Tag: Madness

The Mail on Sunday

Beauty and the Beat

She’s sold over 30 million CDs, got a rock-star husband and likes nothing better than playing music loud on her headphones. So who better than Gwen Stefani to kick off our luxury hi-fi special?

The neoclassical interior of the London private club Home House, with its gold piped organ, gold candelabra and gilt-edged friezes, seems an appropriate place to interview pop’s golden girl. Not least because Gwen Stefani, who lives with her rocker husband Gavin Rossdale in the trendy north London enclave of Primrose Hill, says it was her love for all things British that brought her here from Los Angeles. Read the rest of this article »

There is No Doubt about this quadruple threat

Gwen Stefani: The singer, dancer, actress and fashion designer sees children in her near future

Gwen Stefani, 36, is doing a little short of building an empire. After achieving worldwide success with her band, No Doubt, she is making as a big a name for herself as a solo artist with her debut CD, Love. Angel. Music. Baby.

In between recording and performing, she’s found time to launch her own fashion label, L.A.M.B, and forge ahead in her acting career! But Gwen – who is married to Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale – is also starting to gear herself up for an even more demanding role – as a mother. Read the rest of this article »

Crazy Sexy Cool

When queen of cool, Gwen Stefani, scheduled downtime with CG!, we hit her with your must-know questions on guys, fashion and, erm, bananas…

I love your solo album Love. Angel. Music. Baby. Would you have tried this kind of music if you were still in No Doubt? Louise, 15, Essex
What happened was we’d made made a record and after that we said, “We’re going on a break.” No Doubt had never taken a break in 17 years. So I said to Tony [Kamal, No Doubt bass player and Gwen's ex], “Wouldn’t it be fun to do a dance record while we’re on the break, the sort of fun songs we listened to in high school?” So the idea was to work with new people and then return to No Doubt, but I never thought my solo album would be this successful. Read the rest of this article »

No Doubt! Gwen Stefani tops the top

Gwen Stefani took top honors “Best Female Vocalist” – and No Doubt won “Best New Group” in the 1996 Circus Magazine Readers Poll. By Vinnie Penn

“Peek-a-boo!” is the first thing No Doubt lead singer Gwen Stefani utters when I answer my telephone, and from the way she says it – with a sunshine sweet little giggle – it is obvious from the outset that the native Californian is all girl, a “real girly-girl”, as she puts it. But one thing Gwen Stefani definitely is not, is JUST a girl. And “Just A Girl”, the firecracker first single off Tragic Kingdom, No Doubt’s third full-length record (and second official one for Trauma Records), is a sarcastic shoot ‘em up of that very fact.

Now, over a year after the release of the band’s breakthrough song and pretty much ten years together, No Doubt is a household name, a way of life…in other words: They’ve arrived. Read the rest of this article »

California Dreaming

DATE UNKNOWN: Date above is an estimate

In 1992 LA ska-punks No Doubt released their debut album and no one noticed. Five years later, they’re the biggest band in America and singer Gwen Stefani can’t leave the house without getting mobbed. “I have to get people to slap me in case it’s all been a dream”, she tells Paul Brannigan.

Every time the pretty blonde ventures outside her parents’ Orange County house she elicits the same response from the mall rats and the skate kids. And their slacks-wearing parents. And the old folk smelling faintly of pee.”Hey!” they cry.”Does anyone ever tell you that you look like that girl?”

By “that girl”, they mean Gwen Stefani, effervescent frontwoman with Californian ska-poppers No Doubt. The Gwen Stefani who’s been peering out from all the hip magazine front covers: the sassy, sexy singer who has taken up squatters’ rights at MTV and who’s currently sitting pretty at Number One on the nation’s album chart. And the pretty blonde just shrugs and walks away with a smile. Because in the last twelve months, being “that girl” has never been so much fun. Read the rest of this article »

Get happy!

A tragic suicide. A messy inter-band romance. A flop first album. Gwen Stefani and No Doubt have suffered enough heartbreak to feel your pain, they’re just not all that interested in replicating it.

Smatterings of breathlessly excited, blonde-streaked, sparkle-lashed 14-year-olds litter the backstage area of San Francisco’s fabled Filmore. Oblivious to the portraits of Janis, Jimi, and the Jefferson Airplane scattered around the venue, these girls line up to press tokens of esteem on the recently adopted object of their devotion, No Doubt’s bare-midriffed, high-octane, dreamboat frontwoman, Gwen Stefani. “You inspired me to start my own skateboarding magazine for girls!” enthuses one such acolyte. Then she presents the 26-year-old singer with a painting, thankfully explaining the elements contained therein — “That’s the sky, that’s the river, that’s the castle” — and before anyone can ask “Uh, what is it, exactly?” Stefani gushes gratitude and holds the piece out of me. “Isn’t this amazing?” she gasps. Of course, I find myself with a headful of retorts of the “I can’t tell till you wipe the vomit off” variety. I search Stefani’s eyes for a glint of cynical complicity, find only earnest appreciation, and feeling like grinch, mumble, “Interesting. Very unique.” Another devotee pleads to use the phone in No Doubt’s dressing room. Against the advice of the group’s road manager, Stefani lets the girl in. She rushes to the phone, dials seven digits, and shrieks “I’m in No Doubt’s dressing room!” Read the rest of this article »

A Certain Band

Ska-influenced, it’s everything thrown together into a big mix. It’s energetic.

The view of 805 area code Golden Staters toward Orange County has usually been one of negativity, as in “we don’t want to be like Orange County,” a place so crowded that you need to leave for the beach a week in advance in order to find a place to pay to park. We’re the “before,” Orange County is the “after.” If it weren’t for the street signs, there would be no telling the difference between, say, Fullerton, Anaheim, Garden Grove, Santa Ana, Fountain Valley or Tustin. It’s one big cement city where only the cops in the different cities drive different color cars. Read the rest of this article »