The singer-songwriter always knew No Doubt would rise again. No matter how long it took. By Randy Lewis

Gwen Stefani may be a superstar pop singer, hit songwriter, fashion maven and role model for millions of girls and young women, but on a brutally hot afternoon late last week, on a loading dock outside a largely empty sports arena in Ontario, she was just a mom, trying to keep her 3-year-old son entertained while she took on an impromptu decorating project.

“I don’t have time to do this, but you know me — once I get obsessed with something . . .,” Stefani said while splattering globs of sky blue, neon orange and electric pink paint across three large squares of white fabric. She and a couple of friends were creating tapestries that will hang in the backstage dressing rooms during the first full-scale concert tour in seven years by No Doubt, the once-scrappy ska-rock group that emerged from Anaheim to become one of the biggest-selling pop music acts of the 1990s and early 2000s.

Nearby, Kingston James McGregor Rossdale, the first of Stefani’s two kids with rock star hubby Gavin Rossdale, frolicked over a separate sheet of material reserved for him. Eager to include his 8-month-old brother, Zuma, in the fun, James (as Stefani usually calls him) plopped his hands on his young sibling’s head.

Inside the 6-month-old Citizens Business Bank Arena a short time later, Stefani, bassist Tony Kanal, guitarist Tom Dumont and drummer Adrian Young were showing pretty much the same childlike exuberance and energy as they bounced around the gleaming white retro-futuristic stage set they were trying out for the first time before the tour kicks off Saturday in Las Vegas.

Following a group hiatus of five years while Stefani put out two multimillion-selling solo CDs, “Love.Angel.Music.Baby” and “The Sweet Escape,” No Doubt is back. From the early box-office response to nearly 60 shows across North America, the quartet is poised for one of the biggest tours of 2009.

During the break, many fans wondered whether Stefani’s solo career would mean the end of the road for the Orange County band that launched her, but in Stefani’s mind there was always No Doubt.

“The day I got home after my tour ended last year, I wanted to do a photo shoot with the group — I thought it was an important thing to do,” Stefani, 39, said during a lull in the show rehearsals. “This is what I told the guys: The plan was I wanted to do the dance record, go on the tour, come home and get pregnant — since I’m a pro at it now because I did it before,” she laughs, before elaborating on her plan. “I’ll write the record while I’m pregnant, then after I have the baby, we’ll go on tour and we’ll have a new No Doubt record. It’ll be amazing.”

Inspiration lacking

All but one part of that plan has worked out. Musical inspiration for Stefani, the main songwriter of such No Doubt hits as “Don’t Speak,” “Ex-Girlfriend,” “Just a Girl” and “Underneath It All,” just wasn’t there after she and Rossdale became expectant parents for the second time.

“It totally didn’t work,” Stefani said. “I don’t know how other women feel, but I lose connection with myself because my body becomes this other vessel for this other human, even after a few months, you don’t have your body back, you’re not yourself. I was feeling not very modern, not very creative.”

After a few months of fruitless writing sessions, Stefani, Kanal, Dumont and Young decided the best thing they could do to get the creative juices flowing again was to follow the path that had first served them so well: Go out and play.

“We’re not calling it a reunion tour, because the band never broke up,” manager Jim Guerinot said.

Disbanding “was never discussed,” Dumont, 40, said on the first of several days of band rehearsals in Ontario. “In fact, it was specifically discussed as ‘Let’s not be one of these bands that breaks up and gets back together.’ We don’t hate each other, it’s just time for a break. Gwen had some real specific things she wanted to do with the time.”

The last time No Doubt toured was in 2004, performing just more than a dozen shows in conjunction with a hits compilation, “The Singles: 1992-2003.” It was 2002 when the group last mounted a full-scale concert tour, following the 2001 release of its last studio album, “Rock Steady.”

That’s when Stefani realized she had some career steps to take outside the parameters of the band she joined as a teenager, entering the group as “Just a Girl” singer before taking over the role of chief songwriter after her older brother, Eric, left the band to pursue his dream career as an animator for “The Simpsons.”

Following No Doubt’s 2004 tour, she intended to put out just one, as she often called it, “stupid dance record” on her own. “Love.Angel.Music.Baby” sold 4 million copies in the U.S. and yielded hit singles including “Hollaback Girl,” “What You Waiting For” and “Cool.”

Guilty feelings

What she hadn’t figured on was doing a follow-up, which left No Doubt in limbo a couple of years longer than the musicians initially anticipated. During that time Stefani also launched her phenomenally popular L.A.M.B. fashion line.

“All I know how to do is follow my inspiration,” Stefani said in a separate interview in her dressing room. “That’s why I did those dance records, it’s where I wanted to be. . . . I really didn’t plan to do the second one. I felt guilty about it, and it was a real scary conversation to say, ‘Listen guys, I feel like I’m this close to another one, it’s really what I want to do right now.’ They were really so supportive and thank God I did it, because that tour was so rewarding, such a great thing for me to do.

“But as soon as I finished that second record, literally it was during mastering of that record I was like, ‘I know I need to do another No Doubt record now. I’m done with this.’ ”

While their celebrity band mate toured and appeared on one magazine cover and TV talk show after another, Kanal, Dumont and Young kept busy. Kanal collaborated with other songwriters, he and Dumont produced recordings for other artists, Young kept his drum chops up guesting with a variety of bands on the road and in the studio.

Dumont and Young also started families of their own, something Kanal and his girlfriend of 6 1/2 years hope to do as well.

“For the first time ever we have our own buses,” Kanal said. “That’s purely out of necessity because Gwen’s got her nannies and the babies on her bus, and Tom has his wife and his nanny and baby, and Adrian his wife, nanny and their son. That’s going to be an interesting dynamic, a little bit of a change, by default. It’ll be interesting to see how all that plays out.”

New fans

No Doubt is finding it illuminating to pick up where the group left off five years ago. Earlier this month the group played a couple of warm-up shows, minus the full stage production that will be unveiled publicly on Saturday.

During the band’s headlining set two weeks ago at the Bamboozle Festival in East Rutherford, N.J., Stefani asked how many in the crowd were seeing the group for the first time.

“I was just in so much shock by the amount of hands that went up,” Stefani said. “I’m still sort of like: Did they understand the question? Because it was like the whole audience. . . . I still don’t know if maybe they heard me wrong or what, but it was kind of exciting.”

Manager Guerinot says he hasn’t been completely surprised by the enthusiasm he’s witnessed so far. “They’ve been away for five years,” he said. “Gwen had spectacular success in the interim, people remember this band as a tremendous live attraction and I think there’s an awful lot of pent-up interest in whether we’d see No Doubt again.”

The group has sold out four nights at the 15,000-capacity Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine – they’ll play July 31 and Aug. 1, 2 and 4 – and three L.A. shows at the Gibson Amphitheatre in late July.

All four band members say they aren’t interested in milking the nostalgia circuit, and that they consider this tour a steppingstone in the creative process, much like the way they operated in the beginning, before their 1995 album “Tragic Kingdom” transformed them into one of the world’s most popular acts.

“It feels so much more right than I thought it was going to feel,” Stefani said. “Physically it feels right – I feel powerful again, I feel modern again. And I have my little baby, and everything feels so great in that kind of way. And on top of that, the welcome we’re getting: Selling out the four Irvine shows, we’re feeling bigger than we’ve ever been.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ve uploaded two great new PSDs from shoots of the Love Angel Music Baby promo shots and NME UK both from 2005. If you would like to make a request for PSDs just leave a message in the chatbox >>>

All the PSD downloads are now actual PSDs and not transparent PNGs as before. Happy downloading!!

She’s got it all -hit records, a hot clothing line, a new fragrance and a rocker husband who cooks for her. No doubt about it: Gwen Stefani is living it up, especially when she’s just hanging out backstage with baby Kingston. By Jancee Dunn.

At a recent stop of Gwen Stefani’s Sweet Escape tour, the centre of attention is making quite a scene backstage. Shrieks pierce the air. Objects are flying. It’s not Gwen, of course. It’s one-year-old Kingston, happily throwing his toys around the room. The singer has brought her son along and he has adapted admirably to road life. “Although this morning he woke up at six,” she says. “And I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to die right now’. I definitely don’t get enough sleep, but I’d rather spend time with him. I’ve got this extra-fun, amazing little guy who just wants to hang out with me.”

Usually, backstage rooms are fetid and depressing, but not this one. You’d never know it was in Omaha arena, It’s done up in a crisp black and white: the walls are papered with a graphic pattern the chic sofa is black and a huge vase of white lilies sits on the coffee table. Kingston’s adjoining room is decorated with light blue, checked fabric and his crib is piled with a rainbow of stuffed animals.

“I really do have it luxurious out here,” Gwen says happily. As she reclines in a chair, the 27-year-old looks effortlessly glamorous, a Horst photo come to life. She wears a fitted red and blue striped blazer from her L.A.M.B clothing line, dark skinny jeans with a high waist and vertiginous caramel stilettos. Everything about her glows and gleams: her platinum hair gathered in a high ponytail, her ruby manicure, her creamy skin, the jeweled ring on her finger. Today, only two thirds of her family is here: her husband, Brit rocker Gavin Rossdale, who often comes to the shoes, is at home in LA working on a solo album. (The couple recently sold their Los Feliz digs for a Beverly Hills mansion formerly owned by Jennifer Lopez.)

Gwen grins as Kingston spots her visitor and lurches over with a sunny smile. He’s wearing blue trousers and a pink and white checked shirt (“His father bought him that”). A happy child with ginger curls and his mother’s dark eyes, he attempts a wobbly walk. Gwen picks him up and summons the nanny. “We won’t get anything done otherwise,” she says as he begins to wail. “He has always been easy-going and chill, but now he’s going through a real clingy phase.”

The singer turns her attention to a pile of new handbag samples from L.A.M.B. “I’m so excited about these,” she says. Gwen is the girliest girl imaginable. It looks for a moment like she’s going to toss them giddily into the air. She pulls out a green bag with gold studs. “This looks disgusting,” she says (translation: it’s gorgeous). As she rummages through them, US rapper Akon, who is her opening act, wanders in and seizes the green one. “Yo, this is crazy. These bags are so classy, man,” he says. “This is so dope.”

“It’s sick!” Gwen cries. L.A.M.B (named after her mantra “love, angel, music, baby”) launched in 2004 and has grossed $100 million over the past four years. The latest edition to the empire is Gwen’s fragrance, out this month, called L (short for “L.A.M.B” and “love”). A beguilling mixture of rose, lily of the valley and sweet pea (like the one her mother grew in her backyard), the scent was designed to be fresh, clean and feminine. “I wanted to be strict in making sure that I’d really wear it,” she says. “I don’t want to lie and say ‘It’s great’. Same with the clothes – I’m doing it for me.”

And the juggernaut rolls on: soon L.A.M.B will launch denim, watches and shoes. “I never thought I would get in this deep,” Gwen says. “Like, I’m panicked.” It’s all part of a larger plan. Although she continues to crank out such hits as “4 in the Morning”, she’s started designing for the next phase in her life. “I wanted to do something that was more creative but wasn’t music, because I don’t think I can do this forever. I’m already in shock that they let me do music this long,” says the singer, who had her first hit with No Doubt in 1995 (the album Tragic Kingdom sold 16 million copies worldwide).

For Gwen, music and fashion have always been intertwined. She grew up in Anaheim, California, the second of four children. her father Dennis was a Yamaha marketing executive, her mother Patti, a homemaker, who nurtured Gwen’s interest in making clothes. A good Catholic girl, she held on tightly to her femininity, even as she stomped around the stage in Doc Martens. “I’m the girl who would wear baggy jeans but not forget to put on tons of make-up,” she says, recalling her look from the band’s video for “Just a Girl”.

Gwen served as frontwoman for 17 years, seven of which were spent dating band-mate Tony Kanal (their break-up inspired several hits including “Don’t Speak”). In 1995, she met Gavin when No Doubt opened on tour for Bush, the British rock act he fronted. She was instantly smitten and they married seven years later. In 2004, she went solo for the exuberant dance disc Love Angel Music Baby and during the tour, Gwen discovered she was pregnant. She kept her secret from the fans, but as she grew larger and her breath grew shorter, she struggled to change into nine costumes a night. Often, she would burst into tears before going on stage. “It was terrible,” she says. “I was bloated and I just felt so gross.”

But in comparison, this tour has been “shockingly fun”, says the new mother, in no small part because it’s a family affair. Before her shows, she sings lullabies like “Twinkle, Twinkle” to her son as she puts him to bed. “But he sings a lot to himself. He’s just getting into music. he does the whole head-bouncing thing.” She sighs. “I love him so much. He’s the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

And because Kingston’s along for the ride, she and Gavin haven’t missed any milestones, though they don’t party like most rock stars. For Mother’s Day, they attend a brunch – complete with ice swans on the buffet table – at the golf resort where they were staying. For Kingston’s first birthday, they celebrated at Otto, a popular haute pizzeria in New York. “My parents flew out and Kingston had pizza; it was really cute,” she says. “My parents live for kids. That’s all they really care about.”

Gwen fully plans on giving her folks more grandchildren. “Obviously I’m in a race to have another, but I don’t want to do it while I’m on tour,” she says. “And I want to do another No Doubt record. But I can’t wait to get pregnant again. It’s so fun and consuming and romantic.” Gavin, she says, has fully embraced fatherhood. “He’s super into being a dad,” she says. He has also mastered another domestic art: “He’s a creative cook. He makes whatever I crave, even when nothing seems to be left in the fridge”.

Cooking is one of the few things she can’t do. “When I was backstage at her LA shows,” recalls Gwen’s longtime friend Vicki Lovine, author of The Girlfriends’ Guide to Pregnancy series, “out stepped Gwen looking magnificent – and she’s just nursed the baby! Hello! She’s bigger than life. How about: ‘I can bring home bacon, fry it up in a pan and do it in 7in platforms and nurse a baby in one hand’.” She laughs, “Gwen’s no ordinary human being but she’s a real human being.”

It’s true: even with her incandescent star quality, there’s still something of the nice OC mall girl about Gwen. Her on stage persona is flirty, but it never strays into raunch. “Everyone’s in such a rush to show they’re sexy,” she says. “Anyone can be sexy. We all have the same body parts. It’s pretty boring.” She shrugs. “Life’s not so short that you need to give it all away in five seconds. That was never my thing.”

Instead, she went for more innocent pleasures. As a kid, she would race home from school with her friends, eager to play dress-up. “I’ve always loved beauty. I was the girl who was, like ‘Ask your mum if we can play with clothes and make-up’,” she says. “I could do that for hours. And you know what? I’m doing the same thing now that I was doing when I was ten.”

Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale seem to be bucking the trend for celebrity nano-marriages. So how do they manage it? It’s not easy, Gwen tells Grazia on the eve of her UK tour. You should see her phone bill…

“We see each other here and there,” Gwen Stefani says of her husband of five years, Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale. “But we’re always on the phone. He understands what being on the road is like and so he knows how to cheer me up when he senses that I’m tired and a bit down. It would be much tougher to do this if I didn’t have a man like that in my life.” Having been on a grueling world tour for the past six months that has seen her sell out arenas from South America to New Zealand, Gwen know all about coping with long-distance love. In fact, she recently confessed she’s envious of the close relationship the couple’s 15-month son has forged with Gavin, whom she married in a pink and white Galliano dress in 2002. But today she’s in a philosophical mood: “I don’t think it’s any harder for me than it is for any woman who has a career and a family,” she shrugs. “As you get older, you’re better able to balance all the ups and downs and deal with tensions that come between you and your partner.”

And this star couple know about tensions. Their relationship was tested to the limits back in 2004, when it was revealed that Gavin was actually the biological father of his godchild – model Daisy Lowe, now 18. Daisy’s mother Pearl, has claimed Gavin has had no contact with his daughter since the discovery, but Gwen remains tight-lipped and its the only topic she refuses to discuss in interviews. “Gavin and I have had our rough patches,” she concedes, “but now we know how to live together and be together much better. That comes with time, patience and just being there for the other person.”

Time, however, is something Gwen doesn’t have an abundance of right now. Since having Kingston, the 37-year-old has managed to combine breastfeeding with releasing her second solo album, promoting her fashion line L.A.M.B and launching a new perfume – and that’s on top of the sold-out arenas to play. In fact, since she took an extended break from her band, No Doubt, in 2004 to release her debut solo album Love Angel Music Baby, she’s barely stopped.

Although she might appear to be a superwoman in ever present crimson lipstick, Gwen admits that, in her own time, she’s far quieter and more introspective than you might expect. “I think about things very deeply,” she confesses. “I can go through moments when I’m down and a bit despondent and I don’t really know why… My saving grace is having Kingston with me. That grounds me and makes me feel so much more secure, just having him in my arms and seeing him laugh and smile.”

And the good news is that fresh from taking to the catwalk with his mum at New York Fashion Week, the always immaculately dressed Kingston is coming to Britain in a special cot on her tour bus. Indeed, motherhood is the one thing Gwen seems truly in awe of; the one thing, perhaps, that she might be willing to slow down for. “It’s been something I’ve been wanting ever since I was a teenager,” she says. “I’ve always known that one day I would start a family and finally that dream has come true. But you need to be in the right place emotionally and spiritually, we’ve become a family, it’s going to be interesting to see how things evolve from here. I know I want more children, it’s just a question of when really.”

First, Gwen has a tour to finish, before returning to LA to start her next L.A.M.B collection. Inspired by watching her mum make clothes for her as a child, the range is Gwen’s chance to indulge and lifelong passion for fashion that even saw her make her own high-school prom dress. “I’ve always wanted to do something with that side of my creativity, but when music took over my life I wasn’t able to focus on that anymore. But I always tried to find interesting clothes and looks whenever I went on tour or did videos. My fashion line was something I was going to do sooner or later, and finally it came together and sales have been really good. Almost too good – [now] I have to come up with new designs and concepts!”

In the flesh, the star is softer and warmer than in her videos; and she’s not quite so perfect under the heavy make-up she usually performs in – but is somehow prettier for it. Her pancake-flat stomach (she bats away compliments modestly) and long, sinewy limbs catch our attention too – it’s hard to believe she’s had so much as a carbohydrate, let alone a baby. “The best thing about touring is that I’m back to my pre-baby weight!” she laughs. “Last time I was touring I was pregnant and felt horrible on stage. It was very tough. This time it’s much easier. It’s performing in front of thousands of fans one moment, and playing with my little boy the next. Plus, I don’t have to tidy up when I’m staying in all these fabulous hotel suites! This is the life I’ve wanted so I’ve just got to pace myself, conserve my energy when I’m not on stage, and enjoy the journey I’m on.”

Yes, this is a woman who doesn’t intend to waste a second: “I could see myself staying at home playing with Kingston,” she begins, “but after a week, I’d go crazy and wonder why I wasn’t doing something.” She smiles brightly. “I have a fantastic life and I’m never going to complain about how success is a drag. It’s not.” How very refreshing.

She’s got it all -hit records, a hot clothing line, a new fragrance and a rocker husband who cooks for her. No doubt about it: Gwen Stefani is living it up, especially when she’s just hanging out backstage with baby Kingston. By Jancee Dunn.

At a recent stop of Gwen Stefani’s Sweet Escape tour, the centre of attention is making quite a scene backstage. Shrieks pierce the air. Objects are flying. It’s not Gwen, of course. It’s one-year-old Kingston, happily throwing his toys around the room. The singer has brought her son along and he has adapted admirably to road life. “Although this morning he woke up at six,” she says. “And I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to die right now’. I definitely don’t get enough sleep, but I’d rather spend time with him. I’ve got this extra-fun, amazing little guy who just wants to hang out with me.”

Usually, backstage rooms are fetid and depressing, but not this one. You’d never know it was in Omaha arena, It’s done up in a crisp black and white: the walls are papered with a graphic pattern the chic sofa is black and a huge vase of white lilies sits on the coffee table. Kingston’s adjoining room is decorated with light blue, checked fabric and his crib is piled with a rainbow of stuffed animals.

“I really do have it luxurious out here,” Gwen says happily. As she reclines in a chair, the 27-year-old looks effortlessly glamorous, a Horst photo come to life. She wears a fitted red and blue striped blazer from her L.A.M.B clothing line, dark skinny jeans with a high waist and vertiginous caramel stilettos. Everything about her glows and gleams: her platinum hair gathered in a high ponytail, her ruby manicure, her creamy skin, the jeweled ring on her finger. Today, only two thirds of her family is here: her husband, Brit rocker Gavin Rossdale, who often comes to the shoes, is at home in LA working on a solo album. (The couple recently sold their Los Feliz digs for a Beverly Hills mansion formerly owned by Jennifer Lopez.)

Gwen grins as Kingston spots her visitor and lurches over with a sunny smile. He’s wearing blue trousers and a pink and white checked shirt (”His father bought him that”). A happy child with ginger curls and his mother’s dark eyes, he attempts a wobbly walk. Gwen picks him up and summons the nanny. “We won’t get anything done otherwise,” she says as he begins to wail. “He has always been easy-going and chill, but now he’s going through a real clingy phase.”

The singer turns her attention to a pile of new handbag samples from L.A.M.B. “I’m so excited about these,” she says. Gwen is the girliest girl imaginable. It looks for a moment like she’s going to toss them giddily into the air. She pulls out a green bag with gold studs. “This looks disgusting,” she says (translation: it’s gorgeous). As she rummages through them, US rapper Akon, who is her opening act, wanders in and seizes the green one. “Yo, this is crazy. These bags are so classy, man,” he says. “This is so dope.”

“It’s sick!” Gwen cries. L.A.M.B (named after her mantra “love, angel, music, baby”) launched in 2004 and has grossed $100 million over the past four years. The latest edition to the empire is Gwen’s fragrance, out this month, called L (short for “L.A.M.B” and “love”). A beguilling mixture of rose, lily of the valley and sweet pea (like the one her mother grew in her backyard), the scent was designed to be fresh, clean and feminine. “I wanted to be strict in making sure that I’d really wear it,” she says. “I don’t want to lie and say ‘It’s great’. Same with the clothes – I’m doing it for me.”

And the juggernaut rolls on: soon L.A.M.B will launch denim, watches and shoes. “I never thought I would get in this deep,” Gwen says. “Like, I’m panicked.” It’s all part of a larger plan. Although she continues to crank out such hits as “4 in the Morning”, she’s started designing for the next phase in her life. “I wanted to do something that was more creative but wasn’t music, because I don’t think I can do this forever. I’m already in shock that they let me do music this long,” says the singer, who had her first hit with No Doubt in 1995 (the album Tragic Kingdom sold 16 million copies worldwide).

For Gwen, music and fashion have always been intertwined. She grew up in Anaheim, California, the second of four children. her father Dennis was a Yamaha marketing executive, her mother Patti, a homemaker, who nurtured Gwen’s interest in making clothes. A good Catholic girl, she held on tightly to her femininity, even as she stomped around the stage in Doc Martens. “I’m the girl who would wear baggy jeans but not forget to put on tons of make-up,” she says, recalling her look from the band’s video for “Just a Girl”.

Gwen served as frontwoman for 17 years, seven of which were spent dating band-mate Tony Kanal (their break-up inspired several hits including “Don’t Speak”). In 1995, she met Gavin when No Doubt opened on tour for Bush, the British rock act he fronted. She was instantly smitten and they married seven years later. In 2004, she went solo for the exuberant dance disc Love Angel Music Baby and during the tour, Gwen discovered she was pregnant. She kept her secret from the fans, but as she grew larger and her breath grew shorter, she struggled to change into nine costumes a night. Often, she would burst into tears before going on stage. “It was terrible,” she says. “I was bloated and I just felt so gross.”

But in comparison, this tour has been “shockingly fun”, says the new mother, in no small part because it’s a family affair. Before her shows, she sings lullabies like “Twinkle, Twinkle” to her son as she puts him to bed. “But he sings a lot to himself. He’s just getting into music. he does the whole head-bouncing thing.” She sighs. “I love him so much. He’s the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

And because Kingston’s along for the ride, she and Gavin haven’t missed any milestones, though they don’t party like most rock stars. For Mother’s Day, they attend a brunch – complete with ice swans on the buffet table – at the golf resort where they were staying. For Kingston’s first birthday, they celebrated at Otto, a popular haute pizzeria in New York. “My parents flew out and Kingston had pizza; it was really cute,” she says. “My parents live for kids. That’s all they really care about.”

Gwen fully plans on giving her folks more grandchildren. “Obviously I’m in a race to have another, but I don’t want to do it while I’m on tour,” she says. “And I want to do another No Doubt record. But I can’t wait to get pregnant again. It’s so fun and consuming and romantic.” Gavin, she says, has fully embraced fatherhood. “He’s super into being a dad,” she says. He has also mastered another domestic art: “He’s a creative cook. He makes whatever I crave, even when nothing seems to be left in the fridge”.

Cooking is one of the few things she can’t do. “When I was backstage at her LA shows,” recalls Gwen’s longtime friend Vicki Lovine, author of The Girlfriends’ Guide to Pregnancy series, “out stepped Gwen looking magnificent – and she’s just nursed the baby! Hello! She’s bigger than life. How about: ‘I can bring home bacon, fry it up in a pan and do it in 7in platforms and nurse a baby in one hand’.” She laughs, “Gwen’s no ordinary human being but she’s a real human being.”

It’s true: even with her incandescent star quality, there’s still something of the nice OC mall girl about Gwen. Her on stage persona is flirty, but it never strays into raunch. “Everyone’s in such a rush to show they’re sexy,” she says. “Anyone can be sexy. We all have the same body parts. It’s pretty boring.” She shrugs. “Life’s not so short that you need to give it all away in five seconds. That was never my thing.”

Instead, she went for more innocent pleasures. As a kid, she would race home from school with her friends, eager to play dress-up. “I’ve always loved beauty. I was the girl who was, like ‘Ask your mum if we can play with clothes and make-up’,” she says. “I could do that for hours. And you know what? I’m doing the same thing now that I was doing when I was ten.”

New album? New tour? A possible No Doubt reunion in the near future? No problem. But this time around, Gwen Stefani’s got a baby on board.

Gwen Stefani wanted to be sure that her return from a between-albums hiatus was going to be, well, a wind-up. “I was thinking about how you disappear and come back, and I’m kind of coming back from being gone a minute,” Gwen hollas back over dinner at hip London eatery, Nobu. “The idea was to focus on the word ‘escape.’ I started thinking about the idea of Houdini. His whole gimmick was that his wife used to kiss him and pass the key through her mouth to him, and he would escape from his traps.”

Pry as we might, we can’t exactly confirm whether Gwen and husband Gavin Rossdale [Ed: Swoon!] are well-practiced in such techniques themselves, but we do know one thing she can’t escape from: her status as the coolest California Girl in popular music.

While we here at Instinct don’t throw the two words “gay icon” around lightly, loyal readers know that not only is Gwen one of three total females to grace the cover of our prestigious circular, she’s the only one to do so twice. Draw from that what you will.

But thrilled as she is with this honor, Gwen’s got a crowded laundry list of chores to busy herself with after dinner; Album promotion! L.A.M.B. fashion shows! Baby Kingston! The Harajuku Girls! so let’s get to the inquiries.

Between its nod to Japanese fashion culture and retro, legwarmer beats and melodies, Gwen Stefani’s first solo album, 2004’s Love. Angel. Music. Baby., seemed to hit shelves-and iTunes-at the right time. Not only did it go on to sell seven million copies, but it’s pom-pom-shakin’ sass anthem, “Hollaback Girl,” became the first million-selling digital single. But Gwen’s not one to go down the same road again.

“All my inspirations were completely different on this record,” she says. “On the last one it was all about the 80s-inspired dance music-the music I danced to growing up. But this time, I was over all that and felt like I was in a whole different place. I called the record The Sweet Escape, which is basically a song on the album. But it was a perfect name for the album because the music takes you away, and it’s definitely a dancey, poppy, sugar-coated set of just delicious ear candy.”

INSTINCT: Somehow, a wig seems to have found its way atop your head lately.
GWEN STEFANI: The visual theme is all inspired by Michelle Pfeiffer’s character in Scarface-very glam, straight-angled-cut blonde bangs with the big eyegear. Also, my new logo is basically a “G” that looks like a wind-up key. It also kind of looks like a guitar. We kind of play on that whole [Houdini] story, with it basically being the key to getting off the dance floor.

Speaking of gear and accessories, where’s the love with L.A.M.B., your fashion line, Gwen? There’s not a darned thing for us boys to wear! You can’t forget the boys! I didn’t mean to leave the boys out.
I will definitely speak to my team about that. You’ll be the first to know. Look out!

Hmmm. Anyway, you worked with the incredibly dashing Tim Rice-Oxley-the keyboardist from Keane-on The Sweet Escape.
I wrote “Early Winter” with Tim, who I love. I discovered [Keane's] first record when it was given to me. I was actually sent a couple tracks from them for my last record. Do I want these tracks? I was kind of like, I don’t know. At the time, it just didn’t feel right. But this time around, I just really wanted to have a ballad on this record, you know? I know this sounds funny, but I wanted to write “Eyes Without A Face” by Billy Idol, or, like, “Killing Me Softly” or “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper. So I got together with Tim, who’d never written outside of his group before. I can describe him like Superman. He looks like Clark Kent. He’s really handsome, but in a subtle kind of way. We wrote three or four songs together, and “Early Winter” was the one that I liked. It’s beautiful and it’s so addictive. I’m very lucky to have worked with him.

Let’s talk about this sample of “The Lonely Goatherd” in your new single, “Wind It Up.”
It’s just a dream I’ve always had. The Sound Of Music is one of my favorite, favorite movies of all time, and one of my biggest inspirations is Julie Andrews. I don’t know, something about that film, it’s just touched me over the years, and so I’ve referenced it a million times for other things. I did a whole session with [producer] Pharrell [Williams] about a year ago, and we wrote four tracks that were all amazing. The first one was “Wind It Up.” I took the track and, against his will [Laughs], had a friend of mine do a remix with a mashup between The Sound of Music and “Wind It Up.” I actually cried! I know that sounds ridiculous, but it was so good and so fresh and amazing.

And now you’ve single-handedly introduced a new generation to the Von Trapps!
I know a lot of people probably don’t know The Sounds Of Music, and hopefully this is my way of sharing something that I think is really great. Maybe people will go out and watch it. It’s a really good film.

Stefani, along with No Doubt-the Anaheim-based band she fronts-leapt out of the O.C. and into the homes of ten million record-buyers a decade ago. Their biggest hit implored us not to speak, but really we just couldn’t stop talking about how varied the group’s sound was.

“I grew up listening to a lot of different styles of music-everything from the LA punk scene to the local ska scene,” Gwen remembers. “Ska was a major part of No Doubt’s sound. I also remember bobbing along to pop or dance ditties I’d hear on the radio. I work really hard to try and reach into different genres, so I hope that comes through.”

Around the time of No Doubt’s early success, Stefani met Gavin Rossdale, lead singer of Brit-rock act, Bush. The two eventually married in 2002, and this past May, seven-pound Kingston James McGregor Rossdale was born in Los Angeles. Shortly after, as all brand new mothers do, she made a beeline to the studio to finish her sophomore solo album.

“I didn’t have the luxury that I had before, where I would just stay up all night,” Gwen says of the sessions. “I would go in to record and have the nanny there. She had to sit right there with the baby while I did this. I am very blessed because he’s such a chilled little guy. He’s seen me do my makeup four thousand times! He’s been in every studio in LA, every studio in New York, every studio in London. He’s been on a jet. He’s been on a helicopter. He’s been everywhere!”

And as jet-setting Kingston racked up frequent flier miles, mom finished the album, and is now preparing to hit the road yet again this April (her 2005 Harajuku Lovers tour was chronicled on a recently-released live DVD). “We’re going all over the U.S. and the rest of the world,” she says. Then, smiling toward Kingston, she adds, “This time around I’m going to bring something along that I didn’t have on the last tour.”

Let’s face it; your husband is hot! Please tell us he’s got at least one flaw.
Oh, you don’t have to tell me! He is amazing and supportive not to mention gorgeous! Also, he’s a wonderful father. What more could I ask for?

It’s been nearly six years since the last No Doubt album came out. Is there any truth to the rumors of a new project with the band in the next year?
A girl’s gotta have some secrets-wink, wink! I’m sure at some point we’ll be doing something. Right now all I can focus on is The Sweet Escape and the upcoming tour.

The last tour was your first one without the rest of No Doubt by your side. Did that affect you?
Definitely! It was a real adjustment in the beginning. I mean, I had the same guys beside me for 20 years, so it’s a totally different experience. And to some extent, it’s a different energy that you give as well as receive from the audience. But I started to find my ground and a whole other level of confidence in myself as the tour progressed. It was a real challenge, but it was also a great learning curve for me as a performer.

What can we expect from this new tour?
Complete mayhem! A lot of costume changes, of course, and just a great party. I’ve upped the crew, so there are a lot more people on stage dancing with me. I had a lot of fun auditioning the new dancers-four girls and four yummy boys! It’s really energetic and up. The production design is going to be quite elaborate.

Speaking of performing, say, for instance, you woke up one morning and realized you’re actually a drag queen, and you’ve got ten minutes before you go on stage. What’d your name, and how would your act go?
[Laughs] Hmmmm. How about Anna Heim? My act would cover a wide range of styles, from early ska/reggae classics to Broadway classics and a few ’80s dance tunes. Don’t forget the red lipstick and platinum blonde hair. Oh, and great backlighting! Always great backlighting.

Despite her hectic life, apparently flawless husband and that whole business of being a “superstar,” we still can’t shake the feeling that, at the heart of it, Gwen’s the kind of down-to-earth girl we’d love to pal around with. This leads us to wonder, Had we been BFFs roaming the halls of high school together in the ’80s, what kind of naughty shenanigans would we get up to?

“Oh, maybe hit a few clubs in the neighborhood, or maybe hang out at the house and watch one of my favorite movies,” she ponders. “I used to enjoy dancing and checking out new music while growing up. I don’t get to do that as much. Now I just love to hang out with Kingston.”

Ah, yes, Kingston, the small, cuddly reminder that Gwen Stefani is, after all, just a girl in the world. “I dedicated the album to him,” she points out, gathering her son up to leave. “I just want him to grow up and look back and to know how important he is. He’s just, like, the most delicious I’ve ever seen, I have no words for him. Isn’t he yummy?”

Both The Sweet Escape album and the Harajuku Lovers Live DVD are out now.

She’s So Unusual

GWEN ON ONE OF HER BIGGEST INFLUENCES GROWING UP:
“I would have to say Cyndi Lauper. She just blew me away. She really was unusual and unique. Aside from the great songs and the look, she gave you something that came from an outsider’s point of view. She knew what was left of center, and she made it okay for young girls like myself at that time to connect with that within themselves. I got the chance to meet Cyndi six years ago. She came to one of the No Doubt concerts at Irving Plaza in New York. Wow! What an experience!”

All hail the platinum blonde that made pop ace and Akon cool. I sat down with the Californian Grammy winner, who claims this is her last solo album… by Maddy Maspero

Last time you realized you’re an OG in this music game?
[Laughs] Yeah, it’s been a lot of years! I started in No Doubt when I was 17 and we were together for nine years before Tragic Kingdom came out. I’ve had this really long, slow career and I’ve experienced so many different sides to it. At the same time, it’s kind of like, “Oh man, I’m not at the beginning anymore.” But I’ve had such an incredible ride. It’s unbelievable.

Last time you thought about how fab your first solo album was?
You know, Love.Angel.Music.Baby was more like a record I wanted to make in my life. It was a dance record, a one-off. I wasn’t considering a solo career.

Last time someone asked you about your new album, The Sweet Escape?
Er, you, just now! After LAMB, I couldn’t creatively see myself going back, but I had a couple of songs in my computer. I went into the studio with Pharrell and wrote Orange County Girl, Wind it Up and Breakin’ Up. Before I knew it, I basically had a record. I actually ended up writing a lot of it after I had Kingston, which was weird because I thought I was done but I wasn’t. I kind of wanted to make one more. I’m greedy, I guess! I really enjoyed being able to indulge in my chessy, theatrical, fun, cartoony side. As soon as I finished recording it, I felt completed in that world and ready to go do a No Doubt record.

Last time you considered collaborating with your husband, Gavin Rossdale of Bush?
Well, I’ve actually sung a lot of background vocals for him, but it’s kinda like the generic, “Can you sing some background?” I’m in the house and I’m like, “OK”. I don’t know, I always thought it was sort of cheesy to work with your lover! Plus I kinda did that already with Tony so we’ve always kept it separate when it comes to creating things. Except for him (points at baby Kingston). I guess that was really creating something [laughs].

Last time you worked with a UK artist?
Well, Lady Sovereign is on my worldwide tour, and I personally requested her because I really liked her record. There’s not a lot of people right now that I would want to take on tour that mean anything,I just think she’s interesting.

Last time you worked with “hook-for-hire” Akon?
When I went into to work with Akon, I didn’t even know who he was. It was like my label forcing me to go to work with him and I said, “I really don’t wanna work with anyone new right now” so I cancelled it. They were like, “Cancel everything else, but don’t cancel this”. So I went in with him and he’s amazing. There was this instant friendship. We wrote Sweet Escape in, like, five minutes.

So is this really your last solo album?
As far as I know. I can’t predict the future. It’s all about the music and “What am I feeling musically?” I was feeling this ’80s dance record really hard… I just really wanted to do it. In my life, and where I’m at, I don’t want to waste any time. I want to keep doing this as long as I can, as you would if you were me. I feel very lucky and I don’t have any moments to spare. People are like, “Why don’t you take time off?” But why would I?

Platinum pop star Gwen Stefani talks about her hit addiction, yodeling fantasies, and how she kicked her Madonna habit. Now she prepares to conquer the world, with baby in tow. By Joseph Hooper.

You know the story: Blonde Italian-American pop diva, music video eminence, and all-round material girl marries a Brit artiste and moves to England. The relationship hits some bumps along the way, but a baby boy ensues and celebrity life keeps rolling. “It is weird that we have all these similarities,” Gwen Stefani allows as she nestles on a couch in one of the many rooms her entourage has taken in London’s Landmark hotel in mid-November. With a voice that hovers somewhere between sultry and Kewpie doll, the singer has a knack for sounding about seven years old: “Madonna’s had us over to dinner and stuff, and she’s always been very nice to me.”

Undeniably, there is a scale to Madge’s assault on the Old Country, everything from the horsey rural estate to the creeping mid-Atlantic accent. Stefani, by contrast, will lose her flat, half-swallowed Californian vowels when hell freezes over, and anyway, she hasn’t even truly relocated to England; she and Brit rocker husband Gavin Rossdale have for the past 10 years split their time between the house in London’s tony Primrose Hill (neighbors on either side are Jude Law and his ex, Sadie Frost) and a manse in LA. But if Madonna does it bigger, it is no longer heresy to suggest that musically, Stefani does it every bit as well. After 17 years of fronting the redoubtable rock/ska/reggae band No Doubt (she should make the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the strength of one immortal break-up tune alone, “Don’t Speak”), Stefani took the solo plunge. Her 2004 giddy confession of dance tunes Love. Angel. Music. Baby went triple platinum. (“I remember telling Madonna I was going to do an ’80s dance record,” Stefani says, “and she rolled her eyes, because I think when you’ve lived through it like she did, she’s like ‘Whatever.’ But a lot of my influences came from her early work, like directly, like a Xerox.”) That album spawned one monster single, “Hollaback Girl,” a saucy cheerleader chant that taught teenage girls how to spell the word bananas and simultaneously established Stefani’s urban street cred as a white suburban rapper comfortable with the “S” word and with pop-hop notables the Neptunes’ marital beats.

“Gwen was always dope,” says Pharrell Williams, producer and one half of the Neptunes. “If there was an ill black record out there, she knew what is was.”

Linda Perry, the songwriter-producer who made Pink into Pink, says she barged her way onto the Stefani solo team by physically accosting the singer at the Grammy awards in 2004. “I was pokin’ her on the head,” Perry says, “and I was like, ‘Dude, you gotta give me a call for the new record.’ ”

Just last week, Stefani put the finishing touches on her new solo album, The Sweet Escape, which, if industry buzz and early radio play can be trusted, is poised to make a major impact. Less self-consciously retro than it’s prodecessor, The Sweet Escape employs the same working method as L.A.M.B; Lock Gwen up in the studio with a blurry succession of dream-team producers all vying for that one megahit (can you spell bananas?), tape everything, toss it up in the air, and see what sticks. A likely recipe for disaster (which No Doubt purists, partial to human beings playing actual drums and bass, may well judge), but it works, mostly due to Stefani’s feckless, reckless impulse to try anything that pops into her head. Nothing is more out there than the album’s first single and video, “Wind It Up” — typically sinister Neptunes beats and Stefani, backed by a symphony orchestra, singing fragments lifted from The Sound of Music’s “The Lonely Goatherd.” (Yes, that’s right: “High on the hill was the lonely goatherd/ Lay, odl ay odl ay hee hoo.”)

“Some people are freaked out by that yodel,” Stefani confides. “Either people get it or they don’t. But I’ve always had the fantasy of putting The Sound of Music to a beat. I used to quote all the songs like a geek!” (Pharrell, a famous musical minimalist, was less than convinced, but he tells me later, “I just rolled with her. I wanted her to be happy.”) Stefani’s term of art for a tune like “Wind It Up” is a “mash-up,” but, if you wanted to go all High Culture on Gwen, Dada would do as well. Marcel Duchamp has nothing on Stefani, whose brain is as adhesive as flypaper, a trap for pop-culture fragments that almost randomly catch and reassemble.

In her own mind, Gwen Stefani is the Cinderella of pop music. At any moment, it seems, the Landmark could turn into a pumpkin. “The hotel maid walked by today,” she says, “and she’s really pretty and she probably comes from Poland. And here I am about to spend a lot of money on room service and I was thinking, I could have been a maid.” Actually, Stefani grew up solidly middle-class in Anaheim, the second of four kids in a tight-knit family headed by folk-music-loving parents (dad Dennis was a Yamaha marketing executive; Patti was an accountant before becoming a full time mom.) Teenage Gwen was mad for clothes and jumped-up Jamaican-rooted ska music, then enjoying one of it’s periodic rivals. In 1987, her older brother, Eric, formed No Doubt and persuaded his bopping little sister to sing in the band and that, aside from a little college on the fly, would be her life; near-constant touring and a steady romance with the band’s bassist, Tony Kanal. The Cinderella theme kicked in big time with No Doubt’s hit third album, 1995’s Tragic Kingdom (Anaheim being home to Disney’s Magic Kingdom, after all), which transformed the Southern California party band into a pop/rock juggernaut. By then, Tony and Gwen had broken up (providing the raw material for “Don’t Speak) and Eric had decamped to become and animator with The Simpsons. But the band chugged on through 2001’s Rock Steady, by which all four No Doubt members were desperate for a break. (Kanal has since emerged as one of Stefani’s trusted solo collaborators.) As as to whether the success of solo Gwen means the end of No Doubt, Stefani says she hopes not: “I’m looking forward to going back to my little musical family and trying to write a song,” she says. But for the tween girls who are the core of her solo fan base, No Doubt, much beloved by young men, would fall squarely into the “No Clue” department.

With hubby Rossdale in LA recording with Pharrell, Stefani has turned over the London Primrose Hill house to her parents, visiting from Anaheim and eager, like the rest of the inner circle, to get some quality time with their six-month old grandson, Kingston. (“He’s pretty rad,” Kingston’s mom says.) For nine days, Stefani has moved in the Landmark with a small army of publicists and managers, transforming one of the city’s swankiest hotels into a field headquarters for the campaign of a global publicity push behind The Sweet Escape.

“I’m so exhausted,” Stefani announces as she walks into her personal assistant’s hotel room. But just because Cinderella is in a mood doesn’t mean she’s a diva. (“The ghastly thing about her is that she is a really decent human being,” says her pal Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson.) Fame and talent aside, Stefani is the mall girl next door, one who’s very in touch with her emotions. When she’s up, she’s up, when she’s down, she cries easily, and she’s particularly sensitive in matters of personal appearance. Trailed from city to city by a retinue of hair and skin and clothes handlers who have become her intimate friends. (“They are as obsessive as I am and complete mad hatters,” Stefani says), she is still the last word on her high-glam platinum persona that evolved over a decade and a half’s worth of music videos. Today, and all-day photo shoot for another project has let her down. “I started with my hard look – my bangs – but the lighting was like Kmart – ‘Attention shoppers!’- so I had to revise.”

Post-photo-shoot debacle, Stefani has changed into a soothingly rich green tracksuit with the logo of her clothing line, L.A.M.B, running down one side in fancy gold script letters, (She has also launched a teen-friendly line, Harajuku Lovers, her homage to the style-conscious Tokyo girls who hang out in the Harajuku shopping district.) “People always say the same things,” she tells me. “That I’m smaller than they expected and that I look better in real like. Which is kind of a back-handed compliment.”

True enough. The early No Doubt Gwen, the adorable ska kid with a little baby fat, has been updated into a striking 37-year-old woman with angular features and a trim, honed physique. And then there’s the hair, which serves as a kind of Stefani mood ring, never more dramatically than in 2000 when she broke up with Rossdale (temporarily) and opted for the startling pink do that graced the cover of No Doubt’s Return of Saturn. She’s since gone back to Jean Harlow platinum, and over-the-top shade that can be seen to good effect in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, Stefani’s chance to play her Hollywood avatar for about three minutes of screen time, hanging off the arm of Leo DiCaprio’s Howard Hughes, (The movie experiences seems to have slacked her once-ardent film ambitions, but she says, “If Martin Scorsese called me again…”)

Hair color notwithstanding, the past four years have been anything but a cakewalk. After her 2002 marriage to her English rocker, she learned that Rossdale had fathered an illegitimate child, now a teenager, Stefani’s lyrics tend to read like blog entries from her own tumultuous Planet Relationship, so fans interpreted “Danger Zone,” off her first album, as a stinging retort: “Are your secrets where you’ve left them?/ Cause now your ghosts are mine as well.” (In this instance, the fans were wrong; the song was written before the revelation, but Stefani would be shocked by it’s prophetic resonance.)

As for the new album’s gorgeously bleak ballad “Early Winter” (“I can’t fix what you broke”), it turns out Tim Rice-Oxley from the band Keane wrote most of the lyrics and, by all accounts, Stefani and Rossdale are in a positive phase of the moon, thank you very much.) “But [that song] felt weird,” she says. “It felt like I could have lived it and I have lived it. I mean, of course me and Gavin have problems, sometimes. Everyone does. We’ve been together for over 10 years. This is, like, the real deal.” (For more on loving your man in spite of it all, consult “The Real Thing” off L.A.M.B)

In any event, she adds, it’s not like she’s going into the studio these days expressly for emotional catharsis. “I’ll never be as pure as I was when I wrote Tragic Kingdom,” she says. “Once you’ve had a hit, there’s no going back, because it’s so addictive. It’s a drug. I felt I was going back and getting more Pharrell, ‘Hollaback Girl Number 2.’” She giggles. “As you would! It’s not like being ambitious is a bad thing. And I wanted [this album] to be now, to be modern. I want it to be in the clubs. No Doubt was never in the clubs. I want to go out and hear that song pumping in the car next to me. I want bass! I want bump!”

Room service knocks and our tea arrives. “This is perfection,” Stefani says. She may be getting the hang of the England thing after all.

The next day I follow Stefani to the KISS radio station to watch her make nice over the English airwaves. It’s an entourage production, but in addition to the usual handlers we get an appearance by the beguiling Kingston Rossdale, who holds court in the waiting lounge under the watchful eyes of his grandparents. “Kingston is so chill,” Stefani says. “He goes with me everywhere, ’cause I’m still nursing. He’s been to every studio in LA, New York, London. He lives up to his name – total Rasta boy. He gives me real balance. You can go 100 miles an hour, but you still have to stop to hang out with him.” According to Manson, Stefani functions bafflingly well at top speed. “Sometimes you hang out with her and she says ‘Oh God, I had two hours of sleep last night. I was in the studio until 4 A.M. and then up with the baby at 6. Then she throws a big party at night.”

If motherhood is sweet, the pregnancy proved to be an unexpected bitch. “I thought I was going to be one of those Mother Nature girls. I figured, I’ll just squeeze it out,” she says, ” ’cause I’m really strong and I work out and stuff.” Instead, shortness of breath and a host of other physical ills made the latter part of her L.A.M.B tour a nightmare. “I would be seriously crying before I went on stage. I didn’t know how I was going to get through the tour, putting on nice costume changes on a stage in front of 12,000 people every night. And I didn’t want people to know [I was pregnant]. I didn’t want it to become the Gwen Freak Circus Show – ‘Watch it grow on stage.’ ”

Tonight, gearing up for her Sweet Escape tour, Stefani is looking the furthest thing from maternal, in a skintight sweater and clunky neck chain that I assume is a garden-variety hip-hop bling until she sets me straight. It’s a key, she says, formed by two back-to-back G’s, her “Wind It Up” key that’s featured prominently in the video with yodeling and the lonely goatherd and an allusively related Houdini subplot with a struggling Stefani shackled to a chain fence as if underwater. “In the video,” she says, “you can see the key coming out of my mouth. When Houdini used to do his tricks, his wife used to pass the key from her mouth to his mouth. It’s the sweet escape. And I was thinking, The key is the music. It all kind of ties up together.”

Whatever (as Stefani would say), it makes for a cool video. Her new fans are happy to follow her into the woolliest recesses of her imagination, entranced by the fabulous artifice, by the playful tug-of-war between her Jean Harlow and abs-of-steal personas, and by the evident fact that you can be a mega-pop star without the standard issue T & A pander (especially about a zillion preteen girls who take their uncomplaining dads to her concerts.) Something about Gwen Stefani seems to reconcile opposites – humble celebrity, femme jock, surrealist material girl – and has ever since the early No Doubt days when she was the girl in the guys’ band touring the rock dives of America in a van. “I would ‘go off’ in the mosh pit,” she says, “but I was always very glamorous before I dove in.”