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

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

Our fave rock star-designer dropped some knowledge on what’s it’s like to release a solo CD, and how every good song deserves a slamming outfit. By Crystal Meers.

It’s been two years since the hardest rocking lady in music first graced our cover. Since then Rock Steady and No Doubt’s Greatest Hits have taken the world by storm, lovely L.A.M.B. gear has hit the streets, and that fine fiancé Gavin Rossdale has become the very lucky Mr. Stefani. As if that’s not enough, Gwen somehow found time to team up with powerhouses André 3000 of OutKast, Eve and the Neptunes to make a solo album, which hits stores November 23. It’s totally a big deal. The record, Love Angel Music Baby, is a dance-party dream and marks Gwen’s first magical musical adventure withour the No Doubt family. (Don’t worry – they’re not breaking up!)

We’re so excited about Love Angel Music Baby. But Gwen, weren’t you supposed to take last year off?
I mean, we were supposed to be off, but we put out the Greatest Hits album, we went to the Grammys, we went on tour, we put out a B-sides collection. It was a huge year for No Doubt. We are 18 years into the band, and No Doubt has been having our cake and eating it too and having so, so, so, so, so, much fun.

What inspired you to make this album?
This record came from me sitting on the bus listening to Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam and Club Nouveau and saying to Tony [Kanal, No Doubt's bassist], ‘Hey, I wanna make a dance record.’ I wrote a song and another song, and then I thought to myself, Oh My God! I want to make a dance record before I die, and it’s like time is running out! So I just pushed myself and went for it.

What is it like working on your own?
I thought it would be fun and fast and easy, but really it was the most challenging hurdle. When you are used to doing something your whole life with the same group of people, you get used to that security. When that comfort is taken away, it’s really frightening. For the new album, I would go into the studio with all these really talented people and I would start drowning in all their creativity. I’m used to doing all the words and melodies, but this album was not like that. It was about being open to other people’s ideas. I wanted to see if their talent might teach me something.

Did you ever expect to be where you are today?
Finding you passion is such a great thing, because then it’s not like work. It’s like doing something because you just can’t help yourself. I feel very lucky. No Doubt have always been huge. We were playing for, like, 2,000 people from our first show on. We definitely had a cult following, and a long time ago I would go into any record store and someone would go, “That’s the girl from No Doubt.” Then we go to travel the world. The biggest shock was seeing how we could be pulled apart by being together every single day in such an intense way. Playing shows sucks the blood out of you. And no one tells you that you are going to do interviews and talk about yourself the whole freaking time, while being an ex-girlfriend of the band-mate sitting next to you [Tony], talking about yourselves and what happened. But I know how lucky I am and how incredible it’s been.

Were you into fashion when you were a teenager?
I was anti-fashion-magazine. I was a little ska wannabe punker, and I was about thrift stores and making my clothes and being different. My mom and grandma made me clothes before I learned how. It’s in my blood.

So was it natural for you to do a clothing line?
Right after I first started L.A.M.B, I had big regrets. I knew it was going to be hard, but not this hard. Usually musicians put their name on a line and don’t have control. I would never sell out like that. What’s the point of having your name on something if you don’t have anything to do with it? I look at the first collection and I see all the mistakes, but everyone else seems to like it. Now I think about what I want to wear and know that soon I’ll have a closet full of my dreams.

How do you connect fashion and music?
In the past I was embarrassed to talk about fashion and my style, because I was always like, the music had to be the most important thing. I thought anyone could get dressed up and dance around, but writing songs takes something. It takes God to be like “Here. You can write a song.” It’s not talent. It’s like magic. But I think that fashion and music come from the same place of creativity. Once you write a song, you want to get dressed up and celebrate it. Music is so magical, it deserves some good outfit to go with it.

Gwen Answers Your Questions

How was high school for you? Do you have any tips for making it through alive? – Alexandra Kaul, 14, San Diego
I don’t even know that girl I was in high school, she was so different. I hated high school, not because of the social parts but because of the learning – you know, the part that you actually go to school for. Learning and focusing were really hard. I still have a hard time spelling and doing math, and thank god for spell-check. After high school I went to junior college and worked really hard and got a B average, and then I transfered to a four-year college and kept studying. As far as making it through, you should just focus on school, because learning is what is going to make you great, not getting caught up in drama.

How did you and Gavin meet? – Fiona Lake, 15, West Point, CA
I remember the head of our then label, Interscope, was always talking about Gavin and his band Bush. At the time, I was into a different kind of music. But the label wanted our bands to tour together. We knew that Bush didn’t want to take us on tour, and we were like, “We don’t want to go on tour with them.” Then, at KROQ’s Acoustic Christmas [concert in 1995], I met him backstage, and I got shot by some arrow. As soon as I looked at him, I started trying everything in my power not to like that guy. But sometimes with love you don’t have a choice.

Whether with No Doubt or solo, pop’s blonde bombshell is hardly “just a girl”

Do you remember what you were doing in 1985?
I remember exactly what I was doing. I was in high school and in love with this guy named Matt. He was on the drum line. I had a bob haircut and wore black-and-white tights and little mod-style outfits, listening to Madness or the Specials. I was hard-core into ska and thrift-store shopping, and making my own shit – trying not to be like everyone else.

How would you like to be remembered?
The Greatest Hits tour we did last year? Every song we played every night was a hit. And until you have a hit, you don’t know what it feels like to play a song like “Just a Girl” or “Don’t Speak” and have a crowd of 14,000 singing it back at you. So I think we’re just proud to have been able to sustain a career and move with the times and still be on the radio. That 15 minutes of fame is real, and so to be able to have anything longer than that is totally a blessing.

Even though your solo record was so successful [Love. Angel. Music. Baby spawned four hit singles, including "Hollaback Girl"], do you still think of things in the context of No Doubt?
Completely. Because Tony [Kanal, No Doubt bassist and Stefani's ex-boyfriend] was such a huge part of that record creatively, even though I only did three songs with him. So I feel like the band hasn’t really gone away. This year went like a flash, and before I know it, I’m going to be sitting with those stinky boys trying to write a record.

Which song are you most proud of?
I wrote “Simple Kind of Life” [on 2000's Return of Saturn] completely on my own, so I was really proud of it. I wrote it on guitar, and that was a big deal for me.

What are your favorite records of the last 20 years?
I don’t have records in order like that. I’m not a collector. My older brother was the guy that would buy every version of a single, so I didn’t need to. We lived in the same house. I was the girl who got bored in the record store. I like hits. I like things that stick in my head. So for me to get into a whole album, that doesn’t happen all the time. There are a few. I listen to Prince’s Under the Cherry Moon [soundtrack] a lot. UB40’s Rat in the Kitchen. The Police.

Any regrets?
I regret not really how to play an instrument. I regret that I have to rely on other people to write songs for me. I can play guitar well enough to write a song, but not enough to be free. I guess it’s not tool late to learn, but you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

But your voice is your instrument.
Definitely. If you said to me “Would you rather be able to play piano or write lyrics and melodies?” I’d say I’d rather be able to write lyrics and melodies. I’ve never considered myself a great singer. I think my voice has become so familiar that people have come just to accept it for what it is. To be honest, it’s kind of nasally and piercing, and I have no range.

What’s been your biggest thrill?
Being free – not having a job but still working all the time. That freedom of creativity, and getting paid for it, so you don’t have to worry if you want extra guacamole. You can afford it.

In 1996 Spin ran a story on No Doubt with just a photo of you on the cover [the band tension it caused inspired the video for "Don't Speak"]. Now’s your chance to talk about what you thought of that.
Having four people in a picture is hard to shoot and make look good. It really is. One person with blond hair and lipstick really stands out on the shelf. We all understand it now. But when we got the call, we didn’t think we were going to get the chance again, because we thought we were at number 15 in our 15 minutes. So we were really upset, and it pulled us apart. But we’ve been able to travel the world and take a million pictures together, so it seems kind of funny now. [Laughs] But I still feel bad about it – Marc Spitz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A lion in lamb’s clothing By Elysa Gardner

NEW YORK — If you want to know how Gwen Stefani maintains her youthful enthusiasm, not to mention her girlish figure, try chatting with her for half an hour. But take your vitamins first.

“I’m just going to keep talking until you ask another question,” Stefani chirps, plopping onto a sofa in MTV’s green room. No Doubt’s 35-year-old, cellulite-free lead singer has described herself as having been a chubby teenager, but her breathless energy suggests the metabolism of a hummingbird.

“I actually have thought of myself as, like, lazy,” Stefani says. “Like, I love sleeping and eating and watching TV. But once I find something that I’m passionate about, I get this crazy drive. Because you hear the clock ticking, and you’re like, ‘Omigod, I want to do all these things, and I have to hurry up because I’m going to die soon.’ ”

Certainly, Stefani’s schedule in recent years would challenge the most determined multitasker. Since No Doubt’s last studio album, Rock Steady, was released in late 2001, she has toured extensively, gotten married — to fellow rocker Gavin Rossdale, frontman for the British group Bush — and acted opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, opening Dec. 17, in which Stefani plays ’30s starlet Jean Harlow. Late last year, she also launched her own fashion line, called L.A.M.B., an acronym for “Love Angel Music Baby.”

That’s also the title of the latest product of Stefani’s relentless drive: a new CD. Out today, it’s the singer’s first album not featuring the three other members of her multi-platinum-selling rock band.

“I can’t really call it a solo project, because it’s so collaborative,” Stefani says. No Doubt bassist and co-songwriter Tony Kanal, Stefani’s onetime boyfriend, is a contributor, as is tunesmith du jour Linda Perry (Pink, Christina Aguilera), who teamed up with Stefani for the single What You Waiting For?

Other co-writers, producers and musicians appearing on Love constitute a contemporary pop/hip-hop wish list, sprinkled with names harking back to the new wave and R&B that shaped Stefani’s youth: Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Dallas Austin, Dr. Dre, Nellee Hooper, The Neptunes, Outkast’s Andre 3000, New Order’s Bernard Sumner and Prince cohorts Wendy and Lisa.

“It’s a nice name-dropping situation,” Stefani says. “I wanted to make a record inspired by the feeling of all that fun, melodic dance music from the ’80s, but to work with people who are in the club today.”

A daunting task

Craig Marks, editor of music magazine Blender, says Stefani’s approach is both bold and canny. “She seems to be an astute and voracious consumer of pop culture, and that’s what she wants to give back. It’s a pretty weird, progressive, avant-pop record, so she’s in no danger of forsaking her credibility.”

Sean Ross of Edison Media Research speculates that while Waiting hasn’t taken top-40 radio by storm, it could be that listeners “haven’t caught up with it yet. But they certainly want her to have a hit.”

But Marks acknowledges that a solo debut, whether the artist wants to call it that or not, “always poses a bit of a risk. Gwen really seems to have enjoyed being with the boys in her band, and that security blanket isn’t there now.”

Stefani concedes that recording Love was more daunting than she had anticipated. “After 17 years of being in this little comfort zone with my best friends, I had to walk into a room with these people I hardly knew and totally admired. It was like, ‘OK, I’ll take my clothes off. I know you totally have expectations of me, but let’s get intimate.’ It was horrifying, but once you get over that hump and the song comes out, you have this little thing that you made together, and it’s there forever.”

That Stefani would describe her creative process in such terms seems fitting for a self-confessed “girly-girl” who thrives in male company. “I love that contradiction of being feminine but playing in the boys’ treehouse. My whole life’s been like that.”

Her fellow players on Love encouraged Stefani to explore her own womanhood and, on tunes such as Bubble Pop Electric and the Asian-influenced Harajuku Girls, try on different voices. “Usually, I write about whatever I’m inspired by that day,” she says. “But I also got to play characters here and there, which added a nice balance.”

Stefani, who is considered one of pop’s coolest clotheshorses, adds that starting up L.A.M.B. further fired her juices. “I was designing and starting to write the record at the same time, so there was a lot of cross-pollination going on.” She adds, “I think I can confidently say that designing is something I want to do for the rest of my life. It’s such a passion for me, and there’s no emotional stress involved, whereas music is very emotional.”

More films may also be part of Stefani’s future, though she stresses that she has only a couple of lines in Aviator, in a scene where her Harlow appears with DiCaprio’s Howard Hughes. “I definitely got my feet wet, and I got to do it in the big pool. And everyone was so amazing and welcoming, from Leonardo to John C. Reilly to Jude Law. … There I go, name-dropping again.”

For all her celebrated chic, in fact, Stefani still seems less than comfortable with certain aspects of celebrity. “At a certain point with fame, you have to learn boundaries. Or else it’s like, ‘OK, I think an insane asylum looks really comfortable right now.’ ”

On the home front

Stefani’s own boundaries, predictably, do not extend to discussing recent tabloid reports that Rossdale has a teenage child from a previous relationship. Asked if she and Rossdale plan to have a baby of their own, Stefani says, “I want to have children, but I feel weird talking to the whole world about that, because it’s my business. And it’s not really up to me, you know? If you see a bump on my belly, then you’ll know I’m having a baby.”

Stefani concedes that there have been significant changes in her personal life since No Doubt rose to fame in the late ’90s, and in the lives of Kanal and bandmates Tom Dumont and Adrian Young. “Tom just got married, Tony’s in a really serious relationship and Adrian has a 2-year-old with his wife. And I’m married, obviously. Everybody grew up. And when you marry, that becomes your priority.”

In spite of that, and her own ambitions, Stefani insists that “the band is totally still together. Tony was very involved in my record, and we put a greatest-hits record out. When you are in a relationship that many years, you have to recharge the batteries. Now we can start flirting about making songs together again.”

Granted, Stefani’s pop life may not remain as chaotic as it has been lately. While she’s doing a promotional tour for Love, there are no plans for the kind of concert trek that No Doubt’s fans have looked forward to after each CD.

“I’ve done so much touring in my life,” Stefani says. “I love it, love it, love it. On the greatest-hits tour (No Doubt) just did, it was incredible to watch those crowds. I cried at every show. But life just feels so short right now. Maybe that’s what happens when you turn my age.”

Not that Stefani is complaining. “I feel pretty filled up with everything. I feel like maybe I can take a breath and go, ‘OK, I’ve done all these things; now I can just enjoy the moment.’ For the first time in a long while, I can’t even see tomorrow. But I know that something is going to surprise me.”

Well, No Doubt’s greatest hits, anyway – which is what they’ll be playing on their last tour before Gwen Stefani drops a solo CD. By Chris Willman.

Shooting what little breeze there is on a hot, insufferably still LA day, Gwen Stefani suddenly feels the need to cull a statistic from a bandmate. “How many times do you think you’ve thrown up in your life, Tony?” she asks. Tony Kanal looks like he’s not certain he wants to play this game. “I’m not sure it’s a lot,” the bass player answers with a nervous chuckle. Better to focus on the immediate future. “This time,” he insists, “it’s gonna be much more mellow and healthy.” Fifty points if you’ve already figured out our subject of the day: rock touring. Their little O.C.-teem-ska-band-that-could, No Doubt, is hitting the amphitheater circuit in June, pairing up with blink-182 for one of the summer’s most anticipated tours. (One of the most economical too: Ticket prices top out in the mid-two-figure range, or about $250 cheaper than it’d cost you for a similar seat to see Madonna.) It’s a nationwide victory lap in honor of their recent blockbuster hits collection, The Singles 1992-2003, whose new song, a cover of Talk Talk’s “It’s My Life,” afforded them yet another top 10 smash (their tenth). This could be the optimal point in their history to catch the band: They’ve been together long enough to almost count as seasoned elder statesmen – 17 years, which is about 170 in rock years – but, being still in their 30s, they’re vigorous, scrappy, and in no danger yet of outgrowing their audience.

Which is not to say they haven’t outgrown a few youthful vices. In “Hey Baby,” one of the several massive singles from their triple-platinum 2001 album Rock Steady, Stefani immortalized her bandmates’ old post-show romantic pursuits, as ironically observed by her from across a crowded bacchanal. But any would-be female band-aids hoping to be party to that decadence this summer may walk away disappointed, since, with everyone in the group either married, engaged, or seriously involved, that song is primarily a historic document.

”I’m sad for Tony on this tour a little bit,” Stefani says, offering sympathy for her bassist and ex-boyfriend Tony Kanal’s lost youth. ”Because these guys used to party so hard. Basically they would start drinking at around five to get rid of the hangover from the night before. Then they’d have an after-party every night, bring a DJ booth and lights and songs and everything, with whatever backstage passes got out to whatever girls. And it was months of that, every single night. The nights we didn’t play, they would go to clubs.” Those years may be gone, but, to crudely paraphrase ”Casablanca,” they’ll always have porcelain.

Speaking of toilets (and we do promise to move along), now is as good a time as any to offer a word of warning for anyone planning to catch No Doubt this summer. If you’re buying beer before their set, be sure to ask for a child-size cup, because there will be no bathroom breaks. Which is to say, you won’t be getting any of those less familiar album tracks that usually signal fair-weather rock fans to make the traditional dash for the loo. The whole set list will come off that best-of. ”It’s really exciting to be able to go on a tour where every single song we’re gonna play will be a single,” enthuses Stefani. ”It’s gonna be like this” – whereupon she strikes a James Bond pose, spraying the room with firepower: ”Bang bang bang bang bang!”

The catch? They’ll be out on the amphitheater circuit for a mere month before Stefani heads back indoors to reload, since she’s still got a long-aborning solo album to get done and released before year’s end.

The tour, in fact, was never supposed to happen. The group had planned to be on hiatus all year, but current events were set in motion in early 2003 when the band initially decided to “put a B-sides record out with a bunch of cool stuff for die-hard fans,” Kanal says. Then came the bright idea to – hey! – throw in a disc’s worth of A sides, along with a couple of DVDs, and make it a boxed set. The final result of this evolutionary process was two separate projects: Boom Box, a limited-edition set, and the single-CD Singles collection, which has moved almost 2 million copies.

“We just wanted to celebrate that we’ve been in a band as long as we have,” says Stefani of the hits collection and commemorative tour. ”None of us were expecting to go out right now, but it’s funner when you don’t plan it and it just happens.”

“Tony, your hair is so white!” yells Stefani, commanding Kanal’s attention from across a bank of lights at an outdoor photo shoot. This would seem to be a textbook case of the pot calling the kettle platinum, but she’s right: Kanal is looking fair enough that you wonder if maybe he’s the member Martin Scorsese should’ve picked to play Jean Harlow in The Aviator, the Howard Hughes biopic starring Leonardo DiCaprio (to be released in December). “It’s like a fluorescent bulb,” she marvels, moving closer for a blonde-on-blonde comparison. “Is my hair that white?”

Meanwhile, drummer Adrian Young has turned whiter than either dye job, thanks to a six-foot boa constrictor that has just been introduced to the circus-themed set. Young’s performed live in nothing but a jockstrap, so it’s clear he lacks any phobias about public nakedness, but he’s got one about snakes, and his request to move to the farthest edge of the shot is granted. Stefani, for her part, digs the boa (though it proved to be too uncooperative to make the final photo). For a good half-hour she has it around her neck. Asked what 25 pounds of pure muscle coiling round your shoulders feels like, Stefani – looking altogether too relaxed – says, “It’s like… a massage.”

Maybe they could take the boa out on tour to help work out those post-thrashing neck cricks – or, in Stefani’s case, to relieve her daily noon pre-tour workouts. “It’s ruined my day,” she complains. But perhaps this buff rock icon doth protest too much, since moments later she’s telling her fellow band members, “I want to be working out with you guys on tour!” The guys smile faintly, as if trying to replace the mental image of a StairMaster with a picture of Jim Beam.

Or it could be just the genuine smile of a recently acquired domesticity. Kanal, 33, will be bringing his girlfriend on tour. Guitarist Tom Dumont, 36, is newly engaged. (He’s the one who, with his new bushy ‘n’ bearded look, might as well be a member of Phish. ”I’m the not-rock-star of the group,” he says.) Drummer Adrian Young, 34, is married and has a 2-year-old son; he’s also one of the few avid golfers to sport a full Mohawk, which helps ensure he gets accosted every time he leaves the house. (”I wear hats, every day, but it doesn’t matter,” he grumbles.) And as everyone probably knows, Stefani, 34, married her longtime beau, Bush-man Gavin Rossdale, in 2002.

You might think marriage would have taken a bit of the bloom off Stefani’s incurable romanticism – that maybe she wouldn’t mind getting out of the house and living the single life for a few weeks this summer. You’d think wrong, you heartless cynic. ”It’s gonna suck” being away from Rossdale, she says, ”though it always makes it very exciting when you get back together again. This is the first year in our relationship we’ve ever really hung out this much – like, every day. I love waking up together. And also making records at the same time [while living] in the same house, so that’s a first too.” She describes a typical working-couple setup: ”We go off to the studio and don’t see each other all day long, and then we’ll see each other at night and it’s ‘Oh, how did it go?’ It’s rad – I love it.”

At this point, it may be some of our more love-soured readers doing the throwing up. But Stefani is the rare distaff rocker who can fully indulge a girly-girl side, with all the romance and glam that might entail, and still seem like one of the boys. She and her band have always been crafty about striking intriguing balances. Starting out as a bunch of ambitious Anaheim teenagers in an unremarkable late-’80s ska band, No Doubt matured into the goofy but pop-savvy alt-rockers behind 1995’s 8-million-seller Tragic Kingdom. Five years later, maturity was the unexpected order of the day with a confessional follow-up, Return of Saturn. In December 2001, they came back with a well-regarded return to immaturity – and successful step forward into dance music – with the electronics-shaded Rock Steady.

Their next album should mark a pendulum swing back toward writing on guitar and piano and away from dance beats. Or so they say now. It’ll probably be a long, long time before anyone hears it.

In a makeup chair between shoots, Stefani is telling her assistant about the tracks she’s been recording with Outkast’s Andre 3000, a number he wrote called “Long Way To Go.” They’re set to resume work on the song later today. “We sing [in unison], but because his voice is so cool and mine is so geek,” she worries that “it sounds like I’m singing backup on his record.” Tonight she’s going to try to talk him into doing it as a true duet, trading off lines.

Stefani describes her first solo album as a dance project, a CD made up of electronic beats rather than the band tunes she’s accustomed to with No Doubt. Dallas Austin is on board, as is Beyoncé producer Rich Harrison. But in some ways it doesn’t sound like a huge departure: Nellee Hooper, who co-produced Rock Steady’s best cuts including “Hella Good” (their most club-friendly hit), is producing some tracks. And Kanal is co-writing and producing two others. Since No Doubt has been so successful in reinventing themselves, couldn’t she have purged some of the creative impulses within the context of the band?

Well, no. “The music I wanted to make for the dance record is something I could not do with No Doubt,” she maintains. ”It would exclude members, because it’s programming, it’s electronics. But it’s cool, because everyone’s been supportive, and there’s no plan to quit doing what we’re doing.” The others concur, noting their own sideline activities producing new artists or playing in other bands – including, in Young’s case, a recent touring stint with reunited new-wavers Bow Wow Wow. ”We’re not sleeping together,” says the drummer. ”We can cheat on each other. It’s cool.”

Perhaps the most ironic part of Stefani doing a solo album is that the lyrics are much less autobiographical than the material she writes for No Doubt. “There are some weird twists to the themes, but it’s not heartfelt, deep, painful subject matter. I sing ‘baby’ a lot which I haven’t done before,” she says with a laugh. So she had to go solo to get impersonal? That’s why I don’t call it a solo record,” she responds. “I call it a dance record. A solo record to me is like heart-pouring-out, ‘Finally here’s me! This is what they’ve been holding me back from!’ That’s not what this record is. I want to make a record that’s a modern version of the ['80s] stuff I grew up on that made me feel really happy, that you can dance to in the club.”

For now, Stefani has set aside her disco ambitions to concentrate on moving the big crowds they’ll soon encounter in amphitheaters. Which should be a cinch given their arsenal of hits. ”There’s something really fun about going into the opening chords of “Don’t Speak,” to hear that crowd roar,” says Dumont, asked to pick a live favorite. ”But from the musical side of things, “Ex-Girlfriend” and “New” are songs that are kind of intricate, where there’s a lot of detail and subtlety in the way you navigate the songs, but at the same time they’re very rocking and aggressive.”

“Sunday Morning” is one I love playing,” says Kanal.

“Just a Girl” is always a winner, even though it’s not my favorite song to play, because it’s hard and you get tired,” Stefani says. ”But people get so excited. If you’re playing a festival and not doing too good, then all of a sudden you play that song, it’s an instant win-over.” And her own favourite? ” ‘Rock Steady,’ but we’re not playing that on this tour. Right?

“We could throw it in a couple of shows,” Kanal offers.

“But it wasn’t a single,” Stefani points out.

“You never know what kind of shows we might do,” he says guardedly, a little less prepared than Stefani to have a band meeting in public. So there you have it: They might throw in an album track or two and break the all-singles edict. Nonetheless, No Doubt fans, while the band members do their pre-tour workouts, you might want to work on steeling your bladders. Because even if “a real love survives a rock-steady vibe,” a full tank of Bud might not.