of course, but minutes later, Tony could be sitting on the curb in front of the house, crying, his makeup running down his face.

That December, four days before Christmas, something so terrible happened that adolescent secrets about who was kissing whom no longer seemed to matter. John Spence went to an Anaheim, Calif., park and shot himself. A few days later, No Doubt played at the Roxy in Los Angeles. It was meant to be their big break. Instead a friend went onstage and announced it was to be their final show. Nonetheless, the next months, they decided to continue. They convinced themselves it was what Spence would have wanted.

The current No Doubt cast assembled gradually. Tom Dumont was an adopted middle child whose life was changed when a relative gave him Kiss’ “Destroyer” for Christmas and his Aunt Ruth, an ex-nun, gave him her old 12-string. He ended up playing Rush instrumentals at school and heavy metal in his older sister’s group, Rising. (He wore spandex only once, and his hair was more moussed than teased.) When he went to meet No Doubt, he put his long hair into a ponytail “to try and hide my metal thing.”

Adrian Young had been a No Doubt fan. Way before he joined in 1989 (he told them he’d been drumming for years, but it was a lie), he had phoned the number on the back of the number on the back of the cassette they sold at concerts and had spoken to Gwen. he even went by her workplace – he’d heard that she and Tony had broken up, and he was wondering – but he never got to the point, and soon she and Tony were back together again.

In 1991 the band finally signed a record deal with Interscope. Its first album, “No Doubt,” was not what the world has been waiting for. No Doubt hoped that at the very least, they would get played on the radio station of their youth, Los Angeles’ KROQ. They hoped in vain. “The program director,” says Adrian, “said it would take an act of God for this band to get this band to get on the radio.” And God was otherwise occupied. No Doubt were trying to launch an album of quirky, bouncy girl-sing pop as Nirvana and their compadres were exploding. At No Doubt’s album-release party, during the height of grunge, they gave away No Doubt kazoos. The album sold about 30,000 copies.

In those days, Eric was the band’s creative center. Their 1992 tour was not a success, but the others had fun. Eric would stay in the back of the van or just disappear. “You could tell he didn’t like hanging out with us,” says Tom. Things got worse when Interscope encouraged them to work with producers on their new songs. Eric didn’t want people telling him how his songs should be, i.e., simpler, less quirky and with more structure. When the band met with Matthew Wilder, best known for his breezy, rinky-dink early ’80s hit, “Break My Stride,” their first impressions were not favorable. “His hair is almost like Sammy Hagar,” says Tom, still vaguely incredulous to the day. “Really tight curled locks. Tight pants.” Wilder wanted them to work on a song of his, eventually called “Walking on a Fine Line,” which they hated (and which would quitely be dumped). “It was such an invasion, at first,” says Gwen.

An invasion, but a successful one. It hurt, but it worked. “This is a very weird thing to talk about,” says Tony, “because I don’t want it to come across that we changed our songs and we were just beat down like baby seals. One of the reasons this record took so long to come out is that we withstood a lot of pressures and we were unwilling to compromise on a lot of things. ‘Tragic Kingdom’ is a battleground. It was the outcome of three years of struggle.” And there were casualties.

There had always been conflict between Eric and Tony. The carefree artist and the careful businessman. The singer’s brother and the singer’s lover. And though Eric encouraged the other band members to write more songs, he sometimes felt threatened when they did. In 1994, Tom and Gwen came up with “Just A Girl”, and Eric, always a talented cartoonist, invented her – Gwen Stefani, pop star – as a cartoon. Now she was taking control of his creation and becoming something much more aggressive and forthright than he’d imagined. And people seemed to like this new Gwen. Part of him was happy for her, but part of him was jealous.

He got more and more depressed. In September 1994, he stopped turning up at rehearsals, even though they were held in the house where he lived, and then he quit. He’d previously done animation on the first two seasons of “The Simpsons,” and he eventually took a job there. Afterward, Gwen and Eric went through therapy together, at their parents’ suggestion, to patch up their relationship. “I didn’t want to lose my brother, you know,” she says, “because everything that I am is because of him.” When “Tragic Kingdom” was finally ready for release, there was a school of thought, principally pressed by Gwen, that although Eric had not been around for months, the album was as much his as anybody else’s and that he should appear with them on the sleeve. So the five of them spent an uncomfortable day being photographed on streets and in orange groves. If you look at the sleeve booklet, Eric is always standing at the back or the side, and usually he is looking away. “It was very weird,” Gwen remembers. “It was horrible.”

One of the last songs Eric wrote for the band was called “Bye Bye Birdie.” A sad farewell song about a newborn bird who needed to fly off into the sky. It worked either way: the band away from Eric, Eric away from the band. It was never recorded.

The man who left

Eric Stefani calls me on a mobile phone from Central Park, in New York. He’s standing by the Alice In Wonderland mushroom statue. “I hear you’ve gotten everybody except me,” he says. He talks about the older days sweetly but a little forlornly. He suggests that he went off track for a while. “I was trying too hard to put my personality, or my being, on this planet through the music,” he says. “And I didn’t know how to express myself any other way. So when that was compromised, I was lost. But I think I found myself more by losing that and having to act as a human.” He tells me, “Art should imitate life, not the other way ’round,” as though this is a relatively recent, and rather surprising, discovery.

Until recently he had been working on his own cartoons on the side and doing The Simpsons as a day job. His favorite Simpson to draw: “Bart. Bart was the whole reason I got involved. I relate to him.” But now he has quit again, because all these music-publishing companies are offering him songwriting deals, particularly since the success of “Don’t Speak,” whose music and melody he wrote. He explains that he’ll try to write some of those kind of pop songs, but his true passion is elsewhere. He’s formed a ragtime band. They do the Little Rascals theme, Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” and some new songs of his own. “The humorous side of me, I think, that’s where I’d like to see myself,” he says earnestly. “I should be seen as more of a ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic.” He tells me about a song called “Kangaroo”: “It’s like something on the Muppets. If I could be doing songs for The Muppet Show, that would be the ultimate gig.”

Yesterday, in fact, he bought himself a Kermit puppet. Today he’s off to see the Statue of Liberty for the first time. And a David Lynch retrospective in Queens.

More history: heartbreak, parasites, publicity stunts

In the “Tragic Kingdom” years, there was another force tearing the group apart: Gwen and Tony. “I think he started feeling really claustrophobic,” she says. “And he’d never had any kind of experience, as far as seeing other girls, since he was 16 years old. Of course” – she adds with a half-laughing, feigned chutzpah – “he was going out with the raddest girl in the world.” It took ages to break up. Those were the days when Gwen used to listen, over and over, to Elvis Costello’s “Almost Blue.” That was them. Almost everything. For a long time, even after it was supposed to be over, she would make him kiss her. Or he would just do it, anyway.

“I don’t expect anyone to understand exactly what happened,” Tony says gently, “and I really have no desire to justify and clarify. It’s in the past, and that’s it.”

Their biggest worry was how to fall apart but still keep the band together. ” ‘If we break up,’ ” Gwen remembers, ” ‘how can we be in a band together?’ I was, ‘If you even see a girl in front of me, I will kill myself. How can we hang out each day, and I can’t touch you??’ And that’s why we stayed together for such a long time: because he was such a good friend to me that he could never hurt me. Even though he was already killing me, just by me knowing he didn’t want to be with me.”

If Gwen Stefani lost the love of his life, she also gained her subject matter. One of the many ironies surrounding No Doubt is that this music, which is frequently dismissed as meaningless, superficial pop, is fully in the tradition of the heartfelt, intimate, pop-poetic confessional. If you want to know what happened between Gwen and Tony, read the lyric sheet. “I was, ‘Fuck, I can’t keep writing about the same thing,’ ” she remembers. ” ‘But I gotta write about what’s in my head, and that’s the only thing on my mind.’ ” The day she wrote the lyrics to one of the most direct and pointed songs, “Happy Now?” (its real-life Gwen ‘n’ Tony story line: Bot dumps girl, girl announces that she likes her newfound liberation and taunts him, “are you happy now?”), she was really proud. So she phoned up the person with whom she usually shared both her triumphs and disasters. Tony. “I was ‘Dude, I totally wrote the raddest song – I have to read it to you. Promise you won’t get mad at me.’ ”

Tony says he accepted it. It wasn’t easy, but he wasn’t about to stop her from doing something that she wanted to do. Tony’s favorite No Doubt song, ironically, is one of the meanest, “Sunday Morning.” (Its real-life Gwen ‘n’ Tony story line: Girl used to go out with boy and act pathetic and overdependant, but now the tables are turned – “Now you’re the parasite.”)

“It’s not mean towards him, really,” says Gwen, when I mention how strange this is.

Well, I point out, it does call him a parasite.

“Oh, yeah,” she says giggling. “I forgot about the bridge.”

Of course, everyone expects Tony to be mortified now that the barbed hymns of their relationship are sung by millions. But at worst he is bemused, and at best, amused. One night he jumps offstage and tells the band that a boy in the audience asked him, “Are you still jealous?” Sometimes it feels like everyone’s looking at him during “Don’t Speak.” ” ‘Will he break down this time?, ” Tony says, laughing. “Am I going to storm off the stage?”

“That would be so rad!” hoots Gwen. “You should shake me and then walk off. We should do that as a publicity stunt.

More gushy stuff about the singer

Around her neck, Gwen wears two chains. One carries a silver-colored, ornate GWEN in what is apparently the lettering style favored by Orange County gangs. The other carries a cube that simply says G. She was given the W, E and N, but she removed them so that the G could stand for something else. It’s easier when you share an initial with your boyfriend.

Gavin. Like being the star in the spotlight, her boyfriend is another issue that tears Gwen in two directions: her obvious joy on one hand, her awareness of how little the band likes the attention her relationship draws on the other. (No Doubt opened for Bush last year. When, at random, I ask Tom if he likes them, he says, “No. They have some catchy songs, but to me, it’s just milking what somebody else created. I don’t know. Maybe Bush was doing that shit before Nirvana came out.”)

One night in the dressing room, the band finds a magazine in which Gwen is supposed to have made kissy-kissy comments about her boyfriend – horrible, heinous misquotes, she says. “Fuck them dude,” she explodes, meaning the magazine. She points out that some of the phrases she is supposed to have said are Anglicisms that she barely even understands. “They’re fucking assholes. I hate everybody right now. They put words in my mouth. Liar. Fucks.”

“Stop trying to deny it in front of Chris,” teases Tony.

“I’m embarrassed in front of you guys. I would fire me if I was you.”

That night, before the encores, the band waits in the venue bar. Tony nudges me and points above Gwen’s head. A poster for Bush’s Razorblade Suitcase. “How appropriate,” he says.

One night in London, Gwen and I talk. I sit on her bed; she lies down. She is surrounded by pre-Valentine’s Day debris: tape, wrapping paper covered in hearts, a chocolate heart-shaped cake, chocolate bars, a small teddy bear, an I LOVE YOU heart-shaped balloon. On the inside of her makeup case are Polaroids of Gavin and her. Earlier she has shown me her main gift: a silver fountain pen engraved G loves G. She’s annoyed that she made a mess of the card. “I made the ugliest Valentine,” she says. “I got too excited. Too many hearts. Like I just had so much love that I wanted to send that it got out of control.” (Tomorrow Gavin will send her a Prada dress and gray mittens: “He has good taste, that boy.”)

She sighs. “It’s really hard for me now. My best friend for eight years was my boyfriend and was in the band that was my life. And now I have this band, which is my life, with my friends, and I have this fantasy boy that’s away that I dream about.” She smiles. “I like him a lot, you know?” she says. “So why should I hide it? And I hope it works out. But I’m a hopeful girl. How do you think I stayed in the band for 10 years?”

We talk about those 10 years. “Normally you don’t have these conversations unless you’re having therapy, right?” she says. She begins to get sad when John Spence is mentioned, and when we reach the breakup with Tony, the floodgates open. “I’ll just start crying, and I can’t stop,” she sobs. “I’m a baby. Sorry. I’m so embarrassed. I’m going to cry forever now. I’m totally a baby.”

I change the subject and ask some dumb things to cheer her up, which at least stems the flow. Then the phone rings. It’s Gavin. I ask if I should leave, but she doesn’t answer. She tells him that I made her cry. “You are so fucking cute,” she tells him. She’s so sweet on the phone to him – so sweet and so sad.

Some investigative journalism

Onstage, Gwen Stefani sweats, and she sweats until she is drenched, but it is a clean, odorless wash of perspiration. I learn this in the back of a Glasgow, Scotland, taxicab. The recently encored Gwen is carrying her stage clothes. “Smell my top,” she instructs, holding forward the wet, flimsy white top she was wearing minutes ago. “It doesn’t smell,” she says. Out of obedience and a keen desire for the truth, I lean forward and sniff. No smell.

But she is not satisfied. There are harsher tests. She holds up a black undergarment that has been subjected to an even more stringent dousing in Eau de Stefani. “The bus probably doesn’t smell, either,” she announces, and checks it herself. “It doesn’t!” she exclaims with pride. “Smell it!”

That is why, driving along through Scottish suburbia, Gwen Stefani pushes her self-soaked bra toward my nostrils, and I inhale as I must.

And everything she says is true.

A longer trip around Britain

As they travel the country, these are some of the things I see and hear No Doubt do. They worry about their laundry, Gwen’s voice, my article. They reminisce about the concert in Japan where a man screamed – Adrian does a fine Japanese man hollering in English – “I want to fuck you, Gwen!” They meet Kato Kaelin in a London hotel. (Kato tells me about his 12-year-old daughter, Tiffany, and her favorite pop group. Sometimes Tiffany phones Kato up and plays pretend. “Hello,” she says. “I’m Gwen Stefani.”)

They read out loud a review of “Don’t Speak” (which will enter the British charts at No. 1 the following week) from Kerrang!, a British rock magazine: “Mere words cannot describe how abysmally gutless and sugar smothered it is… Much like an anteater with a punctured snout, No Doubt suck badly.” (Tony wants to make it into a T-shirt.)

Slowly, they must think about the future. There is an American tour to plan, and I sit in on production meetings where they try to realize their moody, lavish, theatrical vision, earnestly debating whether to go with the $9,000 fly or the $6,000 rain, and the exact nature of the onscreen trees. (“If we go to wood, I don’t think we’ll be able to achieve the trees that we all want,” the production designers advise. There is something enjoyably surreal in hearing people discuss making trees out of wood and then deciding against it.)

They have a few new songs, but one issue remains undecided. Eric. Gwen is particularly adamant that he should be involved in the next record. “Because Eric is No Doubt,” she says. “I think that what we are is that” – she points to some steamed vegetables on a dinner tray in front of her. “And they’re really good, but if I can put a little butter and salt and pepper on that, it would be fucking great. And that’s what Eric is.”

So you become famous, and some of you get too much attention, and some of you are too ignored, and it feels marvelous, and sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes people make you cry, and sometimes you forget why you do all this, and sometimes you think you never really knew. And sometimes you realize that you don’t really need a reason.

When Gwen and Tony were splitting up, Tony offered to leave the band. “Because he loved me so much,” she explains. “I would never let him.”

Did you offer to leave, too?

She laughs. “Fuck, no.”

Tom Dumont & Tony Kanal signal The End of Modern Rock

One this is for sure. The bell has tolled. Alternative rock is dead. Shut the coffin, tighten the bolts. After some brilliant contributions (Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Sonic Youth) to the music world over the last decade, the flame is now extinguished, sending its last, weakened plume skyward. Eh… better to burn out than fade away, right?

Though “serious” players may be breathing a collective sigh of relief at the news – alternative rock having served as a thorn in the side of many of you for quite a while – its death leaves a few questions unanswered. First how did it die> Wasn’t it just storming the airwaves? Second, what will take its place in the national market? And last, does anybody care?

The truth is, the music wasn’t developing open relationships with its fans. No sooner would Band A release a decent record attracting a handful of of us when Band B would come along and steal us all away. There was no band loyalty on behalf of its fans and no band development on behalf of their labels. So really, in an attempt to capitalize on it, the industry killed its own (bastard) son – shot it dead. What will take its place, you ask? Whether you like them or not, bands like 311, Counting Crows, the Eels, Fun Lovin’ Criminals, Sponge and the subject of this month’s cover story, No Doubt. In lieu of superstar mega-bands – which have grown rarer than dodo birds in Des Moines – these outfits have capitalized on the gaps, burrowing sizable niches between the alternative and mainstream groupings, with crossover potential most alternative bands couldn’t dream of (Weezer, where’d you go?). These bands talk the talk of their fans, empathize with them in a way so many alternative bands couldn’t, and see the forest and the trees within it.

To most who see them, No Doubt is about over-exposed kewpie doll singer Gwen Stefani. Her hiccup-y, hyper dramatic voice and stunning presence grabs mesmerizing command of an audience, and her sweaty midriff, as omnipresent as jiggling buns on Baywatch, does hold a kind of hypnotic allure. But, dudes, let’s take a step back and re-examine this band from the inside out. Strip aways the Gwen visuals and what have you got? You’ve got the engine – guitarist Tom Dumont, bassist Tony Kanal and drummer Adrian Young – that powers this band with turbocharged muscle. Together the trio guides No Doubt through a minefield of rollicking styles, from hard rock and metal to ska, soul, reggae, and funk. Guitarists should appreciate Dumont’s and Kanal’s versatility, as well as their simplicity as songwriters; they’re the keys that have unlocked the doors to hit singles like “Spiderwebs” and “Just A Girl.”

Founded in 1986 by Gwen and her brother Eric Stefani (who later quit the band to become an animator – he now works on The Simpsons), No Doubt has coughed up the necessary to become one of the most coveted bands in the land. After gigging in and around L.A. for over five years, their eponymous debut in 1992 sank like a stone. Not to be discouraged – their live shows were still anticipated events – the band regrouped and in early 1995 released The Beacon Street Collection on its own, without the aid of a label. That also made little commercial impact, but its follow-up, Tragic Kingdom, the band’s first album under the aegis of Trauma/Interscope, has sold enough to keep it at the top of the charts for months. If you don’t already have a copy of it you’re already in the loser minority, ’cause 10 million others already do.

Needless to say, the LA crew proved to be in demand and hellishly elusive to track down. After a breathless worldwide search, the band turned up in the wilds of England on the brink of their first universal tour. Judging by the sales of albums and concert tickets, the rest of the world is not far behind the U.S. in their infatuation with No Doubt. We had a chance to speak with both Tom Dumont and Tony Kanal, two of the instrumental and songwriting minds behind the band’s massive success. Tom was up first.

Have you ever worked as hard as you’re working right now?
Tom: No, no way. The day-today things really aren’t that hard – talking on the phone, going to photo shoots – but being away from home for two months is hard, frankly, it’s hard to find a place to comfortably take a shit. Sometimes you don’t have time to take a shower and clean off last night’s sweat. Overall it’s a lot easier than working at McDonalds, but at the same time it’s hard work.

Are you saying fame is not all it’s cracked up to be?
Tom: No, not really. I’m just being realistic. Honestly it’s really fucking great. All my life I wanted to be doing this, I just thought I’d end up doing it in clubs, on a more modest scale. And although this ends up being different from what my romantic notion of a successful rock band really is, I’m still happy that we are super busy and have a lot of things to work on.

Is it a case of too much too soon?
Tom: Too soon? I’d say no, because we’ve been together for 10 years. But it has happened pretty suddenly in a large way. For a while we were worried about it, because we really want to build a lasting career out of this – do it for five or ten years. But at some point the success just got out of our control. We don’t know if we’re gonna be the next Milli Vanilli or whether next year people are going to want to hear us all over again.

You guys seem to be everywhere these days. Have you compromised yourselves in any uncomfortable way in terms of marketing or music?
Tom: Tricky question. I guess the answer is no. But there have been moments where I’ve compromised myself, personally, like in photo shoots where I had to wear something I felt foolish in. But musically we never have. We’re pleased with what we’ve done, and even though we made Tragic Kingdom in 1994 and we’re way past that now, we’re still pretty happy with the record. We’re not the kind of band that got its respect for… I dunno, it’s kind of hard to explain. We’re not known for being musicians’ musicians – not like Steve Vai. We’re more known for certain visuals and being song-orientated, which is fine with us. We never set out to be Rush, and we couldn’t pull it off anyway.

You started out as a metal guitarist.
Tom: Yeah, I was really into Rush, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and some progressive rock: Kansas, Yes. I loved all that stuff, but then I moved on. That’s where I came from, though, learning Rush songs.

When did you first start playing?
Tom: I first picked up a guitar at 12. I really wanted to be a great player and play really fast and fit in, but couldn’t do it. I just didn’t have it. I loved playing, but couldn’t pull off the guitar wizard thing, so that’s when I quit metal and started playing for the fun of it. That’s when I joined No Doubt.

How did you begin learning to play?
Tom: I got a 12-string from a relative and took the extra strings off and played it as a six-string. My dad paid for lessons at the local music store. I started playing James Taylor and the Beatles and I learned regular chords and fingerpicking patterns. I picked it up pretty quickly. From there on I was self-taught. My older sister – who went on to get her degree in Classical Guitar at UC Irvine – taught me a lot of stuff, and then it was all listening to Sabbath and Rush and trying my best to learn the stuff. In my first band in high school we played tunes like “Jacob’s Ladder” and “Natural Science” at talent shows. We bit off quite a lot there for kids our stage.

What happened in college?
Tom: When I started college I was a music major. I took theory for tow and half years at Orange Coast College. Learned a lot of classical stuff: Italian 6 chords and Neapolitan chords and four-part harmony writing. I learned some piano and singing. It helped, but at the same time it constrained me because there were all these rules that you had to heed. At the same time, I was starting with No Doubt, and Eric [Stefani] was breaking all the rules I was learning. He came up with the greatest, most fucked-up chord progressions, so I was getting an education form both sides.

Did you finish your formal education?
Tom: I finished the two-year program at Orange Coast College, then moved to Cal State Fullerton, the main college, but that’s where it ends. To get a degree I needed to specialize in one of their instruments. Classical guitar was the closest to what I played, but I felt like I was starting over. After getting command of rock, I had to start over. I’d much rather have an amp and crank power chords, so I dropped out.

Your solo on “Don’t Speak” shows some classical training.
Tom: Oh, yeah. As I recorded it I was thinking about how any true classical players would’ve hated the way I did it. I played it with a pick – a huge no-no. I hated the anal sitting position and the fingering positions. We did a number of run-throughs and we tracked them and spliced it together from six different solos, but I’m pleased with it. When I hear it in the supermarket I think we pull it off. It sounds very poppy, but it works as a piece of music.

What was you first electric guitar?
Tom: A black Les Paul copy, when I was 13. I got it because I like Ace Frehley. To do this day I’m obsessed with the idea of Gibson guitars.

You’re into Hamer’s, too?
Tom: Actually, I play Hamers a lot live. Right when we finished the album I bought a flying V, and I kind of liked the idea that it was a ’50s kind of space-age design, but its image was very ’80s metal. Same with the Explorer – it was a good visual element. So I looked around for companies that made Explorers and V’s, and Hamer, for me, was the company that made them best. I’ve got mahogany and maple top Hamer Explorers [known by Hamer as the Vector - Ed.], plus a korina Explorer and a korina Flying V [the Hamer Standard]. They’re very much in that old style. They play great, they sound great, and they look great.

You sound like you’re acquiring some nice guitars. Are you a collector?
Tom: I don’t have any great vintage guitars, just some fun ones now. When we recorder Tragic Kingdom I didn’t have any of my own guitars. I had to rent them. I rented a couple of Gibson SG’s with P90’s, and then got the Hamers when we started touring. But when we go back and record I’ll have a huge assortment to draw from.

What about effects?
Tom: Traditionally, I’ve been a no-effects kind of guy, just playing through clean or distorted cahnnels. I used to think that guys who have a lot of effects spend too much of their time using them and not enough time playing straight guitar. But I’ve changed my attitude about that. I’ve always had a Cry Baby wah pedal around, and a box made by Dunlop that’s kind of like an octave pedal but produces a tone that sounds like a Moog synthesizer. It only works for high notes and solos, but tis really amazing. I have a tremolo pedal, and my setup is in stereo, where I can shift between two amps.

There are so many guitar styles on Tragic Kingdom. Just what kind of guitar player are you?
Tom: That’s a hard one. Songs on the album aren’t, for the most part, written around the guitar. They’re written more from the rhythm of the bass and drums, and I really want to complement that with my guitar playing. I like to be versatile enough to make each song different from the next. “Just A Girl” is a rock riff, “Excuse Me Mr.” is kind of a country-ish guitar thing in D minor for the verses, and pretty punked-up. Every song is different.

Do you feel like the third member of the rhythm section?
Tom: It started out that way, but we moved into more of a rock sound on the last record. On “Spiderwebs,” for example, Tony wrote it as a single-note bass line, so I had to write something around it to fill it out. That little octave thing there is me trying to fill in a guitar part without stepping on the vocal or the bass line.

The intro riff on “Sixteen” sounds like a Led Zep ripoff.
Tom: Yeah! Tony wrote that, and I, not being too creative, just doubled Tony’s bass line and made it fatter. In between I put this little pick harmonic thing on it that I got from Mötley Crüe. You do a harmonic single note and scrape your pick down it. Mötley Crüe did it, and so did Missing Persons on “Words.”

You finally get a chance to go nuts on that flashy hammer-on part at the end of the title track.
Tom: I knew it was a total metal-sounding thing, but to me it fit the part. Like when “Eruption” came out – I half-assedly learned that solo, but nobody does those these days. I don’t know what the kids think when they hear me do it, but it’s simple, just two chords going back and forth. It’s a lot of fun but hard to do live because it’s doubled and there are octaves in the second section of it after the hammer-on thing.

Are there any other moments live when you get to step out?
Tom: In “Spiderwebs,” we break the middle bridge section down and get a chance to do a lot of noodling during that – trying to be tasteful between Gwen’s antics on stage. I never really get a chance to break out and do “Freebird” solos, which I would like to do, but never in the history have we had sounds that thing going. I guess it’s that whole new wave/ punk idea that they’re not necessary or they’re too showy. I do them but they’re short. A lot of times I just copy the vocal melodies.

What will your new material sound like?
Tom: We’re going in two directions. One is that new wave-y, Cars approach. The other is more rhythmic, leaving a lot of space open for vocals and horns. But we’ve only got eight new songs since starting this whole touring cycle. I think we’ll be more prolific when we get home.

Did you have a clear idea of where you were going musically when Gwen’s brother Eric [the band's main songwriter] left?
Tom: We did once we sat down and started putting together songs. We hit on this theme of ’80s new wave, trying to use those types of sounds for keyboard patches and musical influences as a guide. But because I was into metal, all the new wave I knew was from the radio: the B-52s, Devo, the Cars.

It must be satisfying to write songs that so many people have a chance to hear.
Tom: It feels great. I co-wrote “Just A Girl” and when that started getting played it was really thrilling, and it gave me confidence. I had finally put together something that worked and that people could react to.

Is it difficult, as a guitar player, to find yourself behind an attention-grabbing singer like Gwen every night?
Tom: Good question. Yeah, there are times when I think all of us as musicians would like more of the attention. We’ve been ‘real’ musicians for 10 years now and we’re all good players and we take ourselves seriously. We’re not top musician guys, but we can be pretty creative and I’m proud of what we’ve done. But the attention we get is because our songs are hits, and… well, you know why. Even though Gwen is what they think of when they think of this band, I still feel proud that I’ve played a really big role in helping this band succeed. All of us did.

Having joined at the age of 16, No Doubt is Tony Kanal’s first real band. As the rubbery heartbeat of the No Doubt sound, Kanal has already received accolades from bass pundits, and deserves credit from guitarists, too, having provided the nasty bottom from which many of Dumont’s licks spring.

Have you had any time to enjoy yourself during this mega-success?
Tony: Yeah, a little bit. In the past when we toured we did five or six shows a week. This time it opened up a bit, because Gwen can’t sing more than four times a week. She has had a problem with her voice and didn’t want to push it. But the days off get filled up with press.

So is this your 15 minutes of fame?
Tony: Absolutely. But it’s been very fulfilling 15 minutes. We started to have a good time – you know, “Let’s be in a band!” We never set out to make a significant change in the world. We were here to make music and have a good time. We’ve had such huge ups and downs. We’re just happy to be able to enjoy it while it’s happening.

Did you start out as a bass player?
Tony: No, I actually played saxophone up until high school. My best friend’s brother Dave Carpenter, was the bass player in my high school band and he was graduating, so when I became a sophomore he asked me if I wanted to be his bass replacement. So I tried it out and haven’t looked back.

What was so cool about the bass that made you drop the sax?
Dave Carpenter was cool about the bass. He was so inspiring to me. he still play, and he was my teacher that first year. Then I started listening to records to hear the bass player. Dave introduced me to Stanley Clarke and Jaco Pastorius, and other great jazz bassists.

But you didn’t get involved with a working band until No Doubt, right?
Tony: Yeah. Prior to No Doubt I listened mostly to funk, but when I met Eric and Gwen I was 16 and got exposed to the two-tone thing: the Specials, Madness, the Selecter, English Beat. Then I got into the southern California punk-funk scene, with the Chili Peppers and Fishbone. Flea, Horace from the Specials and Norwood from Fishbone were huge role models for me as a bass player.

How do you fit in with that elite company?
Tony: I don’t fit in. I don’t feel like I’m a musician’s musician. I don’t think I’ve reached that level. Maybe in the future. Those guys are very high caliber. I don’t pretend to have gotten to that level.

If you had a solo record, what would it sound like?
Tony: What No Doubt is is what I am. All of us came from such diverse influences, and we’ve incorporated all those different styles into the band and actually made it work. The direction No Doubt is heading is the direction I head. This band has been my life for the last 10 years. I’m 26 now. So where it goes, I go. This is it.
When I was younger I never envisioned myself becoming a rock star or anything. I always envisioned going to college and becoming a doctor or something professional. But destiny just happened and I’ve never looked back. Realize that up until two years ago we were all still working and going to school while the band was going. We had our day jobs to get by.

Many of the songs are driven by you and [drummer] Adrian Young.
Tony: If there’s any compliment that we can pay ourselves it would be that myself, Tom and Adrian work very well together as a rhythm section. His style as a drummer is incredible. There’s no other drummer I can name I’d rather play with.

Tell me about your bass rig.
Tony: When I started I was playing that high school standard Rickenbacker bass. The first bass I purchased was the one I still have, the Yamaha BB1500. It has been my main bass for the last 10 years: a passive bass with a bolt-on neck, and it has never let me down. I’m always looking for other basses but I know I can always count on that one. I bought a BB3000 in Japan, a one-piece of the same bass. The original bass, the 1500, is easier to slap and less rigid, and it’s light – I’m not the biggest guy and I like to get around on stage – but the 3000 gets better tone. Maybe that’s because it’s newer, but I get a more solid sound out of it than the 1500. I have a MusicMan now, too, a four-string and a five-string.
I play through a Gallien-Krueger 800RB head that I bought a year ago, and an Ampeg SVT 8×10 cabinet that I bought in 1989. I have a couple of G-K 2000RB’s too, but it’s all pretty straightforward – no effects. I’m always trying stuff out. I might add a compressor to my rig.

Do you still put time into learning?
Tony: No, to be honest, I don’t. The last few years I’ve been on the road and that takes a lot out of you. Your daily routine is made up of checking in and out of hotels, finding decent places to eat, soundchecking, and doing major amounts of press. I have to say, I can’t see myself sitting down to play bass. It’s been such a whirlwind. Maybe after it settles down I’ll get back to learning.

Does the criticism of No Doubt as a lucky marginal talent bother you?
Tony: Yeah. I guess it does somewhat. People have to realize that we spend our time playing, writing songs, rehearsing, doing press, touring… we play a lot of different roles. A lot of musician’s musicians only do one thing: play. If we only had to play, we’d probably get pretty good ourselves. But I think it would be an unfulfilling career overall.

Do you have anything to say about No Doubt’s role in helping to kill alternative rock?
Tony: We can’t claim to be that significant. We just do what we do, and have ended up here. I wouldn’t say that alternative rock is dead. I would say that the grunge scene’s mellowed. All of us like Soundgarden, Nirvana… But the grunge label has almost totally faded. Music comes and goes in phases, and the record-buying public is fickle, too. Right now we’re lucky to be what people want to hear. Next year they’ll listen to something else. Because of that, we need to write music for ourselves and not to appeal to someone else’s idea of what the public wants.

Gwen Stefani’s survived a friend’s suicide, a flop record, and a band that was set on self-destruct. Now she’s a international sex symbol with a hit record, a hip boyfriend, and a whole new set of troubles. By David A. Keeps

Imagine being in high school back in the mid-80s. You play piccolo in the marching band. You hate math. You’re a little shy of confidence and creativity. And a little chubby. One day your older brother brings home a record by a nutty English group called Madness. It’s rad and it totally changes your life. You hang out with the punkers and the mods and start making your own clothes. Then your brother decides to form a band and makes you the lead singer. You are Gwen Stefani, sixteen going on seventeen.

Weeks, months, years fly by. It is 1992. A lot of crazy shit has gone down. You lost your other singer to suicide. Your trumpet player gets his girlfriend pregnant and quits. You have a new guitarist, drummer and bassist. Your band, No Doubt, releases a debut that tanks, so your record company blows you off. By 1995, you’ve been dumped by your boyfriend, the bass player. So you sing a song about it, “Don’t Speak,” written by you and your brother, who’s just quit the group, and it sends your second album, Tragic Kingdom, to the top of the charts. It is 1997 and you are Gwen Stefani, twenty-seven, multi-platinum queen of pop.

This is a really exciting time to be Gwen Stefani. And a confusing one. Her fashion aesthetic has been celebrated in Women’s Wear Daily, but Newsweek called her a “skank”. Critics question her credibility because she is from unhip Anaheim in Orange County and plays hugely successful, hugely catchy music. Her first hit, the feminist-lit “Just a Girl,” has become an anthem of empowerment for her massive teenage female following, but she has always dreamed of being married and having kids. She is Doris Day in a tank top and bondage pants. It is unlikely that she will ever be the subject of a Camille Paglia essay.

There’s more. Her low-profile relationship with Bush’s lead singer, Gavin Rossdale, has given birth to high-octane rumours that they are (a) engaged, (b) married, (c) having a love child, (d) none of the above. (The correct answer is d.) She is suspected of being both a music industry marionette and a martinet, the de facto leader of the band, a future solo artist and movie star. (She has already met with three top Hollywood agents.) Not suprisingly, Gwen has her reservations about this story focusing on her, and the band waged a small, uncivil war over it.

I ask bassist Tony Kanal about all of this. None of the band want to contribute to a story just about Gwen, but he responds diplomatically: “Before this record came out, we were always a band, a democracy – this was never an issue. There’s a natural tendency for the media to gravitate towards lead singers – particuarly females – and if you’ve seen Gwen perform, you can see that she deserves it. It’s not something we’ve been dealing with for a long time, but I think we’ve gotten used to it.” Gwen acknowledges that it’s a problem they may never fully resolve. It’s no coincidence that the video for “Don’t Speak” was a narrative in which the band watch Gwen be singled out for the cover of a magazine.

“We were on tour for too long, and we weren’t getting along,” says Gwen. “We thought the saddest thing we could do was a video about the band breaking up, ’cause we really thought we might.” She is insistent about one thing: “It’s not like Gwen Stefani and the No Doubt background loser boys,” she declares. “I would feel naked without them.”

Oh. And all this sex symbol stuff. Don’t even go there. “I think earlier on there were ideas that since I’m a rock chick that I would be some slutty woman, and I’m totally the opposite. People are suddenly starting to accuse me of selling myself, like obviously I knew that ten years down the line if I kept it up, I would make some money off this belly button”

Scenes from an awards show

The camera crews recording the celebrity arrivals at the American Music Awards never even see Gwen Stefani. No Doubt are late, and a snominees for Best New Pop/Rock Artist, they have to be seated. Pronto. No time for photographs. Gwen, very ’40s-cover-girl gorgeous, swoops in, confiding to a friend, “What about my nails not being done?”

After No Doubt lose the Best New Artist award to Jewel, Gavin Rossdale sends an emissary to bring Gwen backstage. Sitting on his lap, she is anything but inconsolable. Soon, however, she looks the slightest bit worried. “My band is probably wondering where I am.”

Gavin and his band, who are nominated for Best Alternative Music Artist, head down to the auditorium with Gwen in tow. “Let’s go and watch the other cunts win,” Gavin says, looking straight at me. “And you can quote me on that.” Smashing Pumpkins take home the trophy. Typical.

It is no small irony that Bush and No Doubt are on Trauma Records. Each band suffers an identity crisis. Bush, who are English, have outlasted their American grunge counterparts; Americans No Doubt are toffee-flavored new-wave ska. In a sluggish musical economy, these bands are a genuine organic phenomenon. Unfashionably pop, they have shifted some ten million units for their label, yet they command nothing but abuse from music critics. Their lead singer are held up to a strange double standard: Too Pretty To Mean It. If misery loves company, Gwen Stefanni and Gavin Rossdale are made for each other.

After the show, they slip off to Beverley Hills for a private party for Bush. When she’s in town, Gwen still lives at home, so her whole family is here, too. Gwen cuddles her baby sister Jill’s brand-new daughter Madeline. Later on, she returns to Gavin’s lap. He holds her gently, one hand just underneath the back strap of the dress he bought her especially for tonight.

I next meet Gwen Stefani for dinner at the swank May Fair hotel in London. No Doubt are here to promote their European tour. She has a Bloddy Mary. (She’s not much of a boozer. The last time was when No Doubt celebrated hitting number one. Tequila shots. “Self-torture,” Gwen deadpans.) She orders pasta and a salad. Healthy. I want something meaty. So I ask her about the men in her life. There are two things Gwen cares deeply about. What her parents think and what her fans think. “I believe that sex is a sacred, private thing,” she declares.

When it comes to the men in her life, there haven’t been many. In the summer between eighth and ninth grade, there was Brad, her first French kiss. He had braces. In band class, she met a bad boy who had hair like Robert Smith and an uncontrollable urge. “Everyday, I would just be fighting him off,” she recalls. Once, she had a mild case of groupie-itis: “I made out with the keyboard player from Fishbone, and he tried to take advantage of the situation and I was not about to, and he got really mad.”

She remembers the day she met Tony Kanal when he came for to audition for the band. “He had on white huarache sandals and white baggy pants, and his hair was out like full funk, like really into Prince. I was really into dark guys then, and he has such a dark sense of humour, I couldn’t help liking him.” For nearly eight years they were joined at the hip. The relationship grew lopsided: She heard wedding bells, he sought space. He was a gentleman, Gwen says. “He did stay with me way longer than he wanted to.” On Tragic Kingdom, they sugar coated the bitter pill of their relationship and created modern bubblegum pop. They still had their friendship, and now they had success. “It’s scary to think I could love Tony so, so much, and that now I can have a life without him. It’s so scary that there’s nothing you can do to guarantee anything is gonna be permanent.”

In February of ‘96, she found herself on the road with Bush. No Doubt’s leg on the tour was supposed to last three weeks. It stretched on for three months. On the third day she knew. “I was worried I was going to have to hide in my bunk,’cause there is no way I was gonna start hanging out with some dude who’s in a band that every girl wants to fuck.” She winces. “Sorry, Mom,” she says into my tape recorder.

The last thing she wanted was another musician. “But who am I ever going to meet who is honestly gonna love me for who I am and not want my money? That’s why I think me and Gavin have hooked up. When we get together, it’s not like we talk about how much money we make and how many hit singles we have. We talk about, ‘Dude, you’re a fox! Quick, give me a kiss’ – like two normal people that just wanna take a break from their work lives and hang out with each other.”

Gavin Rossdale has it all. “He’s the most sickeningly romantic guy I’ve ever met. And on top of it he’s physically perfect – and I’m not even into that.”

Still, he’s a London guy, she’s a California girl. They’re both always on tour. They haven’t talked about their relationship in the press before “because we really haven’t known where we stood. Why should we tell everyone else what’s happening when we don’t even know?” Gwen is certain of one thing: “If I get a crush on someone, that’s that. My whole lofe is directed around that. I can’t help it. I love love.”

Scenes from a childhood

Gwen Renee Stefani was born October 3, 1969. Her first memory is of her older brother Eric stealing Oreos from the kitchen, scraping out all the white stuff and making a ball out of it. She was a girlie girl, playing baby dolls, house and dress-up. Her big brother was “a nutcase,” always drawing cartoons of her and pounding on the piano every morning. “He was the one with all the talent; I was like Eric’s little toy. He forced me to sing.” (I tell Eric this and he laughs: “I’d use the word ‘begged.’ I didn’t take a whip to her. She had a great voice and she was really cute and had her own thing going.”)

Her fifty-something parents, Dennis and Patti, were once in a folk band called the Innertubes. Mom played the autoharp; Dad played guitar. There was a lot of Dylan on the family turntable. “Gnarly,” Gwen recalls. She preferred show tunes: The Sound of Music, Annie, Evita, Kermit the Frog’s “Rainbow Connection.”

She did sports. Water ballet. Soccor. “Mostly for fitness reasons,” she says. “My grandma was one of thos really obese women – I think that really frightened my mom, ya know?” At twelve, Gwen was put on a strict diet. “It was out of my mother’s love for me. I don’t know if that’s so good for a kid to be concerned over that so early. I think it’s haunted me in a way.”

Her Catholic parents were very protective. Before she saw Flashdance, her parents lectured the whole family about the heroine’s sexual mores. For her graduation Gwen had to go to Disneyland instead of the usual hotel parties and had to be home by midnight. Six years ago, her dad took the family on a Roots-like trip to Italy. “It was like strict rules,” Gwen remembers.” ‘ We’re going there to see the churches and the art, and you can’t talk to boys, and you have to wear long dresses with your shoulders covered.’ ” She was twenty-one.

Gwen couldn’t believe some of her school friends hated their parents. Hers did nothing so stern that she had to hurl the F-word at them like some other girls. She did use the word on stage, against her mother’s wishes, at a show that Mom had invited relatives to, and for a week mother gave daughter the silent treatment. I call her mother. “That word?” she asks. “That’s what you wanted to talk to me about? I was quite shocked that she put that in her act. I know it’s really common for young people, but I hated to see her accept it.” At least she isn’t pierced or tattooed, her mother says. “Her fans can go and bleach their hair and that’ll be enough.”

Gwen was daddy’s girl, her mother tells me. So I speak with him, too. Having been a marketing executive for Yamaha, he’d worked with bands, allowing Gwen to meet Sting and A Flock of Seagulls. He was supportive of his son and daughter’s ambitions, but concerned. “Luckily we never had any troubles with her drinking or taking drugs,” he says. “She’s serious about doing the rock-star thing as a profession, as opposed to ‘Let’s go party.’ ”

And what does he think of his little girl becoming a sex symbol? “That’s very troublesome. She’s very self-conscious about the whole thing. I think she’s hit on a trend in society where blatant sexuality is really not what’s happening; the healthy, athletic, happy honest approach is where she’s at, and that’s why people find her attractive.” And her boyfriend? “Gwen’s certainly very emotional, but I have 100 percent confidence in her judgment.”

Scenes from a photo session

In a London photo studio, wearing hot rollers, a sweatshirt that says DON’T TOUCH ME, and with a slight case of “pillow face,” Gwen still looks fresh as a breeze on Sunday morning. I offer her a chocolate biscuit. No thanks. “I’ve started my diet today.” She thinks it’s ridiculous that a few good photos have made people think she has abs of steel. “More like abs of Jell-O,” she says frowning comically.

There are two band photo shoots scheduled, Gwen would like a close-up of the four of them sitting in chairs; the man from New Musical Express sets up a full-length shot. They go through their Madness poses. Gwen focuses carefully on each shot, chin down, eyes wide. Tony jet-lagged, tries to keep his open. Guitarist Tom Dumont lifts his shirt and shows off his belly. “It’s important to be comfortable with your body,” he explains. Drummer Adrian Young agrees. “Let’s all drop our trousers and stand in our boxers,” he suggests. So they do. “You guys are nasty,” Gwen squeals, all boop-boop-de-boop.

Next setup, “What kind of expression does the Melody Maker like?” Gwen asks the the photographer. She gives them plenty, directing the band to follow her lead: “Look dreamy. Cock your heads this way, I’ll cock mine the other way. Now smile. Give him serious pissed-off English faces. Attitude. Oasis.”

It’s almost over. “I have this really good idea that the New Musical Express wouldn’t do,” she purrs as the band sit down side by side in the chairs. “Believe me, you’ll love it.”

Believe me, he does.

In a car, driving from Newcastle to Manchester, I ply Gwen with fresh fruit. She takes out a videocam and films us, introducing me to her parents. “It’s going to be a proper, very educational story. And very ladylike,” she promises. Her voice is tired – she had a problem with nodes last year – so for a while she quietly does vocal exercises that sound like gargling and bees buzzing. She’s a bit embarrassed; I try hard not to laugh.

She’s a delight, sweet and sincere, totally enjoying the success she feared might never happen. “I get my jollies singing on stage. Sometimes I feel guilty, like maybe something’s wrong with me that I need that attention.” Autograph hounds? “No big deal. Unless you’re really busy and trying to buy tampons and it takes forty-five minutes because you’re signing stuff.” That’s Gwen, always trying to please everyone: Her mom. Her fans. Her band. Herself. Sometimes she must feel like Gwenderella at a quarter to midnight.

Later we talk about her place in rock history. In the late ’80s, all the Orange County were punk-rock boys. No Doubt were different: Their herky-jerky ska was fun, their lineup was interracial, and there was Gwen. “At first, other girls would snarl and be jealous, like, Why does she have the right to even be up there?” Now, Gwen notes, “there’s this real bond that happens and it’s kinda like girl power. They can come to our shows and get in the pit and feel aggressive.”

It isn’t always empowering. When No Doubt played a pro-choice benefit, the not-very-political Gwen told the audience, “If I got pregnant right now, I wouldn’t get an abortion. But isn’t it cool that nobody can tell me what I can and can’t do?” Afterward, she says, “the organization was like, ‘We would’ve never asked Gwen Stefani to be involved if we knew she was going to say that.’ ” That’s hypocritical, says Gwen. “They were pro-abortion, not pro-choice.”

She also has discovered that even in the late ’90s, boys will be pigs. At one concert, she was singing “Just a Girl” and heard the audience chanting. “I’m like ‘Cool, they’re really getting into it.’ And then all of a sudden it’s ‘Show me your tits!’ I’m up there making a point about how I fell being a chick. Even though maybe the song is not as cool as a Courtney Love song, it is my life and how I’ve been meant to feel throughout ten years of being in a man’s business, and suddenly they just totally miss the whole point and I just feel like a whore. Like, what am I doing up there in front of all these boys with a little top on? Maybe I’m asking for it, you know?”

She’s been through worse in the ongoing soap opera of No Doubt. There was John Spence’s suicide nine years ago. “When you’re that age and you don’t even know the person is having problems, it comes as a complete shock.” The band was constantly on the verge of breaking up. After their quirky, not very listenable debut flopped, they persevered. They had a loyal local following (Gwen’s red vinyl Contempo Casuals dress from the cover of Tragic Kingdom is enshrined in the Newport Beach Hard Rock Cafe), so they released their own CD, The Beacon Street Collection. “Interscope never knew what to do with us. They were telling us to turn the guitars up and try to be grunge.” Eventually the music business wore Eric down, and he left to pursue a career in animation. (He has no regrets. He’s working in a short film, has a new band, and may write with No Doubt in the future, he tells me.) Then Tony split up with Gwen. “I just had to grow up,” she says. “I had to go whoosh and become my own person in the last two years.”

Scenes from a promotional tour

No Doubt are just getting started in Britain, so Tom and Gwen spent four days visiting radio stations, playing unplugged versions of “Don’t Speak” and “Just a Girl.” (It pays off brilliantly; two weeks later, “Don’t Speak” will enter the UK singles chart at number one.) At Viking FM in Hull, put to him by soloing on his guitar. On their way out, off the air, Gwen says goodbye to Cameron, the wacky DJ, in her best rock-chick manner: “Thanks for playing our fucking record!”

At Hallam FM in Sheffield, she does a spirited, sarcastic version of “Just a Girl” and a hushed, poignant rendering of “Don’t Speak.” Eyes closed, utterly confident, she warbles, scats and sing-sobs her way through the song.

Afterward in the lobby, she stands in her full-length leopard coat, looking like Bonnie without her Clyde. (Gavin picked it out. “I said, ‘What am I going to do with a pimp coat like that?’ And now I wear it all the time.”) She’s starved. “Dude,” she tells Jasper, the jolly promo guy from the record company, “my stomach lining is digesting itself.”

We buy sandwiches at a gas station minimart. Tom and I spot a headline on a men’s magazine: BRIDGET FONDA PUTS THE ASS IN ASSASSIN. We open it and look; Gwen doesn’t. Later she tells me that she doesn’t think pornography should be banned, it just makes her feel sorry for everyone involved.

In the car, she says, rather tongue in cheek, “There’s a new controversy.” Tom and Tony were offered the cover of Guitar magazine without her and Adrian. “Of course they’ll do it,” Gwen says. We talk about how No Doubt was offered the cover of Rolling Stone, and how the magazine’s readers’ poll ranked the group as the second-best new band while its critics named them the third-worst. “That’s stupid. Don’t put both in then,” she says. “It just makes the magazine look dumb.”

We arrive in Manchester to discover that Bush are playing two hours away. Despite her gruelling schedule, Gwen wants to go. Her logic is compelling – “Dude, I do this all the time. I’m a rock chick” – but in the end she’s too exhausted. At dinner, Gwen consoles herself with a sip of red wine and some passion-fruit sorbet. “Whatever you order for dessert,” she warns me, “you’d better be prepared to give up a forkful.”

Maybe it’s the diet she’s on, maybe it’s just the way she talks, but it strikes me that every time Gwen tries to explain No Doubt, she uses unappetizing food metaphors. The group is a “watered-down version of Two-Tone.” The record, a “salad of stolen devices.” No Doubt is “dessert: We don’t claim to be a main meal.” It’s as if she is apologizing for making music that’s so delicious. I chide her for it. She takes the bait. “We never claimed to be saving the world with this – these are pop songs. But they also are songs from my life. So if you say they have no depth or meaning, it’s like, well neither does my life, and neither does that whole horrible time period of breaking up with the boy of my dreams. It’s like, Fuck you.” Which, in its way, is like punk rock. And her mom may not like it, but it’s also very, like, Gwen Stefani.

Back in early 1987, Gwen Stefani was a pretty well adjusted high school junior who loved the early 80’s ska band Madness. And she shared a fascination for The Sound Of Music soundtrack album with her older brother Eric. By Jessica Letkemann

“Eric got way too much creativity and motivation when we were kids,” Gwen told Circus about her brother. “He was always pounding on the piano and forcing me to come into the living room and sing with him and stuff like that. He was the one who got me into this. He’s my biggest musical influence.”

It was Eric who coerced his little sister to be in his new band with his high school buddy John Spence. Tony Kanal, who was born in India and lived in England until he was 11, joined the band after hearing that they needed a bassist. Kanal, not long after joining the fledgling No Doubt, was not only their manager, but also Gwen’s boyfriend.

With Spence singing, Gwen singing harmony, Eric playing any instrument he could teach himself (trumpet, keyboards, even accordion), and Kanal bass, the band began playing small gigs like high school talent shows. But Gwen was still very young and her mom and dad wouldn’t let her go out on tour outside of Anaheim, even with Eric there to protect her.

In fact, “Just A Girl,” No Doubt’s endlessly catchy first hit, was inspired by Gwen’s dad worrying about her safety when she was younger.

“I got the idea,” Gwen explains, “when my dad used to yell at me for going to Tony’s house and coming home real late. I don’t think a lot of guys know what a burden it is to be a girl sometimes.”

In the punk-heavy music scene of the time, having a girl in a band didn’t exactly make things easy. For whatever reason, they didn’t get their first real gig until they opened for a band called The Untouchables in nearby Long Beach in 1987.

But Gwen’s gender was soon to be the least of the band’s problems. In December, 18-year-old John Spence shot himself in the head, sending his bandmates spiraling down into depression over his demise, and leaving the band’s future inevitably doomed.

Or not.

Again using his talent for persuasion, Eric Stefani convinced Gwen that maybe she could try being the lead singer. She did not like the idea, but eventually agreed to try it.

It was after Spence killed himself that guitarist Tom Dumont, whose previous band shared rehearsal space with No Doubt, and drummer Adrian Young joined.

Dumont loved Kiss, Judas Priest, and Black Sabbath. Adrian was a Hendrix, Journey, and Steely Dan fan until discovering ska, New Wave, and punk in junior high. Dumont and Young melded with the other two musicians and Gwen Stefani’s two-tone British ska fanaticism. This created an odd mix of influences that would ultimately result in No Doubt’s distinct melting pot sound.

Turning their troubles into energy, the band began playing a smany gigs as they could find. Gwen has said in interviews, time and time again, that No Doubt is a live band, not a studio band. It’s no wonder that within a couple of years the band was opening for famous Southern Californian bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers (whose eccentric bassist Flea produced their original demo) and Fishbone. And once that happened, it wasn’t long before record companies noticed them.

No Doubt was signed in 1991, and their first, self-titled album was released in Febuary 1992 on Interscope Records at the height of the “grunge” revolution. Unsurprisingly, the uncompromisingly happy-sounding reggae, ska, New Wave, funk, and pop wasn’t what the country at large was interested in buying in terms of music and No Doubt sold very poorly.

When it came to making a second album, Interscope got cold feet and tried to discourage them. So without any new releases, they plowed ahead through the early 90’s playing shows and eventually became so frustrated about their inability to release tunes from their increasingly-huge repertoire that they recorded, produced, and released their own offcial bootleg, The Beacon Street Collection. “We had so many songs we knew weren’t going to make it onto Tragic Kingdom – we’d written about 60 – that we decided to put a CD of some of the stuff out ourselves.” says Kanal.

By the time it was released in early 1995, No Doubt had hit an interpersonal brick wall. Gwen and Kanal’s romance fell to pieces and Gwen’s brother, Eric, left the band to become a full-time cartoonist for “The Simpsons.”

Instead of letting these events stop her, Gwen was inspired to become the band’s key songwriter. Where Eric had written a lot of No Doubt’s lyrics before, Gwen stepped in with lyrics that told semi-autobiographical tales of everyday feminism (“Just A Girl”) and failed love (“Don’t Speak”). Interscope was so impressed at their self-made album that they gave the green light for another one, which soon became Tragic Kingdom (released under their subsidiary Trauma Records.)

“We went through some really bad times in the past couple of years – personally and bandwise – and out whole way of dealing with that is humor,” Gwen said. “I think that’s really apparent in the record. Even though things may have been bad, and some of the songs are sad if you really listen to them, there’s still an element of humor to it all.”

Within weeks of releasing “Just A Girl,” the album’s first single, the band were an overnight success. This took nine years in the making, of course. Following up with “Spiderwebs,” and “Don’t Speak,” and touring so hard that Gwen lost her voice, No Doubt quickly became one of 1996’s bigger success stories.

Personal intrigue has also been a subtext to the band’s year in the sun. It’s ironic that the songs inspired by Stefani’s relationship with Kanal are now what is making them famous. And it’s just a little too fitting that Stefani has been rumored to be dating America’s reigning modern rock pin-up Bush’s Gavin Rossdale. When asked by Spin about the status of their relationship Rossdale vaguely explained, “I think that she’s amazing but so do a lot of people. As far as her being my girlfriend, when you’re on tour with someone for three months…”

But personal lives aside, what really counts is still the energy and the band’s willingness (perhaps even need) to put on a great show musically and with a touch of light and fun for anyone who comes.

“Gwen gets the girls into it,” Kanal explains. “With a lot of other bands it’s a testosterone thing. Gwen will definitely get the girls involved, give them songs that are their songs and it’s their time in the pit, whatever. Everyone feels like they’re part of it, nobody gets left out.”

Transcription Source: NoDoubt.com