Equal parts punkette and starlet, gwen Stefani is about to go super-stellar. Scorsese’s new star and pop’s hottest hybrid, she’s far from just a girl, says Charlotte Sinclair. Photographs by Lorenzo Agius. Styled by Andrea Lieberman.

Gwen Stefani is half way through our cover shoot when there’s a security breach at the country house that’s serving as our location. While on a tour of the building, a group of blue-rinsed ladies stumble into the music room where Gwen is being photographed. If the peroxide blonde with flowers in her hairs stirs recognition in the octogenarians, it probably owes more to their memories of Forties starlets than any familiarity with the sexy, stylish, stiletto-wearing tomboy who fronts the Californian rock band No Doubt. Gwen is non-plussed, and smiles graciously, arching a perfectly penciled eyebrow at the group as they are ushered outside outside onto the lawn, their chorus of interest (‘Goodness, wasn’t she pretty?’ and ‘Who was that?’) drifting in through the open window as the shoot resumes. The renegade OAPs could be forgiven for their ignorance, but Gwen Stefani – whose currency as a bona fide rock chick, fashion icon and budding actress is already soaring – is about to hit the big time.

A few days previously, I was led into a closed room as St Martins Lane hotel to listen to exclusive tracks from Stefani’s new solo album, Love Angel Music Baby. The clandestine circumstances say much about her exalted status. With the kind of secrecy usually reserved for top-selling global artists such as U2 and Madonna, I was allowed only a supervised listening of three of Stefani’s new tracks, the words of which I had to frantically scribble down before the lyric sheets were snatched back at the end of the session. There was no question of taking the CD home. The album is her ’side project’ – her first record without the No Doubt boys (ex-boyfriend and bassist Tony Kanal, guitarist Tom Dumont, and drummer Adrian Young). As well as representing her solo debut, it marks her initiation into a more mainstream sound.

‘I had a very clear idea of the kind of record I wanted to make, as far as style and sound goes,’ says Stefani later. ‘I wanted to sound like Prince, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam and Club Nouveau.’ But the change in direction is not a snub to No Doubt’s sound. ‘It’s not like, “Gi, I’m Gwen Stefani and this is me; these are my true feelings because I’ve been compromising all these years,” ‘ she says. ‘That was the true me the whole time.’ The songs, upbeat dance tracks with a strong Eighties influence and plenty of attitude, include her first single, ‘What You Waiting For?’, produced with Linda Perry (who has written songs for Christina Aguilera and Cortney Love), and ‘Bubble Pop Electric,’ a frenetic beat-filled track produced with Andre 3000 of OutKast. The Neptunes, Dr Dre and New Order are among other collaborators. Gwen’s voice switches from a tremulous vibrato reminiscent of Kate Bush in ‘Cool’, a wistful song about past love, to a throaty Debbie Harry growl for such lines as ‘I’m itching, wish you could come and scratch me’ in ‘Bubble Pop Electric’.

Stefani’s half-street, half-sweet image reveals the contradictions in her. With an English husband (36-year-old Gavin Rossdale of the rock band Bush), a Primrose Hill pad whose elegance equals her own, and wholesome moral principles, commited Catholic Stefani has a classic, ladylike appeal. But equally, she’s a down-and-dirty riot-grrrl from Anaheim, CA, who has spent the past 17 years playing with the boys and sporadically dying her hair blue. ‘Being a girl in a band,’ she explains, ‘means that I want to do my own hair and wear cute clothes – but, when I get on stage, I want to rock out.’

Gwen has garnered a solid fanbase with No Doubt (with whom she has sold more than 25 million records and won three Grammys), but this temporary break from the band, plus her designs for burgeoning clothing line L.A.M.B, and a small but potentially career-break acting role as Jean Harlow in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, mean that everyone is watching Stefani now. As Missy Elliot, with whom she performed at the 2004 Brit Awards, says: ‘When Gwen does this, it’s not going to be just another record; it’s going to be an event.’

However, if she’s feeling the pressure, it’s not showing. It’s a yawning, sleep-fogged Stefani who walks into the old manor-house for our shoot. Pushing open the huge oak doors into the Tudor hallway, wearing a white tracksuit and trainers, she says in her surprisingly little voice: ‘This place is ridiculous!’ ‘Ridiculous’ and ’sick’ (Californian teen patois for fabulous) are trademark Stefani words that, sprinkled into conversation along with ‘dude’, ‘crazy’, and ‘magic’, make her sound younger than her years. She is someone who is visually defined by her make-up – the indelible slash of red lipstick, the long black Cleopatra kohl line on her eyelids – so her bare face comes as a shock. She stands in the dim and dusty hall, her skin clear and almost translucent, and her face dominated by huge brown eyes. A sliver of her famous washboard stomach flashes at her waist as she pushes away a strand of white-blonde hair from her eyes. ‘She ruined her hair on tour with bleach and hair pieces,’ says her stylist and friend Andrea Lieberman. You’ve got to admire Stefani’s commitment to peroxide. She even dedicated a song to her ravaged locks on No Doubt’s last album (the dancehall-influenced outrageously catchy Rock Steady), called ‘Platinum Blonde Life’: ‘I want a platinum blonde life/So I keep bleaching out the color.’

Against the back drop of faded glamour, Gwen plays the imperious and errant lady of the manor for the camera. She sings along to one of her new tracks, ‘It’s My Shit’, standing on the lawn in a floor length silver sheath dress.’ ‘Damn,’ she shouts over herself. ‘This song doesn’t match my dress.’ Stefani plays her part with élan, at one point standing in a revealing silk basque, throwing her head back, her hand on her forehead in mock faint, as 16 spectators look on. ‘Oh my God!’ she yells cheerfully on seeing the Polaroid. ‘Dude, I look like a mannequin. I had to wear this dress yesterday that was so tight my kidneys were squashed to hell,’ she adds. ‘It was amazing.’

Gwen Stefani has been experiencing a renaissance over the past couple of years. At 34 years old, she has become the kind of celebrity whose presence in the front row of a show lends instant kudos to the designer; gossip columnists adore her. At a time when Chloë Sevigny and Sarah Jessica Parker are revered for their offbeat fashion sense and quirky looks, it’s no wonder that Gwen, who can carry off dancehall-inspired ragga wear and Louis Vuitton prom dresses with equal ease, has become a style leader. And all without losing a shred of musical credibility. A collaboration with Moby, the ghetto-fabulous parody ‘South Side’ brought her to a new dance audience in 2000. Moby said: ‘She’s incredibly technically proficient and just a really remarkable singer.’ And last year’s hit, ‘Let Me Blow Ya Mind’, produced with rapper Eve, gave her approval with the hip-hop crowd, and further cross-genre appeal. The Eve video, the first for which Stefani used a stylist (‘Before that I always did everything myself’), also launched her new look: a slicker, slimmer Gwen whose colourful style had been refined with ‘that bling R’n'B lustre’, according to Danny Eccleston of Q magazine.

Sitting in a dusty armchair in an attic room filled, appropriately with vintage costumes, Gwen Stefani is voluble, launching straight into the story of her album. ‘I’m just going to go for it, OK?’ She is refreshingly honest and artless throughout, readily admitting her insecurities in going solo. ‘I don’t really know why I’m doing this record, either,’ she says. ‘I’m just as scared as the fans are for me, and I have been uptight about the whole thing. But I just want to do it.’ Stefani also understands how exacting her standards are. She tells me about a quarrel with Linda Perry over a song they wrote called ‘Wonderful Life For Him’ about Stefani’s first high-school crush, who died a few years ago. ‘I wasn’t finding the right way to say it, and Linda wrote these lyrics and it was the last straw. I was PMS-ing and just wanted to break out in tears,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘So I left and didn;t go back. But months later when I listened to the song again, it was beautiful – so I ended up recording it.’ She smiles, contritely spreading her hands.

A highly ambitious perfectionist, last year she launched herself into a punishing, itinerant recording schedule. ‘I wanted to take time off to get inspired but I was really feeling the clock. The ongoing joke between me and my husband,’ she says, rolling her eyes, ‘is that we went on vacation to the South of France when I got off the Tragic Kingdom tour. That was seven years ago. And there was our five-day honeymoon, which was the only other vacation we’ve ever had.’ And what of Rossdale? The pair met on a No doubt tour in 1995, when Stefani was 25. After a somewhat shaky courtship (during one break-up, Stefani famously dyed her hair pink, cut a fringe and got braces on her teeth), they married in 2002, once in St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden (‘by a Church of England vicar who was Gavin’s religious-studies teacher’) and once in LA; Gwen wore a John Galliano dress at both ceremonies. ‘It’s great to be married,’ said Gavin at the time. ‘It makes us feel our love is a lot deeper.’ I ask her how she copes with having a long-distance relationship. ‘For years, we were apart, which I think is a great thing when you’re creative people. Anything more than three weeks is really screwed up, and causes problems. But we know that it’s not going to be like this for ever,’ she says. ‘I think marriage goes in spurts. Sometimes you just can’t take it anymore and then, all of a sudden, you’re in love like you just met again.’ Babies are high on Gwen’s list, although when she will find the time is another matter. Fans have expressed concern about whether the couple will have enough time to devote to raising a child. ‘We’re just as worried about it as they are.’ says Stefani. ‘But it’ll happen when it happens.’

Stefani was born in 1969, into a musical family; her childhood memories are of her parents playing Bob Dylan and folk records. In 1986, she was asked to sing with her brother Eric and friend John Spence’s band, No Doubt. When Tony Kanal joined, he and Gwen started dating – he even took her to her senior prom. ‘My mom remade Grace Kelly’s dress from Rear Window for me to wear,’ she says. She has been with the band ever since. (‘I’ve been famous since I was 17 – I could go into Tower Records and be recognised,’ she says proudly, giggling.) But the band nearly collapsed when Spence committed suicide, and Eric departed. It was then that Gwen found her voice as a songwriter; in 1995 the band produced their hit album Tragic Kingdom, which sold more than 16 million copies. ‘Before, I was this Gwen, the little sister or girlfriend, and I was satisfied with that. I thought I could never have any kind of effect on anyone. Then I learnt I could write songs – I realised I had a talent and a power.’

This creative period also coincided with her break-up with Kanal. ‘Suddenly, I was this independent person who was happy and didn’t have to depend on my lover. Before that, I never really had anything of my own.’ The two have remained friends; the lament that resulted from the experience was the No Doubt hit ‘Don’t Speak’. Gwen really can write. Some of her lyrics are beautiful – for example, the phrase ‘Born to blossom and bloom to perish’ in Beauty Contest’. And with references to Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes and Janis Joplin on No Doubt’s second album, Return of Saturn, Stefani proved herself to be anything but the dumb blonde.

It was the video for ‘Don’t Speak’, in which Gwen is seen moaning plaintively into a microphone, swaying barefoot in a blue polka-dot dress, that kicked off her reputation as a style leader. ‘I got that dress at a thrift store, five years before we shot the video,’ she says. ‘It smelled so bad that I never wore it. It’s a beautiful fabric, that really old rayon that just hangs beautifully.’ Her knowledge of how a fabric hangs is genuine. ‘It’s in my blood. My grandma made all my mom’s clothes, and my great-grandmother always sewed. Then, all through high school, and in the band, I made my own clothes,’ she says. ‘I used to make corset-style drop-waist dresses with a cheerleader skirt. Underneath I wore my boxer shorts, fishnets and Dr Martens. For years, though, I never wanted to talk about my style because I was more concerned with music.’ However, she now confesses that ‘the visuals on this record are as important as the music.’ She now understands the importance of image innately. ‘I had a very clear idea of how I wanted to look, and I prepared for it.’ She relates the story of her first ‘fashion moment’ with the gusto of a true addict. ‘I bought a Vivienne Westwood corset for $800 – with my own money – and wore it in a video. Then I got to meet her, which was like meeting the Queen. I was just like, “Aarrgh!” ‘

Stefani’s style aesthetic serves as a welcome foil tot he homogeneous Britney look predominant in the music industry. Gone is the unpolished grunge look; in its place is subtle overstatement with lots of colour. Knuckleduster rings and hound’s-tooth check culottes mix with McQueen gowns. Her body is taut and muscular, all traces of the ‘chubby child who had to join the swim team’ erased. ‘I’ve always had to work at it. I have a trainer, and when I’m at home I work out five days a week.’ Standing in a Dior dress with built in hips and a bustle, she says: ‘What was the point of all that dieting? On tour, we all went nuts. We were training all day and by the end of it I was like, “Damn!” I didn’t even recognise my own body. I just wanted to do the show naked.’ And does she feel the pressure to stay thin? ‘Beauty Contest’ has the lyrics: ‘How’d my vanity get such a mess/Reduce myself, I’ve got the strict restrictions.’ Gwen sighs. ‘Even if I wasn’t famous, I’d still feel the pressure because I think we all do.’

Doubtless, she forgives John Galliano for the extra Dior-enhanced curves. Her relationship with him is prolific, and culminated recently in Gwen wearing Dior in the video of No Doubt’s cover of Talk Talk’s ‘It’s My Life’, directed by David LaChapelle. ‘I got invited to my first Christian Dior show, and I cried,’ she says, slipping into ditsy LA speak. ‘I could not believe that someone made that look up.’ The respect is mutual. Galliano says: ‘She has a great energy. I love her personal style – she carries it off with such aplomb.’ Gwen leans forward conspiratorially in her chair. ‘I had John over to dinner the other night. It’s so weird; he was describing the whole couture show that he had just done and then today I’m wearing the dress!’

I ask Gwen if the white angora sweater she’s wearing is Westwood. ‘No, it’s one of my fall pieces. I think it’s gorgeous.’ She’s talking about L.A.M.B (which stands for Love, Angel, Music, Baby), the name of her fledging clothing and accessories line – as well as that of her new album – and yet another feature in her cap. Stefani clearly thrives on multitasking. Her design partner, LeSportsac’s CEO Tim Shifter, had his first encounter with Stefani at a Dior catwalk show. ‘Flashbulbs went off and the paparazzi started going crazy. At that moment I really understood what star she has. She is creative, full of ideas, and really has a sense of what her fans want.’ For Gwen, it is a far more selfish endeavor. ‘I’m not trying to impress anyone except for myself. I sit there and say, “What do I want to wear?” Then I make it.’ She giggles, as if she can’t believe her luck. L.A.M.B bestsellers include her punk-inspired bags with metallic zips. More than a mere vanity project, her bags are selling well. ‘For a while, I thought, “Why am I doing this? I just don’t have the time.” But Andrea helped me, and I’m going to keep getting good at it because I want to do it for ever. I’m not going to be dancing around for the rest of my life.’

An awareness of the limited longevity of the female of the female rock star could explain Stefani’s interest in film roles. ‘I’ve never acted but I always wanted to. I’ve tried out for films before [including Fight Club, Chicago and Girl, Interuppted], which is humiliating but fun.’ Having harboured a fascination with the Forties actress Jean Harlow for years, Gwen was ‘on the floor’ when Martin Scorsese sent her the script for The Aviator. ‘I was like, “You’re fucking kidding me!” ‘ she yells. Scorsese had seen Herb Ritts’ photographs of Gwen styled as Harlow, and asked her to come and meet him, ‘and dress like a lady’. The part only involved a couple of lines, but she auditioned in front of Scorsese and Leonardo Di Caprio, who plays Howard Hughes. Not bad for a debut. ‘I must have been there for about an hour, talking about the band and everything, and then they called, and I got it.’ Stefani considers it an auspicious start. ‘In the movie, Hughes gives Harlow her first role, in Hells Angels, so for me it’s like Scorsese giving me my first role… And it’s Jean Harlow, which is just so frickin’ weird,’ she laughs, shaking her head.

Stefani’s father, Dennis, in town on business, turns up to wait for his daughter to finish the shoot. As soon as he arrives, Gwen, standing the grounds in a transparent chiffon Lacroix skirt, starts to act the little girl. ‘I forgot to put my skirt on Daddy, don’t look,’ she shrieks. Between shots, she pleads with him not to read the gossip about her on the internet. ‘They even say I’ve had a boob job,’ she says, looking at her flat chest in horror. ‘You mustn’t read it Daddy.’ Theirs is a close relationship, and he appears quietly protective of her, despite her age. ‘I feel very stable because of my Catholic upbringing,’ Gwen has said. I ask Stefani Snr if his daughter has always been a star. ‘No, she’s always been regular. She never dressed sexy as a teen, not like Christina Aguilera. She had a ska tomboy look,’ he says. ‘She only got style when she started getting famous.’ He smiles, proving that celebrities have embarrassing parents.

For now, Stefani is happy – creatively fulfilled and settled in her marriage. She has even befriended fellow Londoner Madonna, although she doesn’t necessarily see her self as the same kind of feminist role model. ‘I always respected girls who were tough and could stand on their own. But I was making a stand. I was just a normal girl who didn’t know what was going to happen next; the normal one, over there, with the fat butt,’ she laughs loudly, pointing to an imaginary, plumper Gwen in the corner. The self-deprecation is difficult to accept from someone so assured. It’s far easier to believe the sass and ego of her lyrics in ‘What You Waiting For?’: ‘Look at your watch now/You’re still a super-hot female/You got your million-dollar contract/And they’re all waiting for your hot track/What you waiting for?’ Gwen’s face splits into a scarlet smile as she hears her own words. A super hot female? ‘Dude, you’d better believe it.’

Glamorous Gwen Stefani has become the ultimate music icon with that rare thing – a good reputation. Now, as Jonathon Van Meter discovers, she’s setting her sights on Hollywood. Photographed by Steven Meisel

Gwen Stefani’s house in Los Feliz has a vaguely spooky quality to it. The unease I feel when I pull up in front may simply be the result of my having watched Sunset Boulevard one too many times. Or perhaps the damp January chill has something to do with it. In any case, when the high gates swing open, I walk up the curving, rain-slicked driveway. I am greeted at the heavy wooden door by Stefani’s assistant, Pete, an affable young English fellow who is a childhood friend of Stefani’s husband, Gavin Rossdale.

The house was built in the twenties, and Stefani is only its fourth occupant, which is one reason many of its original details remain unaltered. The rotunda-like entry, for example, is dominated by a dramatic spiral staircase (worthy of Norma Desmond herself) with a complicated wrought-iron railing featuring a replica of a Spanish galleon. On the domed ceiling above, there’s a large fresco of once-famous conquistadors. Pete leads me through a dining room lined with dark paintings and bloodred walls, a medieval chandelier hanging over a long wooden table, and deposits me in an enormous kitchen that has been remodeled to look as if it were designed in the twenties—a sea of black and green ceramic tile bathed in warm, low light. There are candles flickering and religious iconography here and there. It’s as if Stefani’s entire home is a kind of Gothy take on old Hollywood.

While I wait for the lady of the house, I look at framed family photographs in one corner. There is a picture of Stefani as Jean Harlow, taken on the set of The Aviator, Martin Scorsese’s forthcoming Howard Hughes biopic starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Though she utters only a few lines in a movie-premiere scene, a cameo in a Scorsese film on Leo’s arm is certainly not the worst way to announce that she is ready for her close-up.

When Stefani appears in the kitchen moments later, her sunny presence throws the Dark Shadows aspect of her house into high relief. As she opens a bottle of Chardonnay, I ask about the photograph. At first she says that it’s the actual Jean Harlow, and even though a moment before I had thought it was Stefani, I fall for it because she does not look the least bit like the rock star we’ve come to know and love. “I’m kidding,” she says. “It’s me!” She seems pleased that I was willing to believe it might be Harlow. “That’s the key, right?” she says. As I lean in to look at the photograph again, she complains about her makeup. “I would have done it a little differently,” she says. “I’m always in control of my hair and makeup. I was like, ‘Are you sure you want the lips to be that thin? Jean Harlow’s were bigger than that. It’s not like I didn’t read two biographies and watch eighteen of her movies before I got here.’ But what are you going to do? They were in control. I couldn’t say anything. It was hard.”

The makeup artist must have been a nervous wreck. Is there anyone in popular culture today who is as identified with her makeup as Gwen Stefani? The powdered, pale skin, the scarlet lips, those high, arched brows. She has a very particular, almost dated relationship to “putting on her face.” She even wrote a song about it a few years back (“If the magic’s in the makeup/Then who am I?”). It’s so rare to see her out of makeup that when she appeared in a recent video jumping on a bed with a naked face, looking just pretty, she was almost unrecognizable. The image appears to be an homage to those famous shots of a natural Marilyn Monroe, another icon who always had her face on in public and on whom Stefani has been fixated since she was a teenager. “My whole room was Marilyn Monroe posters,” she says.

Today Stefani’s wearing a sleeveless T-shirt with wide red, green, and yellow stripes, and a pair of complicated new Levi’s jeans, worn low and long. Lacy underthings peek out from the top of her jeans. On her feet: sweat socks and Adidas flip-flops. Around her neck is a diamond choker that spells out WIFE in Gothic, diamond-encrusted lettering—a gift from Rossdale. Her white-white hair is a marvel of structural engineering, pulled back tight on the sides and piled high up on her head in a kind of squared-off, simulated Mohawk. Like so much of Stefani’s style, the do manages to simultaneously evoke forties Hollywood and early-eighties SoCal punk. It’s quite a trick.

Stefani has just gotten home from an audition for Brian De Palma, the director who’s partly responsible for making it seem as if something creepy lurks behind every gate in Hollywood. His latest project will do nothing to dispel that notion. He is casting The Black Dahlia, a film based on the James Ellroy novel, which is itself based on the true story of a young Hollywood starlet’s gruesome murder in 1947 (her body was found cut in half and disemboweled). Josh Hartnett and Mark Wahlberg have already been cast in the film as two detectives. Stefani tells me that this afternoon she had to read with “some young guy named Josh,” not seeming to know who he is. She can sometimes verge on ditzy, but, to be fair, this could just be a sign that she’s still sort of a stranger to the film world. “It was really humiliating and nerve-racking, but I feel like I did pretty well,” she says. “But I don’t know whether I would ever even do it if they offered it to me because it’s a kind of a racy part.” She amends her last thought slightly: “I know I’m not going to get it, because I think the character is so the opposite of me. She’s really dark and naughty and slutty. And she has black hair.” This is the first glimpse I get of Stefani’s self-image, which, despite her tough-girl stage persona, is surprisingly wholesome, if not prim.

Stefani claims she had never considered acting until she became famous as the lead singer of No Doubt and agents started calling. After she came off of touring for the band’s breakthrough album, Tragic Kingdom, in 1997, she settled on David Schiff from United Talent Agency. “All I ever do is go to parties with him,” she says. “I never do movies.” Spoken like a true Hollywood starlet.

At least he’s getting her through the right doors. The last film she auditioned for was Mr. & Mrs. Smith. “It was between me and Angelina Jolie, and I’m like, ‘Oh, great. I got a shot here.’ ” But then, she says, “the whole acting thing really feels like something I could do. Whenever I’ve done it, whenever I had moments where it works, it’s just like performing. You hit a moment. And that’s what movies are: a series of moments.”

Now we are sitting in her living room, whose artifacts speak to the curious mix of interests in her life, from haute couture to Hollywood history, from reggae to rock ‘n’ roll. The room is dominated by two plain white sofas and a dark-wood baby grand piano. Above the mantel is a huge black-and-white framed photograph of Bob Marley. Next to it is a red neon heart inside a Plexiglas box, a gift from Gwen to Gavin. Nearby are John Galliano’s framed sketches of her wedding gown. And there, in the corner, are Stefani’s two Grammys, to which she can now add a third, which she won in February for “Underneath It All,” a sweetly demanding little song she wrote about Rossdale before they were married. Lying on the coffee table are stacks of art books, including Icons & Idols, Great Hollywood Movies, and a book of Marilyn Monroe photographs.

At the moment, Stefani is curled up on one of her white sofas sipping a glass of wine. Right behind her head is a series of very glamorous Herb Ritts photographs of her and her husband, propped up in frames and lined up in a row on the piano. The images are, in fact, so glamorous that it’s tempting to want to place Stefani in the pantheon with Monroe and Harlow. “Isn’t it weird how there are icons like that?” she says. “Like Jean Harlow. They screened her movie Hell’s Angels for us. She was really bad in it, really awkward. But she’s so magical. She comes on the screen and you’re like, ‘When is she coming back?’ She’s just like this lightbulb. And it’s so obvious that she’s huge.”

Stefani could just as well be describing herself. Sophie Muller, who has directed seven of No Doubt’s videos, says she has “no idea” whether the singer’s prodigious screen presence in music videos will translate to film. “The difference between actors and singers who are great at videos,” she says, “is that they’re great at being themselves, but an even better, prettier, larger-than-life version of themselves. Actors are often people who don’t really know who they are and really love becoming somebody else.” Muller and Stefani first met nine years ago as they prepared to shoot the now classic “Don’t Speak” video. “She came to my hotel room and I just remember that she was all sparkly,” says Muller. “She had diamonds under her eyes and she looked incredibly glamorous. I just knew that she was a big star. You could see that right away.”

At 34, Gwen Stefani can sometimes seem much younger. She still talks in the patois of a teenager, beginning sentences with “Dude!” more often than not. Eight years ago, I briefly interviewed a 26-year-old Stefani over the phone. I had been writing a story about women in rock, and just as I was finishing a draft, I saw a video on MTV by a band I’d never heard of. The song was “Just a Girl.” Aside from the fact that the lyrics spoke directly to my point, I was thunderstruck by this new? person. She was clearly a post-Madonna, ironic blonde; she spent a lot of time in the video pouting and batting her eyelashes but had rock-hard abs, was dressed half like a boy and half like a cheerleader, and stomped around like a bad-ass rocker chick. I thought: I have to talk to her.

Despite the song’s defiant lyrics – “I’ve had it up to here” is the last line, though it’s sung in a cutesy, Betty Boop voice – Stefani claimed at the time to have no idea that it would resonate with feminists and tough grrrls.”The scene that I grew up in,” she said, “with female artists like Bikini Kill and Hole and all these more punk-rock girls, I always had the pressure of ‘You’ve got to be a feminist and you’ve got to hate guys. And you’ve got to cuss and be tough.’ And I was never like that. I grew up, like, a Catholic good girl. Total Brady Bunch family. That always kind of scared me, the pressure of having to be so cool or like, fuck you to the world. But I kind of got over that and realized that, yes, I love to dress up and I love to wear makeup and be myself. I like being a girl; I like having a door opened for me; I like all that traditional stuff and I won’t deny it.”

Nothing has changed since then. As Andrea Lieberman, a stylist who has been working with Stefani for the last couple of years, says, “Gwen is the girliest girl I know. She’s like a giant heart wrapped in a diamond-studded bow.” Stefani’s girlishness seems to be the direct result of the fact that she has lived in the protective bubble first of her family, then of her band.

Stefani was born on October 3, 1969, to high-school sweethearts. Her father, Dennis, who is Italian, worked in research and marketing for Yamaha motorcycles, and her mother, Patti, who is of Irish and Scottish extraction, was a homemaker. Stefani has an older brother and a younger sister and brother who all live in Los Angeles and remain very close. “I was very spoiled compared with a lot of people,” she says. “We weren’t rich, but we definitely had whatever we wanted.” The Stefani household was also very musical. “My parents were into Bob Dylan and were huge lovers of folk music.” Stefani distinctly remembers being taken out of Girl Scouts to go see Emmylou Harris perform at a local theater. Her parents took her to see movies and musicals, including The Sound of Music, which, as she likes to say, “changed my life.” Then there were the inevitable cast albums for Evita and Annie, which she would sing along to. “I don’t have a singer-singer’s voice,” she says. “I know what my voice is. But I knew that, physically, it felt really good.”

As it happened, her father may have been the first to really recognize that her loopy, unpredictable voice was actually rather surprising. “I remember giving my dad a demo tape of a song I wrote called ‘End It on This,’” she says, “and he would listen to it on the way to work and he played it for people. I remember two things he said to me. One was ‘Everybody’s saying that your songwriting is really good and you should just keep going.’ And the other was ‘Don’t ever take lessons, because your voice is really unique. There’s just something about it.’”

Even No Doubt was a family affair. Founded by Stefani’s brother Eric and his friend John Spence in 1986 as a ska band, No Doubt had very humble beginnings. Gwen was invited by her brother to be the co-lead singer; shortly thereafter the bass player, Tony Kanal, joined the band and they began playing small local venues. A year later, Spence committed suicide, and Gwen stepped into the spotlight. She also became the girlfriend of Kanal, a relationship that lasted seven years and whose breakup she has painstakingly detailed in several songs (most famously in “Don’t Speak”). “I was very passive,” she says. “My brother did everything. I was like, ‘I’m just the sister.’ And then after that I was ‘Tony’s girlfriend.’ And that was good enough for me! I never really had any ambitions or goals or dreams.”

When Stefani’s grandmother died, everyone in the band but Gwen and Kanal moved into her house, and it became known as the Band House, cementing the notion that No Doubt was a family. “I look back on the band, our little family, and how we made it into one. We had a lot of rules that we made up. The band was always number one.”

The group slowly and steadily gathered a sizable and very loyal following in Southern California—but there was no game plan. “We never thought we were going anywhere, really; we just wanted to see the next show. It was just a really homemade little fun thing we did literally in our garage.” Their big break came in 1990, when No Doubt got signed by Jimmy Iovine to his then-fledgling Interscope Records. “Jimmy took me aside and said, ‘Gwen, you are going to be a huge star in six years.’ I was like, ‘First of all, who the hell are you?’ And second of all, ‘I’m not going to be in this band six years from now. I’m going to be having fourteen children and be married.’ Then, practically to the day, ‘Don’t Speak’ was number one around the world. It’s pretty spooky. We always laugh about that.”

In 1995, No Doubt went on tour in support of their second album, Tragic Kingdom. Stefani dropped out of school for a semester thinking she’d be gone for only two months. But two months turned into two and half years, and Tragic Kingdom sold 16 million copies. When the tour finally ended, Gwen came home to her childhood bedroom in her parents’ house in Anaheim, older and wiser and rock-star famous. She had outgrown her own life.

Three weeks before I visit her in LA, I meet up with Stefani in London at Home House, a swanky members-only club where she and Rossdale held their wedding reception in September 2002. It is late in the afternoon on a weekday and we are sitting in a quiet, shabby-chic room with a few fussy little sofas and tables scattered about. There are a couple of middle-aged men pretending not to listen, but I can see them peering over their newspapers. Stefani’s wearing a pair of wide-leg pin-striped Gucci pants and a short little tan thrift-store jacket over a very tight Vivienne Westwood camisole and a pair of Sergio Rossi red silk stilettos. Perhaps it has something to do with her getup, or maybe it’s this old-world setting, but the first thing that strikes me about Stefani is that she is surprisingly ladylike.

While Stefani grows tired of being likened to Madonna, the comparison is irresistible. Madonna filtered her Hollywood-starlet persona through the prism of pop; Stefani has done something very similar through rock’n'roll. Like Madonna, Stefani has begun to drift away from a street-punk aesthetic and into the front rows of couture shows. And then, of course, there is the English husband and dual citizenship. In fact, Gavin and Gwen were recently invited over to Madonna and Guy’s house for dinner, just the four of them. “We do have a lot in common,” concedes Stefani.

But while Madonna’s efforts to grow up and act like a lady have always felt a bit forced, Stefani seems innately poised and well mannered. As rough-and-tumble as she gets on stage, Stefani leaves that attitude behind when the concert’s over. There are no Courtney Love histrionics, no Janet Jackson-style wardrobe malfunctions, no J.Lo diva routines. She’s a rare rock star who has it both ways.

Once again, her family seems to have protected her from the worst excesses of her chosen profession, as well as instilled in her a strong set of values. “My mom was really conservative growing up; everything was plain and simple and tasteful, and I couldn’t wait to rip my shirts and cut things up.” To Stefani, the cover of Vogue represents the pinnacle – more important than even Rolling Stone. “When I told my mother I was going to be on Vogue, she started crying.”

Mama Stefani is also beside herself with joy about the fact that her daughter is finally putting out her own collection, L.A.M.B, which debuted in February. “She was looking through the designs in my book, and she got really emotional.” Here, she imitates her mother crying: “It’s in your blood! This is for Great-Grandma!” Turns out Gwen comes from a long line of seamstresses. “My great-grandma used to start on New Year’s day, which was her birthday, and she would sew every person in her family a quilt and, like, flannel pajamas and then the next Christmas you’d get it. Her daughter, my mom’s mom, made every single thing my mother wore, to the point where she didn’t get to choose her own clothes until she was, like, engaged. And then my mom made our clothes. I used to be kind of bummed. Like, ‘Can’t I go to the mall?’”

One of the reasons Stefani’s look has been so distinct from the very beginning is that she has made most of the things she wears on stage herself. When she became successful and began to tour constantly, she felt she lost her way. Then she met the stylist Andrea Lieberman. “I never really knew anything about fashion,” says Stefani. “Andrea made me a lot sleeker and calmed me down. Before I would just wear everything. She matured my style.”

Lieberman had been admiring Stefani from afar. “I remember when I saw her wearing Viktor & Rolf pants in a video and I was like, ‘She is so fly!’ She always had that mad fantastic style, but I felt like nobody had opened her up to the world of couture and designers. But she’s like a kid in a candy store. Her eyes are wide-open. She loves to throw it all on and I’ll come in and be like, ‘There’s something to be said for restraint at times.’ Part of the joy of working with her is that she has this innate understanding, this cool factor. The It-girl thing.”

Their “inspirational tennis match,” as Lieberman puts it, led to Stefani’s designing and launching L.A.M.B. And while the line is pretty much youthful Gwen-style, is there anything more ladylike and feminine than picking up needle and thread?

It’s as if Stefani is trying on the role of womanhood. As she and Rossdale have been seen ringside at the shows in Paris, you get the sense that she enjoys being the soignée bride of an English gentleman. “Being married does make you feel like a woman,” says Stefani. “Other people treat you differently too. They have a respect for you as a duo. It’s kind of cool.”

It’s hard not to wonder if the wedding and her subsequent married life have met Stefani’s very high (and conventional) expectations, which, two albums ago, she addressed head-on. One song was titled, simply, “Marry Me” (“? I wouldn’t mind if my name changed to Mrs. …”), and in another she yearned for a “… simple kind of life/all I needed was a simple man/so I could be a wife.” When I ask her about this, she says, “It’s weird because when I was a little girl I was always looking at bridal magazines and drawing what my wedding dress was going to be like. But it was nothing like that. I was on tour and I came home and Gavin had literally planned the entire thing. And John Galliano made my wedding gown, chose the color, everything. It’s weird because you think you’re going to do all that. I can remember being on tour, crying, ‘I’m missing out on my life!’ But then I got home two weeks before and got adjusted. And it was very romantic because it just felt like Gavin did it all for me.”

One hopes that the 36-year-old Rossdale has a healthy ego because while Stefani’s star has been ever-ascendant, his has cooled off considerably over the last few years. When I ask her what he’s like, she says, “He’s one of those multi-taskers – good at everything. He’s an incredible cook. I totally scored. I’m a big, huge pig and I love eating, and I married a guy who loves to cook.” Rossdale was a serious tennis player when he was young but gave it up when his coach died. “We were in LA at a dinner party, and this guy was like, ‘You should come over to my house and play tennis.’ And that was it. Now he’s playing in celebrity tournaments. He’s a maniac. He plays like three hours a day.”

It is an intriguing role reversal: While Stefani tours the world and seemingly launches one new career after another, Rossdale plans weddings, cooks, plays tennis, and buys art for their two homes. In a funny way, he’s living the life that she’s always dreamed of. And even though they’ve been together for eight years, it seems they’re still getting to know each other. “We never lived together and we never lived in the same country,” says Stefani. “So, all told, we’ve only been together for, like, two years.” She laughs. “We toured so much separately. The most time we would ever spend together before we were married was like four weeks. But this whole past year, we’ve been together almost every day. Which has just been, like, amazing.” She exaggeratedly wipes the back of her hand across her forehead and says, “Phew!” Big laugh. “We like each other!”

Between quietly taking on Hollywood, getting married, and finally designing her own line of clothes, Gwen Stefani is clearly coming into her own. Nowhere is this more evident than in her music. No Doubt’s 2002 album, Rock Steady, was a huge success, both creatively and commercially, spawning four hit singles. After nearly fifteen years of being a freakishly successful ska band, No Doubt finally collaborated with other songwriters and producers. The result was a glittering collection of brilliant high-end pop that jumped all over the musical map. In the meantime, Stefani also cannily laid the groundwork for her solo career in 2001 when she collaborated with Moby on the ghetto-fabulous send-up “South Side” and, again, with Eve, on her single “Let Me Blow Ya Mind.” Suddenly Stefani became a kind of genre-jumping girl wonder, just as at ease in hip-hop, R&B, and dance music as she has been in the rock world for so long. The surprise for Moby, he says, was that “her voice has this very unique timbre and a very distinctive quality. But after spending a day with her in the studio I also realized that she’s incredibly technically proficient and just a really remarkable singer. And she worked really hard.”

As if to prove there’s nothing she can’t do, Stefani is currently putting together her first solo album, which she’s calling “a dance record.” To that end, she’s collaborating with a stellar lineup of producers and songwriters, including André 3000 from OutKast, Dallas Austin, and her ex-boyfriend Tony Kanal. “I really thought this record was going to be easy and fun and short. I’ll do a couple covers, I’ll work with some really talented people, I don’t have to do all the writing. It’s a dance record, so it can’t really be emotional. Well, I’ve written about seventeen songs, and only two of them are good enough.”

Iovine, chairman of Universal’s Interscope division (whom David Geffen recently called “the foremost record executive in the world today”), believes that Stefani’s future has never looked brighter. “It can be as big as she wants it to be. She’s a driven person, and she’s tough on her music. She’s got just enough insecurity to get herself where she is. There’s no arrogance.”

One of things that everyone who works with her seems to agree on is that Stefani is utterly guileless. “There’s no front to her,” says Muller. “It all just kind of pours out. And she’s always kind of in awe of her life. To have done as much as she has and still be grateful and amazed is fantastic.” Or, as Iovine puts it, “She doesn’t exploit herself. She’s not overselling it.”

I ask Iovine if he thinks there are any other female rock stars who are as big as Stefani. “No,” he says. “What Gwen’s got is that she moves the culture. You are truly great when you can move that culture meter—when you can make the needle jump—and I think she’s going to move it a lot in the next five years. She just will. She’s that kind of artist. I’d bet the store on her.”

Let’s face it: A big part of Stefani’s allure is the killer body. She works out religiously, preferring old-school running and weight lifting to yoga or pilates. Not surprisingly, she has been working out extra-hard lately, denying herself the food she loves so much, for her Vogue photo shoot. But after a glass of wine on an empty stomach in her LA living room, she has decided we must go out and get something to eat. “I feel like if I don’t eat, I might lose one more pound.” She pauses. “But I’m starving.” She invites me to join her upstairs while she gets ready and on our way up says, “When I’m home, I work out five days a week. It’s a battle, I have to say. I have to stop myself from eating. Ask anyone around me: I have to struggle to have this hot body!” She laughs. At the top of the stairs, there’s the master bedroom with a giant, dark wooden canopy bed. Over there, in the corner, is her vanity, a minimalist little moderne shrine to makeup and brushes and potions. There’s an office, a guest room, and then, finally, the vast, roaring closet. It’s a converted bedroom, actually, with plush white carpeting and racks and racks of clothes. “Look at how lucky I am,” she says.

This is the biggest closet I’ve ever seen, I say.

“Hello. Haven’t you seen Paula Abdul’s on TV? She has those circular racks, like they have in stores. I was so jealous.” She picks out a pair of boots (brand-new John Galliano pointy neo-Victorian) and sits on the floor to lace them up. Then she goes to the racks and pulls out a ratty yet elegant vintage cardigan with stains on the elbows. And then she throws on a sort of peacoat, and off we go.

We climb into an insanely luxurious Range Rover with a computerized dashboard. “This is Gavin’s,” she says. “I don’t have a car right now.” She pops in a CD and turns it way up. It’s a demo of one of her new songs, called “Crash,” reminiscent of Kelis’s song “Milkshake” and just as infectious. “Japanese or Italian?” she shouts over herself. We settle on Italian, and she points the car to a neighborhood joint where she’s a regular. “It’s nothing fancy-pants,” she says. When we arrive at the restaurant, it’s packed, and we are forced to wait outside on the street. I can see that this makes her a little nervous and maybe a touch annoyed. In London she admits, with refreshing honesty, that “there are certain things about being famous that I love, like being taken care of when I go to a restaurant. I love the attention. It’s fun.”

If Stefani’s career is tied to her physical beauty (it’s hard to imagine her maturing into a chanteuse), then there’s little doubt that she’s in her prime. Once we’re seated, I ask her if she worries about there being a time limit on a female rock star’s career. “When you get past a certain age, you start thinking about life and how much time ’till you die and you start panicking. I want to have a family, and I haven’t even done that yet. I’m worried that I only have a few more years to do this solo record because I don’t think I’ll care about this record when I’m 45. I don’t know. You can’t predict how you’re going to feel.” Then she tells me about a lyric she wrote years ago and has been trying to get in a song ever since: “Born to blossom, bloom to perish.”

But for now, Stefani’s immense appeal shows no signs of waning. A few tables away, there are two young girls who look as if they’re about to burst because of her presence. Stefani notices them and waves. We return to our dinner, and when the plates are cleared, a waitress approaches with a note. “The little girls in the back wanted me to give this to you. They are so terrified.”

“Will you just tell them that they can come say hi to me?” says Stefani. She unfolds the note and says. “Omigod. Oh. My. God.” Turns out one of the girls, Jana, went to school with Gwen’s niece, Madeline. A moment later, the girls appear at our table with their mother. “Jana, you are so cute,” says Stefani. “How old are you?” “Eight,” says her mother. “I can’t believe you know Madeline,” says Stefani. “It’s so weird because she called me last week and she said I’m her favorite singer. For the first time!”

“Has she not said that every day?” says the mom.

“No!” says Stefani. “Because, hello. Have you heard of Hillary Duff? I finally made it onto her radar. I’m taking her to the Grammys, so watch TV. I’m making her a really cute outfit.” (Sure enough, there was Stefani’s niece in the front row of the Grammys in some crazy getup.)

As we drive back to her house, Stefani tells me that there’s a videotape she wants to show me. It’s edited footage of the early days, when Gwen was still the kid sister in her brother’s rock band. Once we arrive, she takes me into a dark, cave-like TV room and pops it into the VCR. Suddenly, a girl appears on the screen. She has long brown hair, a round face, and schlumpy clothes. The only reason I know that it is Gwen Stefani is the voice. The eighteen-year-old girl on the TV looks nothing like the glamorous creature before me. “I don’t even recognize myself,” she says. She fast-forwards through the tape. “I want to show you where my hair goes blonde so you can go, ‘Whoa!’ OK, here it is. See. The blonde hair changed everything. We’re playing at Disneyland. We wanted to do it just to say we did it. That’s the dress I wore on the cover of Tragic Kingdom that I bought for $14 at Contempo Casuals.”

Wow, I say, I can’t believe how different you look.

“Dude, that was a long time ago,” she says. “Let’s face it. I’m way cooler now.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hella Great

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I know it sounds cheesy,” she continues, “But I found out everything about me through those songs. Suddenly I was this independent person who was happy and didn’t have to depend on my lover. Before that, I never really had anything of my own. It was like, ‘I’m Gwen. Do you know who Gwen is? Gwen loves Tony.’”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And for now, it’s going hella great.

Back from its trip to Saturn, No Doubt is ready to Rock Steady. By Tom Lanham.

Gwen Stefani is late. Not really late, just 15 minutes or so. But the platinum-haired, pout-lipped, pinup-perfect ska-pop goddess has a good cause – her boyfriend, the similarly pout-lipped, pinup-perfect rock icon, Gavin Rossdale of Bush renown, is her wheel man this particularly crisp autumn afternoon. He must’ve missed a Hollywood-hills turn or two. And when this oft-photographed No Doubt diva arrives? Most assuredly, she’s ready for her close up, Mr DeMille; in a flowing, floor length, red cashmere cape (complete with wolf-wowing hood), Stefani sweeps into the spacious, sparsely appointed digs of her band’s bassist Tony Kanal. She doesn’t just walk – in her patent-leather pumps, camouflage pedal pushers and baggy V-neck sweater – but sweeps and ’40s film starlets must’ve swept on Oscar night.

Stefani’s trademark blonde tresses are clustered in a humble bun today. She lets her locks down, she smiles, for the music-clip shoot of “Hey Baby” – the funky-punky first single from No Doubt’s new Rock Steady comeback on Interscope. “In the video, I have total Veronica Lake hair,” she purrs, curling into a wrought-iron chair on Kanal’s back porch.

Stefani sported a self-designed hound’s-tooth-jacket-and-golf-pantaloons number on VH1’s recent Vogue Fashion Awards, where she won Most Stylish Video, “Ex-Girlfriend” (from 2000’s platinum Return of Saturn). Startling the calm Kanal, seated opposite her at his patio table, Stefani jumps up from her chair to demonstrate the surreal hands-clasped-in-triumph victory rumba she danced when her name was announced at the ceremony. “And when I got up to claim my Award, all of a sudden the single was on; ‘Hey Baby’ was blasting!” she informs Kanal. He’s shocked; the song hadn’t even hit the radio yet, but he welcomes the well-placed leak. “So I was like ‘What song is this? Hey baby, hey baby hey!’ ” Stefani trills, shimmying around the concrete while her chum gives her the thumbs-up.

And sure, she rubbed shoulders with top-name designers like Patricia Field, Donna Karan and Stella McCartney at the event, she cedes. “But ever since puberty, I’ve always liked to get dressed up, and I’ve always made my own clothes. My Mom always took me to fabric stores like Jo-Ann Fabrics, House of Fabrics, and then with the band it was like Halloween every day. Like, ‘Oh cool! Now I have an excuse to dress up – it’ll be fun!’ And I spent a lot of time doing it, right Tony?”

Kanal (no slouch himself in designer jeans, T-shirt and a meticulously blond-streaked, prickly-hedgehog ‘do) nods, smiles sagely. And who should know better? He and Stefani dated for eight years, but broke up – with some irony – during the writing and recording of ’95’s Tragic Kingdom, their 15-million-selling sophomore breakthrough. He prepares to speak, but his ex is on a roll. Returning to the Veronica Lake theme, Stefani asserts that she did “just get so inspired by that whole starlet period of Hollywood. I’m fascinated by all that stuff; Julie Andrews and the whole Sound of Music thing, and musicals. And I definitely felt weird when Tragic Kingdom was coming out and the only girls that were around were the country or folkier style – the no-makeup singer/songwriters – or the really hard L7 or Hole-type rock bands. I didn’t feel comfortable in either one of those areas, so I just decided to be myself. And it all turned out all right.”

Stefani is sporting tiny gold earrings shaped like plastic 45-rpm centers, her customary jungle-red lipstick, and huge knuckle-obscuring rings on each hand; one that reads GWEN, another that spells NO DOUBT. It’s a defiant yet remarkably feminine persona, one that teenage fangirls around the world have been copying for at least a half-decade (even though No Doubt coalesced, to little fanfare, way back in ‘86); a style so distinctly Stefani that it – along with her velvety vocal talent – helped propel recent duet clips from techno-maestro Moby (“South Side”) and Eve (“Let Me Blow Ya Mind”) to the winner’s circle at MTV’s 2001 Video Music Awards (for Best Male Video and Best Female Video, respectively). “Without Gwen, the video wouldn’t have gotten shown in the first place,” Moby shyly assessed at the VMAs. Stefani is still dumbfounded – she almost turned down the artists’ original offers, not wanting to be seen “as just a side dish.” And she was pleasantly surprised when countless folks from the techno and hip-hop communities recognized her at the show, waved friendly hellos.

“But the thing about No Doubt is, we were a band for nine years before we had any commercial success.” says Stefani, whose charming, self-deprecating humility can win you over in a heartbeat. “And that, in a lot of ways, has kept us really grounded in the sense that we know what’s happening when they take our picture, that’s not the real thing. We know who we really are, and that it can be gone at any moment. And we feel lucky to still be making music without having to grow up, to just sit around with each other and go to different countries and record with legends and hook up with all these different talented people.” So many people, in fact, that it’s a good thing phones are no longer in rotary. Her nails never would’ve survived dialing all those long-distance numbers.

Set to a cheeky, off-kilter synth riff (even most of his bass lines were performed on keyboards, Kanal swears). “Hey Baby” is Stefani’s humorous study of backstage barnacles, acolytes dying to kiss the ring (either one). “I’m the one they feed upon,” she vamps with neo-Norma Desmond drama, truly baffled to be confronted by “a stranger in my face who says he knows my Mom and went to my high school.” Produced by Sly and Robbie – with raucous guest toasting from rude boy Bounty Killa – during a hard-partying, beer’n'rum glugging stay in Jamaica, the track is a sassy, brassy leap forward from Saturn’s awkwardly insecure “Ex-Girlfriend” (“I kinda always knew I’d end up your ex-girlfriend… Why’d you have to go and pick me?“). Fans of Stefani’s spunky “Spiderwebs”/”Just a Girl” from Tragic Kingdom probably cringed to hear her melt into uncertainty on such somber Saturn sonnets as “Dark Blue,” “Too Late,” “Simple Kind of Life” and the painfully blunt “Marry Me.” Those same listeners will rejoice to rediscover Stefani on Rock Steady, writing and singing with newfound confidence and class. Any mistreating male who crosses her now will come to with a throbbing jaw and a ring indentation as a reminder of exactly who KO’ed him – GWEN from NO DOUBT.

By all accounts, the Glen Ballard produced Return of Saturn was a real bear, a total emotional drain on the group. It posed a tough question: How do you go about topping a 15-million seller? Especially when your founder and key songwriter (Gwen’s Svengali brother Eric Stefani, who first forced her to sing as a scaredy-cat teen) has just quit to sketch cels for The Simpsons? So yes, Kanal shrugs. “Making that record was a very laborious process. The head-space we were in for the whole Saturn phase was extremely serious.” So last November, he, Stefani, guitarist Tom Dumont and drummer Adrian Young “sat down and said, ‘OK – we’re gonna give it another shot, make another record.’ We kinda made a decision to move ahead, but this time we were gonna remove some of the restrictions that we’d had previously. We opened ourselves up to trying anything for this record, just having fun with it. So last January, myself, Tom and Gwen sat down again and started writing.”

The words and music flowed. On one of her London jaunts to visit Rossdale, Stefani paused long enough to co-pen a daffy dub-echoed ditty with Dave Stewart, “Underneath It All.” For two Cars-kitschy compositions – “Don’t Let Me Down” and “Platinum Blonde Life” – No Doubt (Kanal, 31, and Stefani, 32, are New Wave boosters from way back) enlisted the Cars’ mastermind himself, Ric Ocasek, as producer. Madonna mainstay William Orbit oversaw the OMD-ish “Making Out”; Prince personnaly retooled the Paisley Park-polished “Waiting Room”; and Bristol Sound legend Nellee Hooper finished off five cuts, including the Lene Lovich-retro “Running.” “Love is like a punishment/ Homegirl here to represent,” Stefani deadpans in the dancehall title track, but tacks on an optimistic punch line: “Our love is rock steady, rock steady…”

Stefani had suffered writer’s block for Saturn “But the thing I learned from my Dave Stewart experience is that you can write a song in, like, 10 minutes,” she says. “I wrote ‘Underneath It All’ in an instant, just sat down and wrote it right then and there. And the Tony – who’d flown over to England, too – got super-excited about the idea of going to Jamaica to work with all these dancehall producers: Sly and Robbie, Steelie and Clevie. We had maybe five songs written at the time, but Tony made it happen. Next thing we know, we’re in Jamaica. It was magic.”

“We found the balance on this album,” is how Kanal sees it. “All of it came from a very organic place, it was super-spontaneous, but it was just fun. Every single song on it was fun to write; every time we sat down together to work on music, it was fun. And it’s brought certain things to the band that we didn’t have before, like a feeling that we’re gonna be around a little longer. Whereas on Tragic Kingdom, I think people really thought we were gonna be one-hit wonders.”

Sept. 11 found No Doubt mixing in London, where they’d rented a house next to Rossdale’s. Stunned by the Worl Trade Center disaster – and trapped in Britain with no way home – the musicians wondered if such an effervescent, bubblegum-chewy effort would sound glib in light of such grim events. They got over it. “I mean, this is what we do, and what we need to continue to do,” figures Kanal. “And you hope that the stuff you’re creating will provide some sort of relief or a… a…”

“Diversion?” Stefani offers, hopefully. “Music is so powerful and it’s such a gift that we have here; I’m actually thrilled to be creating it and it’s such and uplifting album. And whether this stuff happened on the 11th or not, people can still put their headphones on and have a little fun for a minute, maybe not taking anything too seriously.”

It’s a sentiment tat might appear Pollyanna-mushy coming from any other artist. But Stefani – with her big, innocent eyes and down-home delivery – somehow makes it sound earnest, honest, a little heartfelt wish that the feel-good milestone of No Doubt’s career will make a few despairing souls out there, well… feel good.

A week earlier: Gavin Rossdale sits in a record company conference room, anxiously drumming his fingers on the table. Rossdale’s got a new record himself to discuss (Golden State, with Bush), but Stefani is definitely on his mind.

He felt her pain in London (“It was really hard for her after the tragedy – she was torn with being with me over there and being with her family in America”); understands the misgivings that fueled “Ex-Girlfriend” (“It’s very difficult in this line of work to find stability, substance, because the demands are so great, coupled with the distance and shear loneliness – for anybody in a traveling band, you’re incredibly alone a lot of the time”); and sensed her need for commitment, possibly a family, in “Marry Me” (“Although I don’t know if now is the perfect time to be breeding – we’d be like ‘Welcome to the world, kids! Here are your antidotes!’ “). And you can hear it in the singer’s voice – after six years together, his love for Stefani seems genuine, unflagging. There is, ahem, no doubt.

And as most of Rock Steady’s sugary poetry spins on a Gwen/Gav, enduring-love axis, Stefani’s report card on their relationship is equally glowing. “Gavin is so sweet, and he has a great heart,” she beams dreamily. “And he’s had to prove himself to people his whole life, even to all my friends. But this has been a great year for me and Gavin, for the band, for everyone. We spent loads of time together because he did his record here in LA while we were working, then when we went to London to mix, he was there the same time we were – it was perfect.” Stefani suddenly startles Kanal again by stomping her spiky heel. “But I’m tellin’ ya, nobody’s fucking asked me to get married! Ever! It’s weird. And everywhere Gav goes, everybody is at him about the ring, the ring. And there is definitely a baby boom right now – have you noticed that? Or at least all of our friends are pregnant. Adrian’s having a baby, too. It’s the first No Doubt baby, and it’s gonna be on tour with us.”

Stefani has heard all the No Doubt gossip. Or rather, the surprising lack of it – the general profile is of some nice Orange County-bred, Los Angeles-relocated kids who made good while offending the absolute minimum of bystanders along the way. “And I’m glad people think that,” she says. “Sometimes I think we should roughen up and try to get a little more” – her scarlet nails slice through the air to designate quotation marks – “you know, ‘cooler.’ ”

“It’s true – it’s really rare that people are mean to us,” Kanal chimes in. “We’re really lucky and blessed that way. And I think the reason we’re somewhat grounded, as Gwen was saying earlier, is that it was nine years before Tragic Kingdom came out, which was when we first farted having commercial success… Waidaminnut!” he stops himself, midthought. “Did I just say ‘farted’?!”

Yup, Stefani nods, laughing hysterically while Kanal hides his face in his hands. “And people haven’t heard anything yet!” she gasps, a not-so-veiled tour bus reference. “But we really do try and be nice to everybody, because we were the alternative to the alternative for a long time. It was so weird when Tragic Kingdom came out and all of a sudden we were like the mainstream, because No Doubt had always been the exact opposite of whatever was popular. And now, with Rock Steady, all we feel is lucky; really lucky to be able to try on all those different hats.”

But it’s a real red-faced Kanal who gets the last word in. Sort of. “There was a really important point I was trying to make. But now I can’t remember what it was!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kurt Cobain or Robert Plant?
Kurt Cobain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With thanks to Mike McKeaney of ND Universe