No Doubt’s Drummer dusts off his ska roots, teases the Mohawk, and proceeds to party on with the release of Rock Steady

It’s a Psycho-suburban dream come true: Adrian Young was a striving young drummer living in suburbia, playing golf, drumming at home, and playing in a local band called No Doubt. Fifteen years and seventeen million records later Young is a striving young drummer living in suburbia, drumming at home, playing golf and playing in a famous band called No Doubt.

On the eve of their latest release, Rock Steady, No Doubt was days away from ‘warm-up gigs’ with U2. Drum! magazine caught Young at his very large house on a country club golf course. He graciously offered a tour (because the reporter was staring at the pad). The house was tastefully decorated by Young and his beautiful wife Nina in a dark wood, Southeast Asian opulence. Many of the furnishings were picked out by Young while on tour with No Doubt and shipped home. “We went to Malasia, Thailand, places that were new to us. Those are great. I loved going over there” Young pointed a casual finger into bedroom after bedroom, saying, “We party here a lot and people like to stay over.” The bar is large and well stocked and a grinning Young says. “We’ve had a lot of good parties here!

There’s a game room, complete with arcade video machines. The game room ceiling is papered with album covers, mostly ‘70s acts, some ‘80s: Fleetwood Mac, Steve Miller, Madness, The Police. “A lot of those are my wife’s, but my parents were sort of hippie types, they had a little rock band so I grew up on all that stuff, too. I lived in the Santa Barbara/Pismo Beach area until I was ten. That probably affected me more, musically, than growing up in Orange County did. When we moved I stopped listening to as much ‘70s rock and started listening tening to more new-wave, punk, and ska.”

There’s a room that used to be the office – you can tell by the wall full of gold and platinum records — but it’s being redone as a nursery. “I’m the only married one in the band, and the first with a baby.”

As Young walks around the house, he looks more like an athlete than a musician, If it weren’t for the Mohawk, he could easily pass for a young pro ball player instead of a rock star. “When I was growing up I was all about sports. Basketball in high school, and golf. I didn’t start playing drums until I was 18, a senior. It was sports. Now I’m on a basketball team, and a softball thing. My main thing is golf. I probably spend more time golfing than I do drumming.”

All the members from No Doubt claim roots in neighboring Orange County. Anaheim, in particular, serves as a metaphor for things plastic and “Tragic” in the Orange County “Kingdom.” But now some of them live in L.A., and Young is in a suburb known more for Aviation executives than celebrities. “We’re all from Orange County. I live here because I love [this area]. My parents are still in [a town about ten miles away], I like to be close to them still. LA’s too much. Too much partying, too much everything.”

Young waves off the last couple of rooms, offices, guest bathrooms, blah, blah, blah, he seems uninterested. But he gets a spring in his step when he takes us back downstairs to a room near the bar. He slides a large sofa aside to reveal a trap door. “My drum room is down here,” he says, “Watch your head.” We descend the short steps into a basement that has been padded with acoustic treatments. There’s a kit wedged into the corner, a stereo system, piles of CD’s. In the room directly above us, a tape recorder and some other studio gear is wired to capture evenings of inspiration in the drum room. It’s everything a drummer needs — especially privacy. Last night I was playing in here until about 12:30. It’s great. I don’t have a standard practice routine. During the off time I just keep my chops up, trying to stay fluid. I play to Steely Dan records a lot. I’ve been playing to Jeff Buckley’s stuff. I don’t know the drummer’s name, but he’s good. Some Erika Bahdu for groove. I’ve got a Rush CD down here still [laughs]. Last night I was playing to some 311 stuff.”

Young warns us to mind our head again as we come out of the little studio and go to a front room where we camp with some food and drink and get the low-down on his working life. Through the front window the golf course is busy with players. Behind us is the huge backyard and the stone-rimmed swimming pool.

“On Thursday we’ll start three weeks with U2 as a warm up before the record comes out. So awesome. U2 is totally bitchin’. We’ll do our tour next year. This is the beginning of a long cycle for this record. We’ll do a lot of national and international promo for the record first. Do some live dates. Wherever the record’s doing good next year, wherever we could do good tours, that’s where we’ll go. It all depends on how the record does. For us a lot of things are decided close to the dates. We won’t do the states until next spring or summer. By February we’ll know.”

The promotional tour is comprised of a barrage of radio station visits, press interviews, television appearances, and anything else that might shout from the rooftops, “THE NEW NO DOUBT RECORD, ROCK STEADY, IS IN STORES NOW!”

“It’s not ike a regular tour. We don’t take quite as much stuff. I take my kit, I don’t do rental stuff, It’s a little bit broken down. It’s more of a pain in the ass because you’re doing interviews every day, multiple interviews every day. And different timezones. It’s just work.”

“We didn’t want to wait until next year [to release the CD]. The record company’s behind it, they think it’s going to fly. If we have their confidence then we’re pretty much willing to do anything. Because if the record company’s behind it, your foot’s already in the door for your record to do well, because the dollars are going to be behind it. That’s half the battle.”

With Rock Steady the band has turned into a dance hall groove machine. “During the last tour we put on dance parties after the shows. We were listening to a lot of dance hall music and a lot of ‘80s stuff, too. This is the fastest record we’ve ever done. It usually takes us two to three years to make a record. This one’s a total funk-party record. We weren’t trying to prove anything. Just trying to have fun. There was lots of pressure on us for the last of record. This one we were like, whatever.”

The fact that the airwaves are saturated with beat-box rhythms was likely not far from their minds, either. By the time this interview hits the newsstands, most Americans will have heard “Hey Baby,” No Doubt’s first single from Rock Steady.

“Even though I don’t write any of the songs, I still get to have a pretty free opinion about direction [of the songs]. That’s what’s made it cool over the years. I’ve taken a little more of a back seat on this record, though, as far as involvement goes. The songs, pre-recording, are always a struggle and a challenge, and it’s very rewarding. Any band will tell you that. This time I didn’t have it in me to the fight, you know, and I was more comfortable taking the lesser role. And I’m glad I did. It’s been more fun.”

Young told us about the birthing of the infectious dance-hall groove on “Hey Baby.” “My wife and I have a friend with a Victorian house in San Francisco, a one bedroom place. It came vacant, and he said, ‘Do you want to stay in it for a while?’ This was during some down time for the band and me and Nina wanted to get away, so we got a U-Haul and took one rooms worth of furniture, just grabbed the sofa nearest the door and whatever else we needed and went and lived there. But while we were up there, trying to get away, Tom and Tony came up to work on ideas. Work was following me [laughs]! So we went to this recording studio to work out some ideas.

“Tony had this bass line, this dance hall bass line, and I came up with a beat. There was a million ideas, but this one idea became ‘Hey Baby.’ The drums were just recorded stereo, it wasn’t supposed to be a real recording. We got to Jamaica [later, to record tunes for the record with Sly & Robbie] and tried to re-record it. But we couldn’t get it happening. So we just flew [the stereo drum track] into Pro Tools, and it became the first single.”

We asked if the band jammed on it a lot, or did a lot of takes. “Not really. Pro Tools does that. You can stop stuff or cut it up. Versus the last record, when I was hardheaded about the whole thing. My approach then was, ‘I don’t want to cut anything, I don’t want to do any of that crap.’ Sort of an unnecessary, macho way looking at it. But, I feared that if I started doing that, then people would say, ‘That guy’s not really doing that; he’s getting all cut up on tape or Pro Tools. I didn’t want to become one of those guys. But after using Pro Tools] on two records I realized it’s a creative tool. It’s not a way for lousy players to sound good … well, maybe it is, but I don’t think that applies to me.

“The whole thing was done on Pro Tools. So was the last one, actually. A lot of the songs were done at Tom’s condo. He’s got a Pro Tools setup there. So, a lot of the parts recorded in the demoing sessions in his apartment were kept. That environment creates more of a drum machine, drum loop thing, versus four fight people just getting together and jamming. At least for the starting ideas, before I get to play on it. I did all my parts after the fact. It was different, kind of going backwards, drumwise.”

Was that better? “It’s not really better for me, it’s just different.” Did it increase the fun factor for the band? “I think so, yeah. There’s only like two rock tracks on this CD. Those are the two Ric Ocasek did. It’s a pretty eclectic record, which I guess all of our records are. It’s one of our happiest records. We’ve always had that ‘80s thing going on, there’s no shortage of that on this record.

“There were various individuals we wanted to work with, and this was a good way to hit a lot of ‘em. The record was co-produced by the band plus the producers: Nellee Hooper, Ric Ocasek, Sly & Robbie, Steely & Cleavie, William Orbit, and Prince.”

Once the record is out and the promotional tour is done, it’ll be time to pack up the OCDP kit and hit the road. Young, for the most part, looks forward to it. “Touring was one of the best things for me. We toured Tragic Kingdom for two-and-a-half years. After that I felt really, really strong. Definitely helps, getting out on that road and working on your thing. That repetition is a good thing. I love playing live.” And sometimes friends need a favor and Young is happy to oblige. “Sitting in with other bands is a bigger thrill than playing our own show sometimes. I was in Vegas — my wife was working for Stone Temple Pilots at the time — and Eric [Kretz] asked me to play on ‘Plush.’ That was cool. But I don’t know if I can keep touring as much, now that I have a family on the way.” The enthusiasm in his manner as he talks about playing live seems a bit stronger than his cautious words about fatherhood. And he’s enthusiastic about his new drum set, too.

For this tour Young will be pounding on a brand-new kit from Orange County Drum and Percussion, made from a jellybean jar selection of acrylic shells. Young was excited to get to New York for the U2 shows, because, “I haven’t played this kit yet. This will be the first time I use it.

“There’s a lot more sampling and sequencing on this record, too. So, live, I have a lot more samples to play. Some of the tracks I’ll be playing to clicks. We’re using Tascam 2424 Recording machines, and the tech will be running that. I’m going to give him the look— ‘push the button.’ I’m wearing headphones, and I tried to get the biggest, most obnoxious ones I could find. I’m going to make them even bigger, put stuff on ‘em.”

Some drummers, in the off-season between tours and records, like to hook up some outside gigs, some sessions, some clinics. Was sitting in with Stone Temple Pilots an omen of things to come? “I don’t really have time to play with other bands. No Doubt is full-time. I’ll do little things when I’m out, sitting in with other bands, I love doing that stuff. I’d love to play on other people’s records in the future. I could never picture myself doing clinics. I can’t really solo, and my reading is not very proficient. I’ve taken some basic reading classes, but I haven’t really utilized it much.”

We give a hearty “yeah, but.” Enough of the modesty. How does it feel to sell seventeen million records and tour the world? “It’s pretty awesome. Definitely one of the best things about this is the drum recognition from young people. And from people that are older, too, actually. I’ve even heard people cop licks [from No Doubt recordings]. I’m not going to name bands, but I’m flattered by it, I love it. I do it, too. I still do it; I hear my peers, I can’t help it. My friend Josh Freese lives around the corner. I subbed for him a couple times in the Vandals a while back. I copped some of his stuff on this record.”

We asked Young what he would recommend to young drummers shedding for their future. “I would suggest playing to a lot of different CDs. Mixing it up. Keep those horizons expanded. As teenagers musical tastes are usually skewed into tunnel vision. So, expand. Work on groove stuff. If a kid wants to go to school and be taught properly, that’s great, that can only be a good thing. But some kids that come up learning only like that play so stiff it’s amazing. I’ve seen players with lots of drum corps chops but — so stiff. It’s too one-sided, I think.”

Young cast a glance across the way to the fairway. Would he golf today? “I don’t play rounds every day, but as far as playing or practicing goes I probably get in five days a week.” And would he ever consider switching from drums to golf? “Go pro? No. Too hard. I’m not good enough. Right now I’m a 5.3 handicap. That would be rad, though. I work on my game enough.”

Is there a similarity between golfing and drumming? “Oh, yeah. You’ve got to stay relaxed. [laughs] Stay relaxed or everything goes to hell.”

With thanks to Mike McKeaney of ND Universe

In which we celebrate the union of Gwen and Gavin, the spectacular success of the little so-cal band that could and the arrival of a dangerous character known as the douche. by Neil Strauss

Thousands of Staind and Linkin Park fans are packed into the Universal Amphitheaters in Los Angeles, unaware that No Doubt are about to make a surprise appearance. And to tell the truth, no one is sure if these fans really care. No Doubt are the only band tonight with a female member, the only group more attuned to ska and reggae than rap and rock, and the only act whose current single “Hey Baby,” is full of New Wave electronics and drum machine beats. There is no aggression or angst to be found in “Hey Baby,” kids, just Gwen Stefani singing about sipping chamomile tea. Can you relate to that?

It is Sunday, December 9th 2001, and it’s the sixth anniversary of many things for No Doubt. In 1995, performing at this same same holiday concert for local radio station KROQ proved a pivotal moment for the group and its breakthrough album Tragic Kingdom, which went on to sell 10 million copies and transform this oddball Orange County, California, band into international superstars. It was also the night that Stefani met Gavin Rossdale, the singer of the show’s headlining band, Bush, setting off a six-year relationship that continues to this day. And it was the night that the Douche first appeared. Yes, the Douche. Watch out for the Douche.

The Douche, anyone from the band will tell you with equal parts glee and dread, is guitarist Tom Dumont’s alter ego when he’s drunk. At the time, No Doubt had just landed the prized opening gig on Bush’s upcoming tour. The bands hadn’t met before, and no one was more excited about breaking the ice than Dumont, who idolized Bush guitarist Nigel Pulsford. Unfortunately, Dumont got drunk and the Douche arrived at the KROQ show instead. He barged into Bush’s dressing room, walked up to Pulsford, who plays Fender guitars, and spat, “Fender sucks!” Eventually the band kicked him out. The next day, No Doubt received a frantic phone call from Bush’s record company, telling them that if they couldn’t keep themselves under control, they’d be off the tour.

Tonight, Bush and No Doubt are together on the KROQ bill again, and they are both facing a new predicament: Most of their fans who were teens in 1995 are now grown up. Each band must win over a new audience.

“We were, like, nothing six years ago,” says Stefani.

Sort of like At the Drive-In when they opened this concert last year? “Yeah,” she says. “But not as cool.”

No Doubt bassist Tony Kanal, Stefani’s ex-boyfriend, looks at the band’s career like the original Star Wars trilogy. Tragic Kingdom was Star Wars, exploding out of nowhere to become a huge international phenomenon. Return of Saturn, the follow-up, was The Empire Strikes Back, darker and less entertaining, and left people scratching their heads. Rock Steady, their new dance-hall-meets-New-Wave album, recorded with Ric Ocasek, Prince, rap producers the Neptunes, Nellee Hooper of Massive Attack, and reggae tweakers Sly and Robbie, is Return of the Jedi. “It’s, like, full of Ewoks,” Kanal says. “You know, just happy.”

Happy and fun are the operative words for No Doubt this time around. Stefani can’t help talking about how thrilled she was to see their poster outside Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard. There’s only one thing she’s more excited about right now, and that’s spending time with Rossdale.

“Can you ever know that one person is the one?” she asks. “I’m always questioning that. I think we both question that The one year I think we had so much fun together was this year, because we spent so much time together and got to really know each other.” She pauses. “Not that we didn’t know each other already.” She pauses again. “I just can’t believe it’s been six years.”

Any concerns that No Doubt won’t fit into this hard-rock lineup disappear as soon as the band is announced and the audience erupts for the hometown heroes. Moving onto the stage, Stefani rolls her torso like a belly dancer with a spinal problem; Kanal, with spiked blond hair, skanks around like a cockroach; drummer Adrian, shirt off and mohawk up, slaps his own ass; and Dumont, he just looks uncomfortable.

The band leaves the stage feeling good. Rock Steady will be released in two days, and all is well. “It’s just such a magical year,” Stefani says. “It’s so sad, because I know we’re going to have a crash landing at some point, because we’re just riding so high. Touring to me is becoming harder. The physical part of it is hard, the traveling part is hard, being away from people you love is getting harder and harder.”

Later, backstage, Rossdale arrives in No Doubt’s dressing room, slumping around in a hat pulled anonymously over his eyebrows. Stefani, enthroned at the back of the room, spies him and seems unable to focus on the conversation she is having with a friend. Soon, the happy couple leaves arm in arm. Thus begins a pattern that continues in the next week: Every time Rossdale arrives, he and Stefani disappear.

It’s not simply that they want to be alone. Stefani says that in six years, they have never been together around a journalist. They are adamant about keeping their relationship private. And despite how clearly in love they are, their time together hasn’t been easy. Much of Rock Steady is about how hard it is having a relationship that’s not only long-distance but also between two people in different touring rock bands.

Stefani remembers writing a song with Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics. “The day before we went over there, I was in the park with Gavin, and I had been keeping a journal.” she says. “And we were so in love, and I wrote that line, ‘You’re lovely underneath it all.’ You know, like, ‘After all the shit we’ve been through, you’re a really good person. I really think I might like you.’ ”

Stefani is a bit obsessive, to put it mildly. “I’m really self-centered,” she admits. “I really am, I’m also pretty lazy. I love to sit around and watch TV, and eat ice cream, not work out and be a slob.”

There seem to be two things that make her world go round: Rossdale and No Doubt. Nothing else much matters. I learn this during dinner with her and the band. She slinks into the restaurant in a gray sweat shirt with a hood pulled over her face. Her shoulders curve so she she is practically staring at the floor. As she eats, she only perks up twice: The first time is when Kanal says he’s upset that a journalist called him “anal.” “Well, you are anal,” she says to her ex. The second is when her new album is discussed:

The new record is more… sexy.

Yeah, the record does have a sexiness and hipness that we’ve never had before. The thing about the sexy side for me is that I earned it. It wasn’t until I felt comfortable wearing high heels, because when you’re on heels – dude, you should try it – all of a sudden you’re sexy. I finally feel like there’s a side to me like, “I’m a woman now,” which is fine.

That’s pretty good – you’re thirty-two.

Yeah, I never felt strong growing up. I didn’t know where I fit in. All the women around me that I could look at were in bands like L7 or Hole. They were angry, and I didn’t really feel like that. And the other ones were these folky girls, so there wasn’t really anybody, until I discovered Blondie. She was sexy, and she wasn’t ashamed to be rocking out, and to me, that’s having it all. Because we all want to be sexy, even guys do. It’s in human nature, because we gotta have babies.

But the way you work, it is all your own.

I think the whole sexy thing, to do it seriously, is just a joke. I mean, have you seen me when I wake up in the morning?

Stefani was raised in a catholic family, which is what she blames for her worst faults – namely, that she is too judgmental and not open enough. “My brother was an artist since the day he was born,” she says, referring to Eric Stefani, who left No Doubt during the recording of Tragic Kingdom. “He would win all these awards at school. I didn’t have to do anything, because I had him. I was always a passive person, a one-on-one person. I always had my one best friend, and I didn’t have a lot of girlfriends. I never have.”

Outside of the first boy she kissed, Stefani has dated only two people: Kanal and Rossdale. As for her goals in life, starting a family is the only one she hasn’t yet fulfilled. In her music, she’s already there: “Having a song ['Don't Speak'] that’s going to be there when you’re dead is just, I’m sorry, but it’s just pretty cool,” she says.

An evening with Stefani: When No Doubt walk the red carpet at the Billboard Awards in Las Vegas, the paparazzi scream not for the band but for “Gwennnn,” who obliges them by opening her fur jacket and sticking out her chest, which is covered by just a bikini top. Later a fan runs up to Kanal. “Man, I love your band,” he says. “I just have to ask you: When you guys first got together, did you just think, ‘Wow, she is hot!’ ” Kanal doesn’t answer.

Young comes from the opposite background from Stefani. He was born to hippie parents though his mother left when he was young. The exhibitionist of the band, Young is a madman with a conscience. When he heard that a girlfriend was cheating on him, he got drunk, wrote tat she was the Antichrist across the driveway of the Anaheim, California, house where the band lived and passed out on the roof. Since the house belonged to Stefani’s parents, he spent the next morning scrubbing the driveway.

Now married (to a woman who used to work in the band’s touring production office) and with a child on the way, he’s mellowing out. He just wants to drive some golf balls and be with his wife, though he still can’t seem to avoid singing, “Hey, we want some pussy,” during any lull in the conversation.

An evening with Young, age 32: In the bar of a New York hotel, Stefani lifts her glass for a toast: “To fifteen years of blood, friendship, love and the release of our new record.” Young stands up and takes of his jacket. Underneath is a faded No Doubt shirt. “It’s from 1987,” he says. “I bought it at a No Doubt show.” Young is the band’s newest member, having joined in 1999; before that he was the band’s biggest fan. “You shouldn’t wear that shirt,” says Stefani. “You should frame it, and cut it so that both sides show in the frame.” Young says nothing, but it is clear that in his mind, shirts are for wearing.

Kanal, as cool as he seems, is the band’s most tightly wound character. His father and mother moved from India to London and then emigrated to America with their two young sons in 1981. Eventually, they opened a store in Anaheim called Kanal’s Gifts and Fashion. “They’re such beautiful people,” Stefani says of Kanal’s parents, “and they have such open minds. Especially in their community, because all their friends’ kids are rich and going to Harvard. And here was Tony. In a band. With a white girlfriend.”

An evening with Kanal, age 31: After a twelve-hour photo shoot and a Korean meal, he offers a tour of his house. “This window isn’t supposed to be open,” he says when we enter the bedroom, sounding like a cop on patrol. In an office upstairs, he finds a discs out of order. “I can tell my brother’s been borrowing my CDs,” he says, rearranging them. They run from Eighties groups such as Human League and Men at Work to Oasis and U2. “We judge everything we do by the Clash and U2,” he says. Every time it comes to making a decision, No Doubt ask, “What would the Clash or U2 do?”

He pulls out a daybook, in which he’s listed a chronology of each day’s events for the year of making Rock Steady. “Adrian has golf, Tom has surfing, Gwen has Gavin, I guess, and this is all I have,” says Kanal. “I wake, eat and sleep No Doubt.”

Dumont grew up as the only adopted child in a family of three kids. “His dad was really strict,” says Stefani. “Like, if a chair was pushed out from the table when he went to bed, he’d have to go back and push the chair in. I think his parent’s divorce was just so hard on him. And he really takes care of his mom.”

An evening with Dumont, age 34: He invites me to his small West Hollywood apartment to hear the original Rock Steady demos, recorded on a mini-Pro Tools rig in the living room. He plays an unreleased track recorded to a Dr. Dre beat and failed jam called “Expensive Sushi” with improvised Stefani lyrics and samples he downloaded from Napster. “I’m the opposite of Tony,” he says. “I’m lazy – I would just let something go and later on regret it. I always do this in my life.”

Four days after Rock Steady is released, the band is backstage at Saturday Night Live. After touring with their idols U2, the success of the KROQ show and the buzz about Rock Steady, No Doubt feel like they are getting a second chance. On their first walk through the gauntlet of popularity, they were too confused to enjoy it. Kanal remembers that when No Doubt played Saturday Night Live last time, in 1996, he was so nervous he screwed up.

Tonight there is other drama. Young’s wife, who is seven months pregnant, is sick. And Young is worrying himself sick, too. He calls her doctor and returns to the dressing room, his face ashen. Stefani walks in with a torn black top and a hair cut that basically amounts to a mullet. She isn’t feeling sexy in high heels tonight. “They’re too high,” she says. “I can’t feel my feet.”

She switches shoes while Young places a paper bag next to the drum set in case he vomits during the performance. All goes smoothly, however, and after performing “Hey Baby” and “Hella Good,” the band, plus Rossdale, climbs into a limo. “Can I borrow your phone?” Dumont asks Kanal. “I need to call my mom. She’s been upset today.”

As we sit in the limo, waiting to go to the Saturday Night Live afterparty, it sinks in what a strange group this is. You’ve got a mama’s boy who’s completely uncomfortable with himself, another guy that’s so compulsive that he keeps a log of what he does every day, a punk with a mohawk who is actually a sensitive golf-playing father-to-be and a blond sex symbol who is actually a totally traditional love-smitten woman.

“Most people don’t get it,” Stefani says in the limo. “I love that you are getting it.” And with that, she grabs Rossdale by the hand and jumps into another limo, and the lovers disappear into the night.

Tired of Ska, Bored with bindis, and suffering from writers block, No Doubt looked back to the 80’s for inspiration, conjuring a new-wave fest that would do Missing Persons proud.
Now only if a certain person would propose…

In bed with Gwen Stefani! Bliss! Rapture! Total listener-contest dream come true!

That is, if you’ve haven’t already spent two years in a tour bus with Gwen Stefani. Or a thousand hours at soundchecks with Gwen Stefani. Or 18 months in recording studios with Gwen Stefani. Or untold nights in cramped, urine-smelling, graffiti-mottled backstage dressing rooms with Gwen Stefani.

“Feel free to remove your shoes, dude,” Stefani chides one bedmate. “‘Cause I do, like, sleep here.”

Arrayed upon their singer’s huge, Sleeping Beauty-meets-Kama Sutra four-poster, the males of No Doubt nonetheless seem quite content with their current arrangement, staged for a visiting video crew. Surrounded by scented candles, their backs against the mirrored headboard, drummer Adrian Young (in spotted cheetah coif), bassist Tony Kanal (newly bleached blond), and guitarist Tom Dumont (proudly untinted) lounge like the three stinky brothers of a pink-haired fairy princess, here in her Hollywood castle.

The cameraman asks which member will greet the viewers at home. “Tom, you should do it,” says Kanal. “What should I say?” asks Dumont. “Just take your cock out and throw it down.”

Dumont, who is wearing a brown argyle sweater, looks unlikely to perform this feat. (“The rest of the group, they have this entertainment ethic,” he says later, in the drawl of a philosophizing patrolman on Cops. “I love music, and I love playing guitar, but showmanship isn’t my strength.”)

Kanal is undeterred: “Cock’n'roll, yo!”

The bandmates are here to tape an intro for the premiere of their new single and video, “Ex-Girlfriend,” and their homey little bedroom tableau is the first pre-album publicity they’ve had to do in five years. That is, since the days when Stefani was blonde, Anaheim was home, and “ska” was considered a hot growth stock.

Much has changed since then. Homes have been bought, SUVs have been registered, and the group has labored for two years on a follow-up to their 15 million-selling ‘95 smash, Tragic Kingdom. The result, titled Return of Saturn, is a rambunctious and assured burst of new wave revivalism by people who clearly grew up within broadcast range of ’80s-era KROQ-and who are quite aware they aren’t kids anymore.

Fittingly, the video recasts the band as a fresh but familiar-looking rock entity: : kind of like the ‘96 Smashing Pumpkins, with a pinch of Garbage, a bit of Puffy, and a lot of fluorescent clothing. Like most No Doubt videos, the Hype Williams-directed, anime-inspired vignette also contains a wry autobiographical wink. It stars Stefani as a pink-cornrowed, kung-fu-fighting assassin whose assigned hit turns out to be her ex-boyfriend. “I play the ex-boyfriend,” says Kanal. “Surprise.”

Kanal has already endured the worst revenge a jilted girlfriend can exact: being made to perform her he-done-me-wrong songs before thousands. But Kanal has long aged out of the role of mute romantic villain-both in and outside No Doubt’s circle. Despite the fact that he caused their heroine enough heartache to power a platinum-selling weeper like “Don’t Speak,” today’s younger No Doubt fans, who dish in chat rooms like soap addicts, hardly consider Kanal the devil.

“Gavin is the devil,” jokes Nina Young, Adrian’s new wife and No Doubt’s former production coordinator. She is, of course, referencing Bush singer and Stefani boyfriend Gavin Rossdale. “The kids online, they want Gwen and Tony back together. To them, Gavin’s like the Yoko Ono of No Doubt.” (To which Rossdale replies, “Jesus Christ!”)

Concerned fans would probably be gratified to see the vibe here today. Under the gaze of numerous Gavin snapshots, here cuddles a group it would take one hell of a “Yoko” to shake. “Tony! I wanna be with Tony!” cries Stefani’s little niece Madeline, who clambers onto the bed.

“C’mere, little lamb,” Stefani calls from the middle, beckoning not her four-year-old roommate but her older, smaller one: Maggen, a shaggy, 16-year-old Lhasa apso with a ribboned topknot. The cast assembled, the ersatz but inseparable family called No Doubt is ready to greet the world. The cameraman asks them to move closer together.

“Come on, nerds,” Stefani coos brightly, pulling them tighter. “Come on! Come on, nerds!”

No Doubt’s members are all around 30; they’ve been together since high school-two facts that make them a special brand of modern-rock act. While most bands today resemble hockey teams or rapping Navy SEALs, this quartet recalls a not-so-distant era when men and women toiled together in the making of rock’n'roll songs-a time of bouncy, Anglophilic high jinx known as new wave. “We love music from the ’80s,” Kanal says. “Even the cheesiness of it. That was what we grew up with.” And like well-adjusted children of Simon LeBon, No Doubt wear the ’80s exceptionally well.

Produced by studio svengali Glen Ballard (Alanis, Aerosmith), Saturn has many of the sugar-high thrills we expect from the folks who brought us “Spiderwebs” and “Just a Girl.” But they’re colored by an audible wistfulness, the kind you might evoke by sticking an Adam Ant pin on your Fubu sweatshirt.

“The songs’ DNA contained a profound knowledge of ’80s pop,” Ballard says. “And I think there was an unconscious decision to key in on the sounds and textures that evoked what Gwen was writing about, in terms of a reflective look back.” Named for the astrologically designated moment of adulthood (a 30-year mark at which the planet Saturn realigns with its position at your birth), Return of Saturn is about pondering the past, taking stock, and freaking out. “Assessing my life / Second-guessing,” sings Stefani in “Artificial Sweetener.” Two songs later she’s getting Oingo-existential (“Six Feet Under”). And in both songs, the fretting about romance and destiny comes with so many Split Enz guitars, Cure bass lines, and Missing Persons keyboards that few survivors of the John Hughes administration will brave with a dry eye. But the members of No Doubt are actually quite far from the futuristic androgynous of the classic new wave era.

For proof of this, look no further than the album’s real surprise, “Simple Kind of Life.” In this beautifully crafted ballad, Stefani weighs dreams of motherhood against career. “All I needed was a simple man,” goes one verse, “so I could be a wife.” Five tracks later she’s pining for nuptials in “Marry Me,” pouting “I can’t help that I like to be kissed / And I wouldn’t mind if my name changed to Mrs.” (“Kind of a sledgehammer of a hint,” quips Rossdale.)

Girl Power? Jewel wouldn’t sing lines like these. But this is exactly the kind of unfashionable, unpunk sentiment No Doubt shouted out in the middle of grunge season, giving voice to legions of kids who knew that, deep down, they weren’t nearly as “alternative” as they dressed. “You can’t argue with Gwen’s passion for honesty and openness,” enthuses Rossdale. “It takes a lot to be that vulnerable and lay yourself open like that.” And this is something even the most jaded No Doubt detractor would have to admit: Makeup or not, these guys aren’t faking a thing.

Orange County, circa 1985: a sunny Reagan stronghold with a variety of disgruntled musical youth. Of these, the ska fan was probably the least imposing. Neither as icy as the goths nor as tough as the hardcores, ska kids were generally fun-loving and integrationist hipsters with good organizational skills and bad dance moves. While No Doubt has long outgrown this scene, its members are still imprinted with some of these traits.

Take Tony Kanal. A dreamy-eyed 29-year-old of Indian descent, he’s No Doubt’s second-prettiest member. (“You are a beautiful man,” reads a letter from a gay grad student, closing with a hopeful “P.S.: I have lots of muscles.”) Onstage, he’s a sweaty, head-bobbing dynamo. Offstage, he’s pretty far from a wild-livin’ rock dude. In his bedroom closet: ten pairs of carefully stacked, different-hued Dickies (“that’s what I always go for first”), a pile of neatly folded Beefy-T’s (“pick any out, you can’t go wrong”), some warm-up pants for sportier occasions, and several flavors of Puma. In his office bookshelf: The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra and Power to Burn: Michael Ovitz and the New Business of Show Business. Kanal has been the band’s business manager and archivist for over a decade.

“This is where I spend most of my time,” he says, leading the way into the first-floor office of his still partially furnished Hollywood Hills home. By the desk is a framed poster from the movie Scarface. “I usually watch that or The Godfather: Part II before most business meetings,” he says, then laughs. “It really does work.” Pointing to another wall, he shows me a framed ticket stub from his first concert: Prince, “Purple Rain” tour, February 23, 1985. “Wear something purple,” it reads. “And I did,” Kanal confirms. Below it is another stub: the Untouchables, March 14, 1987, Kanal’s first ska show. Deprived of wardrobe suggestions, he showed up dressed a bit study-hall, fretted at the punkish crowd, and hit a thrift store to re-gear-up.

Within months of joining No Doubt in 1987, Kanal was managing the band and dating leader/songwriter Eric Stefani’s sister, who took over as singer when John Spence committed suicide. Then Dumont joined up, defecting from a heavy-metal band led by his sister. (“Yeah, I had a mullet,” he confesses. “But it was a more forward-thinking mullet.”) Last came Young, who soon established a rep as the band’s hardest partier and most frequently naked member. Such was the high-energy live act signed to Interscope for a self-titled, profoundly ignored debut in 1992-the year No Doubt’s story got truly interesting.

Just as the band was beginning work on their second album, two things happened. Eric decided to quit the band, and Tony decided to quit Gwen. These are precisely the events supposed to end bands’ histories, not begin them. But what follows is a classically ’90s tale of female empowerment: Girl grows up happy in the shadow of guys. Guys fail her. Girl finds hidden strengths. Girl rescues guys, goes platinum. “Suddenly, all the lyric-writing responsibility was kinda dropped into my lap,” Stefani says. “And I had all this stuff on my mind. Broken-heart stuff.” Which led to Tragic Kingdom’s “Just a Girl,” “Don’t Speak,” and “Happy Now?”- hits that blew these four friends into the stratosphere. And that is how Gwen Stefani, her bandmates, and her bindi helped pull America out of the grunge age. Which was a breeze, they say, compared to making their latest album.

“If you hit the hole in four you get a par,” says Adrian Young, holding forth on a Long Beach, California, golf course. “If you hit it in three it’s a birdy. Two, it’s an eagle. Five is a bogey.” According to this scale, I am currently hitting about a booty. Taking aim, I slice a ball deep into a bucolic wooded region. “It’s so strange that you don’t know anything about golf,” says Young. “Where did you grow up?”

In many ways, Young is the living embodiment of No Doubt’s ’50s-flavored So-Cal dream, his lifestyle more like an ring-a-ding anesthesiologist’s than a rock drummer’s. He plays golf, drives a black Mercedes, and lives with his wife in a huge house with orange trees and a well-stocked wooden bar. Only his cheetah ‘do and slightly maniacal eagerness conveys that Young is, as Stefani puts it, No Doubt’s “cool-meter,” he who kicks most ass.

We jump into the golf cart and tear off, two Big Gulp-sized cocktails jostling in convenient beverage holders. “I take this game way more seriously than I take anything in life,” Young says, cornering so sharply my margarita nearly upends. “It’s an obsessive thing. It makes me more mad than anything-any girl, any band fight. It’s just full of anguish.” He stops, grabs a club, and hits an impressive drive onto the green. “Go in…go in…motherfucker!”

The making of Return of Saturn held lots of its own brand of anguish for No Doubt. The process began in early ‘97, two months after the Tragic Kingdom tour ended. It continued, three producers and four false starts later, through January 2000. DMX would have put out five albums in that time.

“Here’s the thing about our band,” says Kanal. “We have really strong opinions individually. And you get 13 years into a band, and you learn not to step on other people’s sensitive areas.” While conducive to band harmony, this diplomacy makes efficient songwriting next to impossible.

After months of wheel-spinning, they decided to sack their longtime producer Matthew Wilder – too much a buddy now to effectively whipcrack. They met with Rick Rubin (Chili Peppers). They worked with ex-Talking Head Jerry Harrison, recording the Go soundtrack hit “New.” They recruited Michael Beinhorn (Marilyn Manson, Hole), who bowed out over scheduling conflicts.

And all the while, their singer and lyricist was slowly, gracefully sinking into despair. “I just couldn’t write words – I had nothing to say,” Stefani says. “It was one of the darkest phases of my life. And there was so much pressure, because everybody was waiting on me.” Finally they met producer Ballard – a calming, Zen-like presence and, significantly, someone who’d already ushered another ’90s rock woman into mega-platinum sales. Ballard reviewed songs, picked winners, and suggested arrangements. He also helped Stefani determine what she really wanted to say.

“Gwen kept repeating, ‘The person who wrote “Just a Girl” isn’t me anymore.’” he says. “She had to figure out where she was emotionally then, not six years earlier. And that’s always a hard thing to do.” Indeed, it must be hard to hear “Just a Girl” at 30 without noticing the lyrics’ extra layer of irony – especially when you’re out of the spotlight, back in your parents’ house, and feeling, as Stefani says, “like an old, fat tennis shoe.”

“I think I lost bits of myself when I was on tour,” she says. “I spent the last couple of years trying to find what was the real me, the real Gwen.” She got into Sylvia Plath. She studied the songwriting of Joni Mitchell. She went through rocky times with Rossdale. (“Ex-Girlfriend” is about him, not Kanal.)

Finally, she rediscovered the person who could make all this sadness and confusion tuneful. But Stefani didn’t exactly emerge from the experience full of heady soundbites on, say, the writer’s craft or journeys of self-discovery. This is how she describes the genesis of “Simple Kind of Life”: “I had just gotten my period so I was, like, real emotional? And then I just started playing these chords, and I was like, ‘Hey, I just wrote a song.’ And I went to play it for the guys and I was on the verge of tears, ’cause it was so emotional. And Glen just looked at me and was like, ‘That’s an amazing song.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, you think so?’ ”

Phrases like this got our sweet, open, slightly spacey California girl dissed six years ago, chided as a Valley Girl among the moody rock chicks. But set against neo-navel-barers like Christina Aguilera and Jessica Simpson, Stefani’s particular brand of frankness seems complicated, even mysterious. In person, she can come off girly, glamorous, or surprisingly tough – calling her friends “Poop” one minute and “Dude” the next. She’s shared rock stages with punks like the Vandals and Vogue spreads with movie stars like Heather Graham. In a way, today’s emphatically “strong women” like Lauryn Hill and Courtney Love make this bipolarity seem even more unusual.

“With us, it didn’t matter that I was a girl,” Stefani recalls of No Doubt’s early club years. “That was the whole point. I could still get up there amongst all the other punk-rock fuckin’ bands in Orange County and make the crowd go off just as hard.” Standing in the doorway of her Hollywood Hills house, Gwen Stefani takes time out for some acting – a little sense-memory exercise.

Having just posed for the cover of Young’s golf-mag-with-attitude, Schwing!, she’s wearing a gray zip-up hoodie, oversized khaki slacks, and a classically Gwen-ish found-fashion accessory: a white hairnet. “Okay,” she says, “you stand right there.” She’s about to re-create her immediate reaction to her current home. “I’ll show what I did when I first walked in.” She goes outside and shuts the door. While Stefani has taken some tentative forays into Hollywood, auditioning for roles in Fight Club and Girl, Interrupted, she is an inexperienced actor. Still, she brings great verve to the enterprise. She opens the door, walks in, stops, and gazes at the interior. “Oh my GAAAAAAAAAHD!” The crazy, hysterical scream of delight echoes against the stone walls. “It was just like that,” she says. “Well, almost that loud.”

Stefani’s dramatic Spanish-style chateau has a wrought-copper gate and Rapunzel-ready balconies. In the entryway stands a three-foot, blue-robed Virgin Mary, directly across the rotunda from a multi-armed Hindu goddess – a fitting icon combo for the nice Catholic girl who brought Indian forehead fashion to the mall. “I thought it would be good, ’cause it’s all girls living here, to have Mary right there to kinda greet us,” she says. “A little reminder to be good girls.”

The girls in question are Stefani, her sister Jill (a quiet 27-year-old Berkeley grad in art history), and Jill’s daughter Madeline. Her niece was born when Stefani was on tour and, like many little girls across the country, got to know her primarily from videos. Clearly a Gwen favorite, Madeline receives another shriek of delight as she comes running into the entryway. “Sissy!” the four-year-old calls, using the standard appellation for all household members. She is holding a pink, bear-shaped lollipop. “Look! I painted my sucker the same color as your hair!”

Stefani leads us through the living room, passing a curious array of pharmaceutical apparati: a distillation tube, beaker, and Erlenmeyer flask. “That’s a birthday present I got for Gavin,” Stefani explains. “Because his record’s called The Science of Things? And he has a song called ‘The Chemicals Between Us’? So I thought that would be a cute present.” Off in the kitchen, the phone rings. It’s for Gwen – whose reaction makes it pretty clear who it must be. “AAAGGGHH!” She clomps over on her high heels, head thrown back dramatically. “Hi!” she exclaims, grabbing the phone. “What’re you doing?” Silence. “Oh, that’s so cute!”

It is, of course, “Gav,” calling from Vienna. Rossdale has become an extended family member in No-Doubtland. He is, Stefani says, both a better cook and a better dresser than she is. (“He doesn’t let me wear bright yellow pants anymore.”) He often introduces her to new authors. He helps Tom Dumont’s schoolteacher girlfriend grade papers. (“Imagine if her students knew who was grading them!” Stefani says.) He even helps field phone calls from the Artist Formerly Known as Prince, mouthing “Do it! Do it!” as the reclusive pop genius called Stefani for a collaboration.

The Artist had first terrified No Doubt by attending one of their Minneapolis concerts, after which he invited these lifelong Prince obsessives back to his paisley pad to jam. “First of all, I do not jam,” Stefani says. “And I mean, he’s not like somebody you meet and walk away going, ‘Oh, he’s a normal person just like you and me-da-da-da.’ You walk away going, ‘That is the Artist Formerly Known as Prince!’”

Later, he modified and recorded the No Doubt-penned song “Waiting Room,” as yet unreleased. “It was so weird,” says Stefani. “Because it was Prince singing lyrics I had written about Gavin with music I had written with Tony.” The mind does indeed boggle. But No Doubt may be the only rock group in history that could make a surreal, vaguely incestuous entanglement between a British neo-grunge singer, a pink-haired rock diva, her ex-boyfriend bassist, and a five-foot, purple-hued, ambisexual pop genius seem normal – even…wholesome.

“Excuse me,” says the fabulous man with the Robin Leach accent. “We’re having an argument. “Do you…sing?” Our two unbidden guests are hovering over No Doubt’s table at Pastis, the newest Manhattan hotspot, the kind of super-chic place where Air is the Muzak, the busboys are flossin’, and everyone seems quite desperate to be perceived as somebody.

With her sparkly makeup and tightly woven pink braids, Gwen Stefani is clearly Somebody. Our friends just aren’t sure exactly who. “I sing,” Stefani says meekly. “I sing in the shower.” “You’re in a baaaahnd, aren’t you?” insists the visitor. “What’s the name of your baaaahnd?”

These questions evince a particularly poignant cluelessness, since Stefani’s band is, in fact, surrounding her. In a room filled with Prada, the boys’ attire includes a black jersey, an Abercrombie-looking button-down, and a Black Flag T-shirt. To the star-spotting fabulousie, they are invisible. To Stefani, though, they are, quite literally, an entire world.

After the inquiring minds wander back to the bar, the rest of No Doubt explodes with laughter. “Is that you, daaaahling,” says Kanal, almost head-butting Stefani. “Are you the one…the one with the baaaahnd?” Young asks. The four friends from Orange County recommence the fart noises and cartoon voices. “From the beginning, no matter who we played with, or who we hung out with, our band was always just its own little group,” Stefani says. “Like, its own little land or something. If I started something new today and looked for three other guys, and said, ‘Hey, we’re gonna do this for the next 13 years….’” Stefani trails off. “I can’t imagine it.”

A blur of Gucci and pashmina whirling behind her, she still seems a bit incredulous. “But somehow, you know, it happened.”

With thanks to Mike McKeaney of ND Universe

Being in a group can be like a soap opera! Find out how sudden fame, serious jealousy, and a gorge guy named Gavin almost broke up the hippest band in the land.

It’s been a most major week for No Doubt. Their Tragic Kingdom album has hit number one, they’ve rocked out on Saturday Night Live, and they’ve had a private tour of the White House. But even with all that under their belts, the Anaheim CA, quartet is stressed about tonight’s concert, their first full show in a few months.

Backstage at Rockland Community College in New York, the band members chill out different ways. Bass player Tony Kanal is taping a scene with his camcorder. Drummer Adrian Young is hanging with his girlfriend, Christine. Guitarist Tom Dumont is digging through his huge bag of free diesel gear, trying to find something cool to wear for the show. Singer Gwen Stefani, meanwhile, has the college’s gym all to herself – a starstruck staffer was only too glad to open it for her.

Anyone who’s seen No Doubt’s babe of a lead singer high-kicking it in their videos or in concert will find it hard to believe that there was ever a time when Gwen wasn’t in great demand-or in great shape. But she remembers it differently. “I was fat all over,” she says of her teenage self.

You’re probably thinking Yeah, right! But Gwen insists that she’s forever battling her weight-in fact, this very minute, she’s working on dropping the five pounds she’s piled on during her vacation. But she’s not stressing over it. “I’m enjoying being a little chubby,” she insists. “I love life, and if I want a rad slice of pizza, I’ll have it!”

Right now, Gwen has good reason to love life. After ten years of struggling for stardom with her best buds and bandmates Tony, Tom, and Adrian, she couldn’t possibly be happier-or luckier.

Rock Romance

“That’s my boyfriend,” Gwen says as Bush’s “Swallowed” comes on the radio. She used to play the “we’re just good friends” game whenever Bush singer Gavin Rossdale’s name came up. Till now, she’s admitted to having had only three boyfriends in her life-the most significant of them having been Tony, No Doubt’s bassist, who was her prom date and main man for seven years.

Gwen was guyless – and heartbroken – after Tony broke up with her two years ago. She tried to deal by writing songs about her feelings; many of those tunes, including “Don’t Speak,” ended up on Tragic Kingdom. But as hard as she tried, she just couldn’t get over him.

“Then I met Gavin,” she says. “And that one night was all it took for me to say ‘Okay, I need to move on,’ ”

Her first close encounter with the Brit babe came around Christmas ‘95, when No Doubt was booked as the opening act for Bush’s tour. “The first thing he said to me was, ‘You’re gorgeous,’ ” she remembers. Gwen, though was not impressed. “I wasn’t looking to go out with a boy in a band – especially one who’s that good-looking. I’m usually attracted to guys with good personalities, ones that make me laugh. That’s what I think is sexy – not some dude with flowing curls who’s tall and gorgeous.”

But once she got to know him, she just couldn’t resist: within days the singers were smooching. “I couldn’t believe he liked me!” Gwen says. “I’d been down about the Tony thing for so long that my self-esteem was way down too. And suddenly this guy thinks I’m great – and he has a British accent!”

Last year, as their bands went on to rule the charts (It was Tragic Kingdom that bumped Bush’s Razorblade Suitcase out of the number one album slot), Gwen and Gavin continued to date but kept their private lives just that. When the Bush-No Doubt tour ended, their separate schedules put distance between then and put their relationship sort of on hold. “We kept it quiet – if we didn’t even know what we were, why tell everyone we’re girlfriend and boyfriend?” she says.

Long-distance Love

Though being separated from her sweetie on a daily basis bums her out, Gwen works hard to keep their romance alive. She has a photo of Gavin taped inside her makeup box, takes her cell phone everywhere so she’ll never miss one of his calls, and even phones other Bush members to track him down when she just has to hear his voice. Still, she can’t wait for the day when they can do “real stuff” together, like, “watch TV, go to the movies, and just hang out.”

Until recently, No Doubt had all the time in the world to hang out. Together since they formed in high school in 1987, Gwen, Tony, Tom, and the group’s founder, Gwen’s big brother Eric Stefani (Adrian joined late), were beginning to think they’d never make it big. Their self-titled debut album, released in 1992, pretty much bombed. Three years later, they forked over the money themselves to put out another CD, Beacon Street Collection, with also went unnoticed. Frustrated, Eric bagged the band to become a cartoonist.

Then came the release of Tragic Kingdom. Incredibly, the first single, “Just A Girl,” rocked the charts, followed by “Spiderwebs” and “Don’t Speak.” To date, Tragic has sold more than 5 million records.

The only glitch is, their sudden success has caused more internal band problems than all their years of struggling ever did. For nearly a decade, nothing could come between them. But for a while last year, it seemed like Gwen’s overnight superstardom might tear them apart. Suddenly, all people were interested in was Gwen’s singing, Gwen’s clothes, and Gwen’s bindi (the Indian jewel on her forehead). The press treated No Doubt as if it was just a girl-and three anonymous background boys. Naturally, the guys felt like they’d been kicked to the curb. “For so long, we were all equal,” explains Tom. “Then we have a hit, and it’s like we’re Gwen’s backup band.”

The group bravely addresses the situation in its “Don’t Speak” vid. “We made a video about breaking up at a time when we thought we might actually break up,” says Gwen. “It was so real. We were fighting while we were filming.”

Making Up

Luckily, the “Don’t Speak” video has helped clear the air and allowed the group to go back out on the road, where they’re sometimes forced to chill together 24/7-which isn’t always easy for Tony. Being in a band with an ex-girlfriend who’s just become a mega-star and hooked up with an English rock hottie can be a major adjustment.

At No Doubt’s next gig in Asbury Park, NJ, Tony’s standing before a door marked “group’s dressing room.” Next to it, there’s another door marked “Gwen’s room.” Tony is not amused. He asks a concert staffer to rectify the situation. “Can you take that down and put something like ‘number two room’? This makes us feel weird.”

Later, Tony opens the door that still bears the “Gwen’s room” sign and finds her talking about the shortlist of men in her life.

“Don’t include me on your list,” he says. “I want to remain anonymous.”

“We were inseparable for seven years,” Gwen pouts.

“Until you met Gavin,” he shoots back.

“Shut up!” she groans.

“That’s exactly what happened,” says Tony, who’s kind of teasing, but not really. “Everything was awesome until, ‘Oooh, big rock star. Well, Tony, he has a private jet. Bye-bye!’ That’s how I remember it.”

“I really love you a lot,” coos Gwen as he walks off. Then she reminds him, “We’re number one!”

“You’re number one,” he says over his shoulder.

But all the traces of resentment and jealousy vanish when the band takes the stage. In concert, they’re simply unstoppable. At the end, delirious fans chase them across the auditorium as they head for their dressing rooms.

Backstage Gwen lets it all sink in. “There was this kid sitting in the front row wearing a Gwen shirt that he’d painted himself,” she begins. “He was singing along with every word and crying . I smiled at him and said ‘It’s okay.’ I wanted to say, ‘I understand; I’ve done that too.’ When you see someone like that, you realize how long they’ve spent listening to your record and how it’s going impact the rest of their life. Whenever they hear No Doubt, it will bring them back to this time period. That’s really special.”

No Doubt’s Dudes

Here, the lowdown on the boys in the band:

Name: Tony Kanal
Age: 26
Instrument: bass
Personality profile: He’s the serious, business-minded babe of the group. When the others got frustrated and wanted to give up before the platinum success of Tragic Kingdom, Tony was the motor that kept the band going.
Romantic status: Single. “I’m not looking for a serious relationship right now – I just want to meet new people and have a good time. I’m into intelligent girls who can give me my own space.”
Stage style: “I like Dickies jumpsuits, workman suits you can get at stores like Kmart, and gas-station-attendant suits. I have about 50 of them.”
Fave tunes: Anything by The Artist and Weezer and “any old school hip-hop”

Name: Tom Dumont
Age: 28
Instrument: guitar
Personality profile: He’s the kinda quiet, self-effacing, all-around nice guy who digs surfing the Net (he handles the official No Doubt home page).
Romantic status: Taken. He met his steady of two years at a club in Orange County, CA. “She’s cool about the whole band thing. I had another girlfriend who couldn’t handle it, and that was when we weren’t even famous yet.”
Stage style: “I usually wear collared shirts – they’re very California. I’m the nerdy character on stage; I love surf shirts with stripes and ugly colors.”
Fave tunes: Anything by ancient heavy-metal heroes such as Black Sabbath or Rush. (He once played in a heavy-metal band called Rising with his sister.)

Name: Adrian Young
Age: 26
Instrument: drums
Personality profile: He’s the closest thing No Doubt has to a party animal. A total jokester who popularized the crew cut with devil horns last year, you’ll usually find him making fart noises or playing b-ball-but probably not taking a shower. “I’ve always been a slobby, stinky guy.”
Romantic status: Taken. He hooked up with his honey almost four years ago while playing a show in Chicago. “She’s smarter than I am – I don’t know why she goes out with me.”
Stage style: “I’m getting into the mod scene-Fred Perry shirts, green flight jackets, stuff like that.” And he’s way over last year’s smeared-lipstick thing: “That was a tribute to my girlfriend, who’s an ex-Goth.”
Fave tunes: Abbey Road by the Beatles, Reggatta de Blanc by The Police, and Ad am Ant’s Greatest Hits.

Gwen Speaks

We got the girl to gush on sex, love-and more!

What were you like when you were in high school?
“I had bad style – my brother bought my this Godzilla T-Shirt and I used to wear it every single day with a pair of really old men’s pajama trousers.”

Describe your first kiss.
“I was in ninth grade at the time. I kissed this boy, Brad – I don’t even know his last name – on a family trip to Catalina Island in California. We kissed on the beach, in the sand, and I remember thinking, Omigod! This is so weird – I can feel his braces! My family left the next day. I wrote him three times, but he never wrote back.”

What’s your greatest vice?
“I’m a big slob. The makeup artist at the YM cover shoot was making fun of me because my makeup case is so disorganized. I didn’t have a cap on my lipstick, and she was all. ‘You don’t know how many bacteria are on there!’ ”

Are you close to your ‘rents?
“I’m very much into my family. We sing together all the time. My sister and I do ‘Edelweiss’ from The Sound of Music, and on the Fourth of July we sing campfire songs.”

How serious are you and Gavin?
“When you get older you don’t date someone just to hang out. I would never go out with a person who I don’t think I might have a future with. All Gavin and I want – I don’t know if I have the right to talk about what he wants ’cause we haven’t been together long enough, but I don’t think he’ll be bummed – is a family and a house. I’m not saying that we’re going to do it together, but we do dream about it.”