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.

‘I grew up loving British ska bands from the Eighties – Madness, The Specials and The Selecter,’ she says.

‘I also love the way the British guys dressed in old movies. And then there’s the accent – that gets me every time.

‘I’ll always be a ska girl. I went through a period of only wearing black and white a few years ago. Listening to that kind of British music when I was growing up, it was like you had discovered something secret and amazing. No Doubt was just a bunch of people trying to imitate the music that they loved, which was ska. I never wanted to be a rock girl – I have no idea what I’m doing or how I got here.’

Stefani is on a sofa with her entourage. There’s a PA, her manager, her trainer, a security guy from Central Casting’s super-size black doorman template, a fulltime nanny and a couple of other extras. On seeing me she had immediately jumped up and hit me with her 1,000-watt smile.

Stefani’s career has kept her jetting between homes in LA and London. In the US, she is neighbours with another famous globetrotter, though this one is from the car-crash end of the celebrity spectrum – Britney Spears. She shakes her head and winces as she recalls how she – like the rest of us – has followed Britney’s public breakdown, sparked by those brutal shots of her shaved head.

‘It was really disturbing,’ Stefani says in a whisper. ‘It’s so sad. I feel like giving her a hug. I think she may move because of all the grief.

Every day there are 14 paparazzi cars waiting for her. I feel bad for her. It’s tough.’

Stefani knows what it is like to be in the maelstrom of madness that is modern-day stardom. But unlike Spears, she remains completely in control of her life, her family and her moral compass.

In the past few years, Stefani has become one of the most talked-about female performers in the world. After splitting from her band, No Doubt, she has become a multi-award-winning solo star – her latest album The Sweet Escape, released in December, has already sold 2.3 million copies. Her previous solo album, Love, Angel, Music, Baby, sold seven million, delivered four top ten singles in the UK and won her a 2005 Brit Award for Best International Female. And all this solo success comes on top of the 25 million albums she sold with No Doubt.

Every aspect of her life – from her looks to her friends to her marriage – is under the full glare of the media spotlight. But she handles everything with a cool, businesslike attitude and has turned herself into a one-woman, multimillion-pound corporation.

Unlike many other performers who use notoriety to sell records, the clean-living Stefani is far too aware of her image to damage her reputation with drink or drugs. She lived at home with her Irish-Italian Catholic parents until she was 30, and has only ever had two partners, Rossdale and No Doubt’s Tony Kanal. No wonder Courtney Love once said: ‘She can’t be a rocker, she’s too clean.’

When scandal hit in the form of her husband’s ex-lover, Pearl Lowe, claiming that her 18-year-old daughter, Daisy, was Rossdale’s love child, Stefani refused to be drawn into a slanging match. She was devastated when Lowe, the woman most famous for swapping partners with Jude Law and Sadie Frost (Lowe’s long-term partner is Supergrass drummer Danny Goffey), took the paternity battle to court, and it is the one subject that is off-limits today. It is easy to forgive her this one element of control. On all other subjects she is straight and open, and she even offers a good line in self-deprecation.

You can’t help wondering if the court case prompted her – at the age of 37 – into motherhood. Rather than involve herself too deeply in the messy affair, Stefani concentrated on getting pregnant herself, and since giving birth to baby Kingston eight months ago, she has focused on being a good mother. She seems to have led a life devoid of serious pain and says she has easily avoided the dark side of the music business that has cursed Robbie Williams and Britney.

‘I am very naive, but I keep myself to myself and do what I do,’ she says.

Stefani takes her work incredibly seriously. ‘I can spend a whole day agonising over what colour glass to put into my watches,’ she says, ‘and weeks trying to work out one five-second section of a pop video. I totally admit I’m a freak.’ Despite spending almost a decade touring, she is not a woman to be caught stumbling out of a club half-cut in the early hours of the morning. ‘Why would I want to do that?’ she says. ‘I have to get up in the morning. I have to work. This is my job and I want to do it well.’

But there is a twist to all the fame and fortune – and it is the one thing that drives her on above everything else. Gwen Stefani is consumed with absolute self doubt. She is the first to admit that she was not a natural born pop star. At school her nickname was ‘The Frog’, and she only tried her hand at pop when her older brother, Eric, pushed her in front of a microphone to sing with a band he’d put together.

‘I was a fat little nerdy kid who desperately wanted to be cool,’ she recalls.

‘People look at me and they think: “Oh, it’s so easy for her. She’s a rock star. She’s cool.” But inside my head I’m still that little geek struggling to make people like me.’ So imagine her surprise when Madonna called her out of the blue to suggest she bring her husband round to dinner to meet Guy Ritchie. ‘I was stunned,’ she says, ‘Madonna was my idol. Her music was my inspiration. I always admired the way she handled herself, and then there we were having dinner. She talked about what it was like for us American girls being married to these British guys. Guy and Gavin got on really well, too.’

Stefani is often credited with bringing good old-fashioned glamour back to the red carpet. So when the pop wannabes began to copy her style, she simply set up the most successful celebrity fashion line ever, L.A.M.B. (Love Angel Music Baby), worn by Hollywood icons such as Lindsay Lohan, Teri Hatcher and Nicole Kidman, with jewellery and a fragrance to follow. Today, she is wearing Stella McCartney skinny jeans and four-inch-heeled black Yves St Laurent shoes.

Her convict’s top is modishly high street.

The only vaguely glitzy bits are the almost cartoonish items of ‘G’ branding she wears. There is a gold belt with a back-to-back double ‘G’ buckle, and on her right index finger is an oversized, black, diamond-encrusted ‘G’ ring on loan from a jeweller. ‘It’s real and I’m hoping someone will buy it for me,’ she says. Hanging from a gold chain around her neck is the chunky double ‘G’ gold key made for the Wind It Up video.

With all those Gs it seems her insecurity has become part of her branding.

‘I do worry about how I look,’ she says. ‘It takes a lot of effort. Gavin jokes that my lips are permanently stained red because the lipstick hardly ever comes off. But I have to make sure I have it on before I leave the house – who knows if someone is going to take my picture?’ As a child, Stefani’s style was quirky.

‘I’d spend all my spare time going to fabric shops with my mum and getting her to help me make clothes. My prom dress was a copy of the one Grace Kelly wore in Rear Window, and one of the first dresses I sang in was a copy of a tweed dress Julie Andrews wore in The Sound Of Music. I guess I always had different tastes.

‘I wasn’t a girl that guys fancied. I was 10lb overweight and I wore odd clothes.

Then, when I grew, a lot of the weight just shifted up with me, so I was popular enough at the end. But when you have grown up like that, you still think of yourself like that. I’m still super-conscious about my weight – but I’d describe myself as a bit chunky. I’m never going to be one of those women who say I look like I do because that’s how I am.

‘I work out for a few hours every day to keep my shape, and I pay attention to everything about my face and clothes. If I start to slack off it really shows – that little chubby kid starts coming out again and I have to start reigning her back.’

You get little sense of the dark side talking to Stefani. Her approach has always been to do the job and avoid the parties. When she talks about her luxuries, it is the fact that she no longer has to pack. ‘I’m not super-demanding, but I don’t want to pack my clothes any more. Do you know how many times I have packed my clothes in my life? My assistant packs them now. I never want to hang up anything ever again.’

Unsurprisingly, there are plenty of plans – the album The Sweet Escape, a new single of the same name, more designs, a perfume to create and – more importantly – she and Gavin want another baby. But she takes nothing for granted. ‘I am a girl from Orange County who just got lucky. That’s it.’

Gwen’s golden ears

Gwen’s headphones are a unique pair of Kai Sounds SK-900 Ds – she had them gold-plated especially for our cover shoot. The Japanese cans date back to the Seventies but are no longer produced.

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.

With your music and your clothing line, do you ever get a chance to relax?
I’ve had a few seconds to myself. It was weird, and I think that I really brought me down. I was like, “Let me go back to work; I don’t know how to deal with this.” I’m trying to live in the moment and really enjoy this wave that I’m riding.

Do you and Gavin get much time together?
For about the last three years we’ve seen a lot of each other. We’re together most days. But in the previous years, because we’ve been together nine years, there was a lot of time apart because we both were touring so much. But we try not to get too far apart or else that’s when all the disasters come! Stay close, hold hands!

What about having kids?
You know, it’s definately on my dream list. One of the big reasons I wanted to do this dance record was because I knew that my passions were going to change soon and I’m to want to have a family. But right now I’m trying to live in the moment and really enjoy this wave that I’m riding. It’s not up to me, is it? If it happens it happens, it’ll happen when… To me it’s such a miracle anyway, that when it’s suppose to happen to me, I guess it will.

Gavin is British – do you spend much time over there?
We spend a lot of time over there. We had a dog there that passed away, and being over here I think has made it easier on us because somehow it just kind of masks it a little bit.

What inspired you to take a break from No Doubt and start a solo career?
When we did the Rock Steady record, that was probably the highlight for me in the sense that we were such great friends at that point. The tour and everything about it was just so fabulous that I pictured a break was the next thing we needed to do. We have never taken a break from each other at that point. So everybody agreed and I had just gotten married. The band were so committed to each other that you kind of don’t even realize it because it’s just up passion. But it was time.

How did you tell the band?
I said to Tony [Kanal], “I really wanna frickin’ make a dance record,” because I heard a Club Nouveau song, “Why You Treat Me So Bad.” I just thought it would be a fun thing to do, and it was very innocent. Like, Tony would be part of it, we would do it in his studio at his house, and it would just be this thing we were going to do. So we started trying it and it turned into this major project where it was like this challenge I had for myself because I never really wrote songs outside of the group.

What does the rest of the band make of your solo project?
Like I said, everybody was very ready to take a break from each other. Tony was so involved in the record that in some ways it didn’t feel like a huge break. It’s almost like it was out of our hands, like we were sent to each other because the idea that we could actually stay together that long is pretty insane, you know? Eighteen Years! I mean, marriages don’t even stay together that long! I never thought the solo record would turn out as good as it did.

Are you surprised your solo album was received so well?
I never thought the solo record would turn out as good as it did, it has so many different styles on it. I think there’s a nice balance of silly stuff on the record. I mean, the whole idea behind it is that it’s a silly dance record, you know? It was based on the whole Harajuku scene in Tokyo and the idea of self-expression through fashion and being unique and individual. I was on a quest. I was like, ” I know, I’m goin to get some Harajuku Girls and I’m going to roll with them everywhere I go.”

What was the significance of the Harajuku Girls?
It was like my fantasy come true. When I first wrote “What You Waiting For?” I’d written a line in the song and it said “I can’t wait to go back and do Osaka,Tokyo, you Harajuku Girls, damn you got the wicked style.” I was giving them a shout-out basically because they’re wicked.

You’ve had such a long working relationship with your band. Was it hard to adapt to working with new people like Pharrel Williams and Andre 3000?
To get out there and write with all these different people was really hard because you to put your ego aside and you have to get out there and open yourself up to not only new people who you respect and you’re a fan of, but also a whole different culture of music as well. So it was a pretty big trip, I have to say. It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be and my ego had a real problem with it a lot of the time. What really defines me, when I think about myself and what makes me feel good about myself is that I’m lyricist – I write lyrics and I express myself through music, and I write melodies. I don’t know how I’ve ever done it, it’s all a mystery to me, music, like I go, “Wait, how did that song happen?” So the idea of getting in with somebody I don’t know and trying to make that magic happen is kind of risky and intimidating.

But what an amazing experience.
When the magic really did come, it was really unbelievable because the people I was working with were unbelievably inspiring and talented. It was just so amazing after 18 years to get in a room and see how other people do it because no on taught me; it was just instinct and just trial and error. It was really cool to get in the room with Pharrell and go “oh that’s how you do it,” or Dr. Dre and seeing how he does it.

So how did you get into music?
I think what happened was my older brother brought home a Madness record that had one hit, “Our House.” So when we discovered that when we were like 14, 15, that was it! We were in and we thought we had found the coolest thing around. We were really inspired by the whole ska thing, which turned us onto reggae music as well, and then we just said “We’re gonna start a band.” There was nothing else for us to do in Orange County.

Was your family supportive?
My parents were kind of conservative, strict. At the same time they were musicians and I grew up on Bob Dylan. My first concert I went to was Emmylou Harris. So my parents are a little bit of a contradiction because musically they love all kinds of hippie folk groups, but then they’re very Catholic and strict. When we started the band they were very supportive of it being a hobby, but at the same time we were all meant to go to college and be something when we grow up.

You have done so much more than ‘be something’. You did you first fashion show with L.A.M.B this year at New Your Fashion Week. How was that?
It is different whe you know that you’re actually doing a show, you know? It’s a little bit more pressure. I have a whole other accessories line, too. When you put out a record, like with No Doubt, we always have merchandise line. That’s just the way you do it and it’s pretty ordinary.

Where did the name for the L.A.M.B clothing line come from?

I was trying to think of a name and I had a dog, Megan, for 16 years. She was this little stinky dog that I loved so much and I used to call her Lamb. For most of her life she was called Lamb, because she used to follow me everywhere , she was so dependent on me. When she died, I was just trying to think of a name and I call everybody Lamb, like anybody I love, it’s like my pet word. So I just thought it was a good way to kind of let her live on. It’s really hard because it becomes something more that the name it has this whole new life. It just seemed like the right thing and instead of just saying “Lamb,” I wanted each letter to rotate and I would give different names to it, and the first ones I came up with were “Love, Angel, Music, Baby.”

Do you enjoy the process of designing clothes?
The whole design process is something I’ve done my whole life and it fulfils me in the same way as music – you have nothing and then you have something. It’s just a very creative, fulfilling, passionate thing that I like to do. It’s something I’d like to do for the rest of my life and that’s why I started the clothing line. I think that every season it just gets better and better. I still have a lot to learn, though. I’m still totally a baby at it.

So there will be more No Doubt albums?
That’s the plan. I really didn’t know that it would take so long to make Love. Angel. Music. Baby. Then we ended up putting a greatest hits record out and that took up time. We went on tour. It was amazing — we never even thought we would have a greatest hits record out. I never intended for this record to take so long, but I kind of want to ride the wave while it’s out there.

What about acting? You were amazing as Jean Harlow in The Aviator.
I would love to do another movie, like to have a real role – not that that wasn’t – I mean Jean Harlow in a Martin Scorsese movie is not bad! But I would love to do a film. I have something I’m developing right now, but with films there’s so many poeple involved and it costs so much, and there’s so much at risk; I don’t like to talk about it. When it’s coming out, I’ll talk about.

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.

What is it with your banana obsession? Hannah, 15, Boston
I’m very fond of bananas, but not [puts on a stuffy Englsih accent] “bananas!” When we were writing Hollaback Girl I was looking at tons of different cheers. I wasn’t a cheerleader myself, but in the US all these different traditional cheers are sung at games and the banana cheer is a famous one. Well obviously the ’shit’ part isn’t in it!

How do you deal with fame? Where do you hide? Susie, 17, Southampton
I don’t hide. Fame’s one of those things it’s hard to describe until you experience it, no one prepares you. If I’m feeling sorry for myself, or feeling fat and ugly, or any of the things that might put me in a bad mood, I don’t leave the house! I know it won’t last forever though so I just try to enjoy it. I’m lucky.

What’s the best thing about your job? Sophie, 14, Derbyshire
Lately it’s felt like I have a thousand jobs and they’re all great. It’s awesome to get to a point where you’re surrounded by unbelievably talented people and you earned it through years of extremely hard work.

Do you see yourself as a role model? Ellie, 18, West Midlands
After so long in the business I am aware of it. For the longest time it was just people like me at our shows, there wasn’t an age difference, but now it’s so varied. I watch certain words I would have said on stage. You do feel slightly responsible. People have asked me to endorse products, but I’ve said no. But I don’t live my life by it. I don’t say, “It’s my life. I never asked to be a role model.” I just try to be a good person.

Hey Gwen! You’re my total idol, but who are yours? Christina, 14, Ascot
Because of the bands I like, I had tons of guy idols. I was into Madness and a group called Fishbone. I’ve always like Julie Andrews, I’m a huge fan. I’ve met so many people I’ve looked up to. Sometimes, it’s not that they disappoint you, but you lose your fantasy of them a little. But everybody I’ve met has been cool, I’ve never met an idol and thought, “Oh no, I hate them!”

Hi Gwen, can you help with some guy advice? You must have loads of admirers, how can you tell when a guy likes you? Lauren, 15, Leeds
That’s where I can’t help you Lauren, because I’ve only had two boyfriends in my entire life! I’d die if I had to go on a date. I live through all my friends’ love lives and they tell me about flirting and stuff and I’m like “Oh my gosh!” So I don’t have any love advice, I’m afraid. If you listen to my songs you can see I don’t have a clue!

You seem like a strong woman. Who wears the trousers in your relationship with Gavin? Teresa, 15, Lincoln
I think we balance each other out, that’s why we’re in love. Neither of us rules the house. It’s our little sacred world and I don’t give much out about it. But I have to say my husband balances me out.

How do you walk in those ginormous shoes you wear? Fiona, 14, Dundee
I’ve always wanted to wear heels since I was a little girl. Now I’m all grown up I wear them as much as I can. The higher the better. But it definitely takes practice.

What’s all this Harajuku stuff about? Racheal, 17, South Wales
Harajuku is a shopping district in Tokyo and when I first went there I felt like I’d come home. It was like another planet, but the planet I was meant to be on. It’s so cool where kids hang on weekends. They’ve got a real sense of style and it’s all about showing off your personality through fashion. I had a fantasy about getting myself some Harajuku girls and the next thing I knew it was true.

Do you make your outfits? Diane, 18, Peterborough
Yeah, it’s all part of the creative plan. I think the visuals on Love. Angel. Music. Baby. are equally as important as the music. It’s just beginning in a way because I’m starting a clothing line called Harajuku Lovers that’s for the fans. I created a range called LAMB, that’s like my fashion line that is really for me. But Harajuku Lovers is almost like a Hello Kitty line. It’s crazy and cute!

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.

Proof of that fact? How about Tragic Kingdom inching its way into the Billboard’s Top Ten albums chart and staying there after being on record store shelves for a period of time that often sees bands at the same point putting out their follow-up? Or how about the subsequent hit singles that came hot on the heels of “Just A Girl”, like the reggae/rock foot-stomper “Spiderwebs” and the heart-wrenching ballad “Don’t Speak”? Some would even say that doing an arena tour with those other chart-toppers, Bush, was a relatively good sign.

But, to Stefani it’s the little things, like appearing on “The Late Show with David Letterman” (“I still can’t even believe we did that,” says the singer). Not long after our encounter the band even took the Saturday Night Live stage.

“Going to Europe, too, was totally a dream-come-true,” she purrs. “I was influenced by a lot of English bands. I still am. So just to be able to go there was unbelievable. Madness was one of my favorite bands, and I loved going to the places that they wrote about. I was like ‘oh my God, Primrose Hill! Camden Town!

To a couple of kids from Orange County, California, who had been local heroes for some eight years by the time Billboard came calling, a trip across the pond must have been a vindication of sorts. After all, co-founder of No Doubt Stefani’s brother Eric, couldn’t even wait anymore, bailing just before the big time beckoned.

So the cross-country trek was endured as a four-piece: Gwen, guitarist Tom Dumont, bassist Tony Kanal, and drummer Adrian Young. But they prefer to think of themselves as a six-piece, including their two zany horn players.

“They’re amazing,” Gwen boasts. “They put on a show of their own. You could just watch them the whole night.”

As if anyone could take their eyes off Stefani for long periods of time, especially when the tiny ball of fire zips around the stage all night herself. There is no denying, however, that their horns are an integral part of what has become known as the No Doubt sound. Check out the brass blast that kicks off the rocker “Different People,” if you’re still not convinced.

“Well, we always had horns in the band,” she says. “From the beginning we were labeled a ska band and it was never really true because we were always striving to have our own sound. In the past it was always a problem, like ‘how are we gonna market these guys’ or ‘there are too many different styles’. Some reason it just happens to work now and people don’t mind it and kinda like it.

“Like” is putting it mildly. The record-buying public are “Just A Girl” like it was an appetizer, “Spiderwebs” as if it were the main course, and enjoyed “Don’t Speak” for dessert. Seconds is surely an option as well. “Sunday Morning” is a splashy, riff-filled ride, “Excuse Me Mister” a Madness-made free-for-all, and there’s even a taste of disco with “You Can Do It.”

“But, honestly, the biggest deal for us with this little bit of success, is that it’s unbelievable because we never thought this would come out first of all,” she explains. “The goal was just to get the record out and everything else has been such icing on the cake…so sweet. We just really appreciate it. We know it’s going to be gone some day. We’re just trying to take every second of it and go, ‘this is so awesome, so much fun,’”

Plus, it did take three years to make Tragic Kingdom, a disc named in part, after the proximity of the band’s rehearsal space to Disneyland in Anaheim. Doubts of the record’s pending release were especially high since No Doubt’s previous outting was an independent CD in their own label made just because the band felt “frustrated” by the industry.

Not only was the road into the “Tragic Kingdom” a long and winding one, but the road out has been equally arduous. The band has toured tirelessly to support the disc, and the hectic schedule took its toll more then once on Gwen’s throat, most recently putting her out of commission for two weeks. Several shows were postponed so that the platinum-haired power-house could recuperate, which she undoubtedly did.

“I remember when I was younger thinking I would never be hard enough or cool enough or tough enough, you know what I’m saying? You know, being female and all,” Stefani admits.

But she’s plenty tough, alright. So much so, in fact, that the band’s lighter-waving hit “Don’t Speak” was quite a curve ball for some of No Doubt’s ever-growing fan-base, who were becoming comfortable with the explosive nature of the music introduced to them via “Just A Girl” and “Spiderwebs”.

“When you think of restrictions, as far as selling out, and how kids are so fickle,” she says, “you get to thinking about, like, being in a punk band. I mean, my God, if you tried doin a ballad you would just be…forget it! You can’t do it. Being in our band we’re able to do that and I really enjoy being able to do that it’s kinda neat that we can do that. I’m glad that we’re not so punk that we can’t.

No Doubt is one of several outfits, actually-many of whom hark from the Southern Cali sector-that run the gamut from rock and punk to ska and funk on their respective musical maps. Bands like 311 and Offspring are also prolific in these genres.

It’s easy enough to see where the “meeting of the minds” takes place for No Doubt; outside of each member’s reverence for Madness, Kanal came to the table with an affection for Prince, and Dumont was, as Stefani puts it, “Mr. Heavy Metal, arena rock guy.”

Melding these influences is easier then it seems, according to Stefani: “When we wrote the music for ‘Just A Girl’, me and Tom sat down and it was like, ‘lets write a New Wave song’, you know? We’re ten years out of high school and looking back and realizing how rad Devo is. That was the motivation, that kind of choppy guitar.

“Bands that were totally happening and the mainstream back then, I was really into ska and I was like ‘fuck off’ to everyone else. But, there was still millions of songs that I loved. My God, ‘Borderline’ by Madonna…I would just die if that was never in my life at that time. It’s just interesting when you look back at how music goes off and gets renewed and unusual.”

Truly, what Madonna meant to the 80’s. No Doubt may mean for the 90’s. The only one who may have a tough time buying that line is Stefani herself.

“For me, I know myself. I know what a dork I am and where I come from,” she laughs. “I would never look at myself and think that I could have any kinda influence on anyone. I’m just me.”

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.

For the first nine years of their career, No Doubt were in their own words “illegal”. They released their debut album in ‘92 and no one even glanced up from their “We Are Hairy-Arsed Angst Ridden Males” albums. Pissed off and not a little embarrassed, they returned to Gwen’s Dad’s garage and knocked out a self-finaced album entitled “The Beacon Street Collection”. Even their record company didn’t give a toss. At the beginning of ‘96, the dogged quartet-completed by guitarist Tom Dumont, bassist Tony Kanal, and drummer Adrian Young-stuck out “Tragic Kingdom” and hoped for the best.

You probably know the rest: the arena tour with Bush, the three smash hit US singles, “Tragic Kingdom” hitting the top spot just before Christmas, where it has remained ever since, selling a whopping six million copies. Now, things are set to get seriously stupid.

This week, Gwen Stefani wanted nothing more than to reunite with her current beau, one G. Rossdale, on holiday in London. Sadly, the demands of pop stardom being what they are, she will spend large chunks of this ostensibly free time chatting to journalists.  As will Tom Dumont back at home in California. Because No Doubt aren’t just a one-woman band, remember.

At various points in our fat-chewing session, Tom and Gwen will describe their success as “weird”, “brilliant”,  and “fun”. They’re pleased, then?

“So many good bands never even get in the charts, never mind get to Number One”, Gwen says in her sugar-sweet drawl.”So for this to happen after all the years of being a cult underground band is incredible. I have to get people to slap me across the face in case it’s all just been a dream.”

Self-confessed “nice middle class kids”, both Gwen and Tom are extremely polite and pleasant.  And frankly, you could forgive a little rudeness or arrogance from the pair, given that recent K! appraisals of the band have ranged from “lightweight mock rock” to “fronted by the most irritating woman in rock”.

“That sort of criticism still hurts”, Tom says.”I don’t think we’re incredible artists, but I think we have some redeeming qualities”.

“Whatever”,  is Gwen’s placid response.  “Critics aside, it feels so cool for us to be getting some respect from our peers after all this time. We were playing one festival and I noticed that a lot of the other bands were watching us from the side of the stage, and I was like, ‘Wow!’ ”

“Before, we were the nerd band from Orange County, and even people from LA looked down on us because we were uncool and suburban and didn’t take drugs. People laughed at this kind of music when Nirvana were huge”.

Back then, No Doubt were more of a pure ska band, kicked into life when Gwen’s brother, the band’s ex-keyboard player, Eric, brought home his first record by Camden nutty boys Madness.

“Our whole family got into it and it was kinda embarrassing”, Gwen giggles.  “At Thanksgiving, we watched these old videos that my Dad had shot when we were kids, and there was one where the four kids recreated a Madness video. I just looked so awkward and stupid in front of the camera.”

“It’s funny to think that 15 years later I’m still doing stuff like this and people actually take me seriously.”

America takes ska-punk very seriously now too, thanks to the success of No Doubt’s fellow So-Cal skarockers Rancid, Sublime and Goldfinger.
“The whole ska scene in America used to be so underground, and we were happy initially just to imitate British ska bands seven years after they were happening”, Gwen laughs.”But the ska-punk people are so strict with their rules. Our whole attitude was to play whatever makes us feel good. We just stole from everyone-like, ‘Hey, let’s stick that Nirvana chorus with that Specials riff’-to make this big salad of sound.”

This “big salad of sound” has proven very appetizing to American record buyers. Gwen and Tom are extremely modest about their success, claiming they were just in the right place at the right time, as music fans tired of “male-oriented hard rock” sought out something fresh and popular.

“I still take the trash out and clean the toilet just like everyone else”, shrugs Tom.

But then Tom doesn’t get recognized as much as “that girl”.

“I still live with my parents, which is embarrassing I know, and Dads will drop their kids off at our house with a camera and their No Doubt stuff”, she giggles.”I’ll casually open the door and all these little girls will be there, like Trick-or-Treat or something. It’s kinda rude and weird, but I know it won’t last forever and so I just try to enjoy it.”

Oh, stop being so self-effacing.

“We don’t want to be dicks”, laughs Tom.”Coming from that punk scene in California, we’re real careful not to get too full of ourselves.”

So how have your friends and family reacted to No Doubt’s nine-year overnight success?

“We’re pretty lucky because our parents are super-proud for us”, Tom laughs.” My parents have always been really supportive, but now they’re just crazy. They think that they’re stars.”

“Mind you, I haven’t seen my friends for ages, so they probably think, ‘Asshole-now he’s a big rockstar, he hasn’t got time for us’ “.

He’ll have even less time for them this year, as No Doubt are set to tour the world relentlessly. But right now, Tom just wants to chill out, maybe fix up the two classic cars he picked up recently, or jam along with his “amazingly beautiful” new guitars.

While Gwen, who admits to being “so tired I can’t breathe”, simply wants to cuddle up to Gavin and “pretend I have no life”.

“For 13 years we were the band that sat in the garage making fun of everyone on TV and radio. To be in that position ourselves now is a real trip, “she concludes.”I don’t know how good we are, but I know we’re having fun.”

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!”

Such heartwarming scenes of girly empowerment, acted out nightly and with increasing glee during No Doubt’s unlikely climb to stardom, must no doubt be growing commonplace, maybe even tiresome, to the boys in the band: bassist Tony Kanal, drummer Adrian Young, and guitarist Tom Dumont. Once the changing area is finally cleared of teens spirited, the tour members of the group slump on the tone of just another stop on their uphill trek.”I don’t know whether to wear this onstage or not,” frets bassist Tony Kanal. “How does it look?”

Silence.

“You guys, can I get some feedback here? How do I look?”

No reaction.

Stefani sits in the corner wrapping yards of gauze around the foot she broke during a typically combustible performance the previous month. Kanal, meanwhile, doggedly solicits opinion on his choice of onstage apparel, a billowing striped gray jumpsuit that conceals any evidence of crotch and butt. “It’s polyester,” he grumbles, “I’m sweating already.”

“I think you look cute,” says Stefani, finally, looking up from ministering to the throbbing foot that has earned her a Kerri Strug-like reputation for grace under duress.

“You look like Woody Allen in Sleeper“, smirks Young, whose own visual hook — hair slicked up into devil horns — has recently been shorn into a flat-top. The jump suit is jettisoned.

Showtime approaches. And despite the whiff of lethargy hanging over the hallowed room, this clearly isn’t just another stop on the trek. The fifth date on No Doubt’s first-ever tour as a headliner, a double-platinum-plus-and-rising album under their belts, this is major. In recognition of their altered status, the group links arms for one of those arcane collective motivational psych-up rituals. Kanal gives me a look. I make to leave. “You too,” he says. I link arms with No Doubt while they recite their aims for the rapidly approaching show. “Last night was great. I want to take this one to a higher level,” says Kanal. “I just want to enjoy myself because I’m totally selfish,” giggles Stefani. “I’m not going to dance tonight,” promises Dumont. I mumble something about attempting to be less tardy with my rent check. The quartet breaks out of the circle, slam their fists together and, in unison, emit the cri de coeur, “No Doubt!”

Myself, I had doubt. Two fists full. My first fleeting impression of No Doubt was gleaned from their grady presence among the maudlin, slope-shouldered worry warts enjoying MTV rotation. “Who are these prancing nincompoops?” I wondered. “Who is this buff blonde with the dot on her forehead who looks like she’s just been peeled off the side of a WWII bomber?” I harbored such questions because I didn’t quite get No Doubt right off the bat. I failed to immediately ascertain that they trafficked in a commodity called Entertainment. I forgot — and, after the onslaught of a rock’s funeral last five years, and who could blame me? — that groups could be fun, and if they were fun that didn’t automatically make them pariahs or confidence tricksters. I knew what I had to do. I went back to the smash Tragic Kingdom, with it’s rinky-dink keyboards, farting horns, staccato guitars, and vibrato-spattered vocal gurgles, quacks, and squeals. I removed it from the company of Live Through This, Little Earthquakes, and Exile in Guyville, where it stood out like an artfully manicured sore thumb, and filed it next to Parallel Lines, Beauty and the Beat, and She’s So Unusual. That manner of hook-strafed, femme-fronted, quirky radio fodder was once in heavy supply. Now it’s available from a solitary source. No Doubt is the Last American New Wave Group.

It should come as no surprise that Gwen Stefani and No Doubt hall from the last bastion of Anglophilia. Somewhere between the endless blue sky and the manicured lawns of suburban Southern California lurked a lingering discontent that led a generation to seek solace from a colder climate. Countless Cali teens spent their formative years crying in the sunshine to British doomsdayers like Robert Smith, Siouxsie Sioux, and Dave Gahan. The less pallid and passive in the audience spiked their hair and attempted to modulate their vowels in accordance with the rules laid down by the Anti-Nowhere League, the Exploited, and GBH. Others, taken by the porkpie hats, ticking-clock rhythms, checkerboard apparel, and “Rude Boy” pins of England’s 2-Tone movement, adopted ska as the soundtrack of their lives.

Eric Stefani of Anaheim, Orange County, California, was one of the latter group. Among the oddities he brought home from the local import bin was a picture-sleeved seven-inch Stiff single “Baggy Trousers” by Madness. For Eric’s little sister, Gwen, that record was a revelation. Ask her now about her teenage years and she’ll flatly retort, “In high school, the only thing I was really into was Madness.” She fell for their vaudevillian swagger and the way they dealt with the bleak mundanities of everyday English life — taking the bus, standing in the rain, the British school system — all housed in a romping environment.

A Loara High School classmate, John Spence, was similarly stuck on ska and it was he who, in early 1987, motivated the Stefani sis to form a band. The core of Eric’s keyboards, Gwen’s teeny harmonies, and Spence’s hoarse bellow, plus a few makeshift musicians, popped up at a various Anaheim parties. “We sucked,” recalls Gwen, “but for some reason there was automatically this built-in following. People loved the fact that it was a girl, that it was 2-Tone, and it was me and John up there.”

Tony Kanal was born in India, raised in England, and was relocated to California at age 11. He saw No Doubt in their party-band incarnation, heard they were looking for a full-time bass player, and, by the time the group played their first promoted-and-paid show, had become a permanent fixture. Five months later, he was both the group’s manager and Gwen’s boyfriend, neither of which he currently maintains.

In December 1987, Kanal received a phone call from Eric. “He just said, ‘Come over right away.’ I got there and he said ‘John’s dead.’ He shot himself in the head.”

“There was some problems there,” recalls Gwen. “He was kind of in and out of high school. His mom kept taking him out of school. He wasn’t really in with the bad crowd, but his mom was really paranoid about it. For all the years I knew the guy, I only went to his house one time, but compared to my family, The Brady Bunch family, church every Sunday — it was different.”

Alan Meade, described by Gwen as a “disco-smooth dork,” took over vocals until he purportedly got his girlfriend pregnant and left the band to get married at 17. That left Gwen as sole proprietress of vocals.

Tom Dumont, who along with his sister laid down the screaming twin leads for Anaheim metal-lurgists Rising (“That’s Rysing?” I ask, hopeful. “No, two i’s. We didn’t go all out”), joined the group in 1988. Longtime No Doubt audience fixture Adrian Young became the full-time drummer next year.

The group’s burgeoning reputation as a festive line spectacle attracted niblets of label interest, but it wasn’t until Tony Ferguson, a Brit who used to work at Stiff, home of the hallowed Madness, and who now labors in an A&R capacity for then-just debuted label Interscope, that anyone took a serious look at No Doubt. Ferguson brought along Jimmy Iovine, Robert Cort, and Ted Field, the industry heavy hitters behind Interscope, to see the group.

“Jimmy told someone, ‘That girl will be a star in five years.’ That was in 1991,” marvels Gwen.

“It wasn’t a scientific insight or anything,” says Iovine, a music-biz vet whose presence as both a producer and label boss has loomed large in the careers of John Lennons, Bruce Springsteen, Dr. Dre, and Trent Reznor. “They were young. I knew they needed a lot of work. Five years was just a figure. I can’t believe she remembers that.”

Glaring proof that luck laughs at No Doubt came when they set to recording their Interscope debut at the exact same moment from a pungent gust from the Pacific Northwest was about to render their peppy skank about as welcome as a melanoma on prom night.

Packed with reedy rhythms and novelty songs, No Doubt’s self-titled first album was released in 1992. It was instantly embalmed by Interscope. The label withdrew tour support and refused to give the group a green light to record a second album. “But we never lost faith in the ability of Gwen Stefani to become a star,” insists Ferguson.

At the end of 1994, the band finally got the go-ahead to make another record. The album would be known as Tragic Kingdom remained in a cryogenic state of artificial existence for a year after it’s recording. During that time, Eric Stefani left the group — he now works as an animator on The Simpsons — and Kanal relinquished his duties as Gwen’s boyfriend.

Paul Palmer, who had just mixed labelmates Bush’s Sixteen Stone, was drafted in to apply similar sonic skills to Tragic Kingdom. “I thought they were fantastic the minute I heard the music. It was all there, even in it’s roughest stages,” avows Palmer, who was not only a studio doyen but also co-owner of the boutique label Trauma, which had just gone into partnership with Interscope. “I had a feeling about the band I couldn’t let go of.”

In the first sustained slice of good fortune to waft No Doubt’s way since the dawn of the ’90s, Palmer’s enthusiasm saw the group shifted from the Interscope to the nurturing environs of Trauma, where they were, at one time, one of the only three bands on the label. Tragic Kingdom was released in October of 1995. Buoyed by viable record-company, the group set out on tour, which, a year later, is where they remain. Their sweet has borne fruit in the shape of inescapable airplay for “Just a Girl” and “Spiderwebs,” and the Top 10 presence of Tragic Kingdom.

“I can’t believe this is my life,” gasps Gwen. “This is my loser band?”

“You don’t have to be singing songs about angst and pain to be credible,” says Tony Kanal. “We’ve gone through just as much as any band. We don’t choose to sing about it.” He pauses and thinks about his last statement. “Well,” he amends,” maybe we do choose to sing about it.”

“I forced Tony to go out with me,” says Gwen Stefani. “He wasn’t even interested. When we made out that first night, I think he thought it was more of a one-night kiss. But then we started going out and after the first year, I was going, “When are we going to get married?’”

Among the album’s kaleidoscope of styles, moods, and tempos lurk songs celebrating individuality (“Different People”), songs expressing demographic empathy (“Sixteen”), and songs about living in the shadow of Walt Disney (“Tragic Kingdom”). Mostly, though, Tragic Kindom is filled with Gwen and Tony songs. Specifically, Gwen-Left-Heart-Broken-Hearted-by-Tony songs. Vengeful declarations of independence (“Happy Now?”), tear-stained refusals to accept the inevitable (“Don’t Speak”), and the vain attempts to cling to a few shreds of self-respect (“End It On This”). Like Fleetwood Mac and Abba before them, the group’s success has both come at the expense of has openly exploited the heartbreak of a central couple. But while Lindsey Buckingham could pen a stinging critique of Stevie Nick’s perfidy and flakiness (“Go Your Own Way”) and then force the object of his derision to mouth his words, in No Doubt, it’s the otherwise sweet-natured singer who nightly picks the scabs off old wounds for public consumption.

“When we broke up, I still forced Tony to kiss me,” says Gwen. “I was in denial. I might have lost the title of girlfriend, but in my eyes we were still together. For, like, a year, he didn’t have to come to my house when I demanded it. He didn’t have to do anything, but when he felt like it, I was there. It was horrible.”

As female revenge scenarios go, Stefani has landed in an unbelievably juicy position. Imagine, as a dumpee, you wind up worshiped and adored for warbling songs that berate the dumper. And he has to stand there and play those self-same songs! “It’s fucking surreal,” says Kanal. “Think about being onstage playing these songs. I’m opening my personal life up to all these people. But I can’t get attached. I’ve got to separate myself from the music and lyrics.”

“At first it didn’t seem to get to Tony,” says Dumont. “He was like ‘I don’t know, for some reason it doesn’t bother me that all these songs are about me.’ Maybe he liked it. But now I think it’s starting to bother him a little. Some guy wrote an article about us saying, ‘Why is Gwen so sad? What did Tony do to her to make her write all those lyrics?’”

While Stefani admits to phoning Kanal and reciting lyrics to “Happy Now” (“Are you happy now? / You’re by yourself / All by yourself / You have no one else”), this self-admitted Woman Who Loves Too Much maintained intense loyalty to her ex. “Everybody’s like, ‘God, that guy is a jerk.’ which is not fair because he didn’t have his lyrics to talk about me when I smothered him and he didn’t have a life. It must have been hard for him to take when people write ‘How could you leave Gwen, she’s so great.’ But they don’t know me. They don’t see my faults. They just see me however they want to see me. They think I have abs and I don’t. I have fat.”

Lucid and loquacious when holding forth on subjects ranging from No Doubt’s checkered path to Prince’s far-reaching ’80s lineage (he bests me with Tamara and the Seen, I call his bluff with Jill Jones), Kanal’s speech is peppered with pregnant pauses when discussing how he and Stefani found themselves taking up residence in Splitsville. He glances out the window of the Seattle hotel restaurant where we’re having breakfast. Out on the patio, a wedding in progress. He watches as the couple take their vows and it’s possible he’s hearing Stefani’s oft-repeated plea “When are we getting married?” and wondering if she’s up in her room watching the ceremony, maybe even tensing himself for the prospect of her charging across the patio in time to catch the bouquet. He turns back from the exchange of rings and ponders his perception as something akin to a ska-punk Ike Turner.

“It’s very tough,” he admits. “I care about her a lot. I’m not given the opportunity — nor do I want to — to write my own lyrics. But hopefully people with some logic will realize that it wasn’t just me, that it’s not just a one-sided thing. I’m not such a bad guy.”

Stefani claims her post-Tony love life has not been a densely populated affair. But there were those rumors linking her tousle-headed labelmate Gavin Rossdale. “Everyone wants to know about me and Gavin,” she smiles. “We’re just friends. Although he’s definitely cute.” Pondering the dichotomy between her naturally self-deprecatory nature (the inside of her vanity case is festooned with stickers bearing the word DORK) and her sudden ascension to paragon of bare-midriffed yumminess, she continues. “A lot of boys like me now. But it’s not like I’m making out with people, you know, ‘Hey baby, come back to my room.’ I’m the kind of person who would way rather just spend time with my boyfriend watching a movie at home then going out to a party. That’s the way I’ve always been. I’m not used to being on my own, because, like, I’m into it. I think about him all the time.”

Turning plaintive, she sighs, “I want to have a time when I don’t need a boyfriend. But it’s just nature to want someone. There’s nothing better than that.” She pauses for a second then leans towards me. “So what did Tony say about me?”

If existing in an unattached state is taking its toll on the singer, the rigors of the road have left a similar mark on Dumont and Young. As Gwen and I head down to the Quality Inn hotel bar, we come upon the guitarist and drummer locked in each other’s arms, swaying to in-house one-man band Steve Merriam’s haunting rendition of Chris Issak’s “Wicked Game.” Later that night, Young will tell me he’s counting the days till his girlfriend Christine joins him on tour. His anticipation is made more urgent because he’s smuggled a shoeful of mushrooms from Germany for the purpose of celebrating the reunion. As he talks, an inappropriately coquettish, over-40 Asian woman crisscrosses the bar, continually attempting to catch his eye, then making a big show of looking away and laughing. “It’s a lonely life,” he sighs.

Modern Women, a beauty supply store in Bremerton, an hour outside of Seattle, isn’t the most densely stocked outlet in the planet, but its displays of Wella and Clairol are sufficient to elicit an involuntary sigh of happiness from Stefani, who loads up with the shampoo, conditioner, and lip-liner. “I most recently got ragged on for the girly stuff,” she says, referring to reviews that have taken her fondness for cosmetics and naval-displaying stagewear as compelling evidence to impeach her as the sort of pliant, submissive fuck toy of which we should have long rid. “Maybe I should be more of a tough chick. But I’m not. That’s not me. I love makeup. I love getting my hair done. I love getting pedicures. I’m the furthest thing from a rock chick.”

Going on to tabulate further examples of Non-Rock Chickdom, she brings up examples such as her yearly trips Knott’s Berry Farm to see the Ice Capades, her recent trip to Paris where she went jogging without money or I.D., got lost and had to call her friend back in the States to find the address of her hotel and, most heinously, that she still happily resides at home (as does Kanal). “I don’t pay bills. I don’t pay rent. The only thing I pay is my phone bill and my car insurance.” She does, however, harbor vague notions of one day moving to L.A. “If my dad will let me.”

Adrian Young rises from his hotel bed and glances at the golf bag propped up against his table. A dedicated player who prefers his time on the links to his hour onstage, Young’s been practicing for a radio station pro-celebrity game. “I was going to play today, but we’ve got a group meeting,” he says. “A lot of people don’t realize that this is a democracy. They’re like, ‘Ask Gwen if this mix is okay.’ Or we’re doing some TV show and it’s like, ‘Ask Gwen how this feels for her.’ I make fun of these people. I have to do something. I can’t fake it all the time.”

Probably the only starlike indulgence practiced by Gwen Stefani is her predilection for checking into hotels under the pseudonym “Daria Blue.” Nevertheless, her undimmable onstage kilowattage and generous allocation of Personality Plus has singled her out as the group’s Star-with-a-big-S. In the endless obstacle course of their nine-year career, the last and most potentially damaging impediment to No Doubt is that they’re now irreversibly engaged in the process to which experts refer as Becoming Blondie.

Like Chris Cornell, Kim Deal, Eddie Vedder, and uh, Evan Dando before her, Gwen Stefani shines in a solo setting from the front cover of this magazine. Such public acknowledgement for a band member’s ascension from singer to Star-with-a-big-S caused heartburn for the rest of the group. “We want people to know that we’re a band,” asserts Kanal, who is able to recount at some length the number of photo sessions in which he has participated only to open up the subsequent magazine and find himself cropped out. “For many years, we talked about what would happen if we ever got offered this sort of stuff. We’re going to say “It’s the whole band or nothing.”‘ But when you’re actually put in that situation and you see that your friend has the opportunity, maybe the once in a lifetime opportunity, to be on the cover of a magazine, why would you hold someone back from that?”

“Everybody just wants to focus on the girl,” admits Stefani. “I think that’s the one outside stress thing that has come into the band. We’re getting over it. The others sit and bag on me constantly now. Like, ‘On MTV News, Gwen broke her foot last night blah blah blah… and in less important news, Tom Dumont found dead.’”

“This crowd has not yet been rocked.” So pronounced Rob Kahane, co-owner of Trauma Records, gazing out at the vast expanse of pierce-holes and skate wear favored by the audience at Endfest, an annual interment camp with brief musical interludes, sponsored by Seattle’s modern-rock station, KNDD, “the End.”

The previous day, No Doubt played a ramshackle acoustic radio session at the End. Stefani’s voice was ragged (“I’m being visited by a horse”) and Dumont’s playing hand was injured (“Someone asked for an autograph. Then, when they realized I wasn’t in 311, they grabbed the pen back and cut my hand”).

After the set, two starstruck Gwenabees approached Stefani, paying shy homage and asking for tickets to the upcoming dirtbath. She apologized for being unable to accomodate them. They wandered off disconsolately. Then the group’s road manager said he could put them on the guest list. Stefani squealed “Little girls!” and scampered off after them. On hearing of the news, they threw themselves at her like she had attained Fairy Godmother status in front of their eyes. “Work hard, stay in school, don’t kiss boys,” she cautioned them.

I don’t know if those girls were out in the crowd today. Part of me hopes not because they might have caught any kind of disease out there or, worse, the prefunctory sets by Everclear and Filter. But if they were bouncing around near the front rows, they would have seen No Doubt shine among the murk. They would have seen Stefani’s wackiest-ever rendition of “Just a Girl.” Downshifting from the song’s pogomatic power to a skeletal repitition of that niggling opening riff, Stefani adopted scaredy-cat eyes, a trembly-lipped pout — when Laverne wore a similar expression, Shirley referred to it as the “the boo-boo face” — and a cowering posture. Whimpering “I’m just a girl” repeatedly, she prostrated herself on the stage, regressing back to infancy, looking like she might be huddled up in a streaming puddle of pee, until she screwed up her difiance and railed back at the ignorance and oppression of this man-made world under whose heel she’s squashed with a crowd-galavanizing “Fuck you, I’m a girl!” They would have seen Tony Kanal finally sporting his billowing gray jumpsuit. They would have seen the hulking brutes of Goldfinger and Deftones herded on stage to sing along like happy campers with the group’s wedding-band encore of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.” They wold have agreed with Kahane when, at the show’s close, he declared that the crowd had finally been rocked.

“I never thought that me, this loser from Anaheim, could have any effect on anyone,” says Stefani after the show. “I never had any creativity or anything. Then, suddenly, I’m what everyone is looking at. It’s such a strange thing, but it’s so exciting, ‘cause I remember the way those two little girls from yesterday felt. You have to keep in mind, whether or not you feel like shit or whatever. You think that maybe if you bring a little happiness to these kids, they’re going to remember that. Like I would talk about Madness, they’re going to talk about No Doubt? How cool is that!?”

Transcribed by Jenny of Beacon Street Online what a star!

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.

Something far less daunting than a concrete nightmare is coming to us from Orange County Wednesday night: ska-inspired music from those home-grown heroes of the 714 area code, No Doubt. Still, they pack a threat, and it might be worse than traffic, according to singer Gwen Stefani.

“All of us are so close, like a little family,” she says. “We get to play something we made together and show it to other people, but the guys in the band are really stinky. They smell. They’re disgusting. Besides that, I can live with it.”

No Doubt spends quite a lot of time on the road, presumably with the windows down, because there’s not so many places to play in Orange County, which seems strange given the large number of bands there. And maybe we were right all along – from Costa Mesa north to L.A., the only differences are the street signs. It’s L.A. everywhere.

“There’s not really a division between Orange County and L.A.,” says Stefani. “Orange County kids will go up there to see us, but L.A. kids usually won’t come down (to Orange County). There’s a couple of little clubs in Orange County, but we turn down a lot of gigs because we need room for our fans to slam and dance. Most of our gigs are in L.A. In fact, we just had our record release party last night at the Whisky. It was incredible. It was totally packed. We gave away a bunch of No Doubt stickers and No Doubt kazoos.”

But like kazoos, David Lynch, Screaming Yellow Zonkers and the Cubs, ska has a built-in group of hard-core fans that won’t go away, no matter what.

“Originally, we were just a bunch of friends doing a bunch of ska covers just for fun,” Stefani says. “We weren’t serious at all. We were just playing the music we wanted to play. We grew up listening to Madness, so automatically, we played the kind of music we liked. Also, we just got lucky. The ska crowd dug us. The ska scene is really like a cult scene. Ska music is really simple. There’s definitely ska elements in our music, but that’s not all we’re into. We just add stuff to it – just everything thrown together into a big mix. It’s just really energetic music.”