Gwen’s our fave fashion and pop icon and all-round quirky chick – No Doubt about it!

Hi there, Gwen! Good to catch up with you – how are you doing?
“I’m great, thanks!”

You’re famed for your bold fashion statements and for being a trendsetter. Do you choose all your outfits yourself?
“Well, I have stylists who bring things in for me, although I still get very excited about what I’m going to wear every day! I used to make my own clothes when I was younger, too, so it’s very exciting for me!”

Well, now you’ve got your own, über-cool fashion labels and a signature perfume, too. Tell us about them…
“I have a whole range of merchandise called L.A.M.B, which is named after the initials of my first solo album, Love Angel Music Baby. Plus there’s another, called Harajuku Lovers, inspired by Japanese street style. My perfume is called L, which again stands for Love and it’s like me shrunken into a little box!”

Your hands-on attitude to design led you to breaking a finger while stitching an outfit! Was that your x-ray that you put on one of your t-shirts?
“No, that was Tony Kanal’s [No Doubt bassist and Gwen's ex]. He broke hisfinger and sent me the x-ray, so I did a t-shirt saying ‘Broken’ and the x-ray printed on it!”

Your stage clothes are really incredible, too. What happens to them after a tour?
“I auction them to my fans to raise money for charity. It’s very exciting to be able to share them in this way and do some good.”

What do you like to do when you get a day off from your hectic pop-star life?
“I absolutely love to watch TV and my favourite channel is Discovery Health. I also like those reality shows where they do makeovers on people – it’s fun to see the before and after comparisons!”

We’re hooked on reality shows too! What’s your fave snack food while you’re watching telly?
“Oh I love food! I’m weak for cookies and pizza, so I will have a little here and there.”

Living in the spotlight must be tough, though?
“It can be frustrating and hard sometimes but I’ve been really lucky to have Gavin [her hubby, British rock star and actor Gavin Rossdale]. He relates to and understands what I’m going through and knows what the music business is like.”

Your song Wind It Up samples a song from The Sound Of Music and you dress up like Maria in the video. IS it your fave musical?
“I love Julie Andrews [who played Maria in the original film]. And I remember when I was a little girl and went to see the movie, it was such a huge inspiration for me. There are loads of references to it in my video.”

And finally – one more question about fashion! You seem to be a lot more down to earth than the average fashionista, so how do you feel about your “style icon” status?
“I think that I’ve been able to fool a lot of people into thinking I’m pretty hip, but in reality I’m just a big dork! I’m just an Orange County girl from a loving family, making music with my friends!”

Gwen – dressed to impress

“I remember when I was in school, they’d ask, ‘What are you going to be when you grow up?’ And then you’d have to draw a picture of it. I drew myself as a bride.”

“Now I’m a mother, I think I should always dress as a character for my children, so they think their mom is Alice in Wonderland or Cinderella.”

“Sometimes you have to sacrifice your performance for high heels”

“Being in music, you can wear whatever you want – it’s like an excuse for Hallowe’en every day!”

“I’d like to be one of the guys, but I wanna wear a lot of make-up”

Gwen’s favourite things

Favourite Food “Sushi”

Fave make-up “Bright-red Lipstick”

Best Place to live “California and then London”

Favourite song on your new album “4 In The Morning”

Best chillout place “The park, ’cause it’s peaceful”

Fave fashion designer “Vivienne Westwood. I might as well just go there and hand over my entire pay-cheque, I spend so much money there!”

Fave theatre show “The Sound Of Music”

Favourite band “No Doubt, of course! My intention is to get back into the studio and record with them again.”

Fave sport “Swimming. I used to swim in for my high school.”

Favourite saying “Workin’ it!”

New album? New tour? A possible No Doubt reunion in the near future? No problem. But this time around, Gwen Stefani’s got a baby on board.

Gwen Stefani wanted to be sure that her return from a between-albums hiatus was going to be, well, a wind-up. “I was thinking about how you disappear and come back, and I’m kind of coming back from being gone a minute,” Gwen hollas back over dinner at hip London eatery, Nobu. “The idea was to focus on the word ‘escape.’ I started thinking about the idea of Houdini. His whole gimmick was that his wife used to kiss him and pass the key through her mouth to him, and he would escape from his traps.”

Pry as we might, we can’t exactly confirm whether Gwen and husband Gavin Rossdale [Ed: Swoon!] are well-practiced in such techniques themselves, but we do know one thing she can’t escape from: her status as the coolest California Girl in popular music.

While we here at Instinct don’t throw the two words “gay icon” around lightly, loyal readers know that not only is Gwen one of three total females to grace the cover of our prestigious circular, she’s the only one to do so twice. Draw from that what you will.

But thrilled as she is with this honor, Gwen’s got a crowded laundry list of chores to busy herself with after dinner; Album promotion! L.A.M.B. fashion shows! Baby Kingston! The Harajuku Girls! so let’s get to the inquiries.

Between its nod to Japanese fashion culture and retro, legwarmer beats and melodies, Gwen Stefani’s first solo album, 2004’s Love. Angel. Music. Baby., seemed to hit shelves-and iTunes-at the right time. Not only did it go on to sell seven million copies, but it’s pom-pom-shakin’ sass anthem, “Hollaback Girl,” became the first million-selling digital single. But Gwen’s not one to go down the same road again.

“All my inspirations were completely different on this record,” she says. “On the last one it was all about the 80s-inspired dance music-the music I danced to growing up. But this time, I was over all that and felt like I was in a whole different place. I called the record The Sweet Escape, which is basically a song on the album. But it was a perfect name for the album because the music takes you away, and it’s definitely a dancey, poppy, sugar-coated set of just delicious ear candy.”

INSTINCT: Somehow, a wig seems to have found its way atop your head lately.
GWEN STEFANI: The visual theme is all inspired by Michelle Pfeiffer’s character in Scarface-very glam, straight-angled-cut blonde bangs with the big eyegear. Also, my new logo is basically a “G” that looks like a wind-up key. It also kind of looks like a guitar. We kind of play on that whole [Houdini] story, with it basically being the key to getting off the dance floor.

Speaking of gear and accessories, where’s the love with L.A.M.B., your fashion line, Gwen? There’s not a darned thing for us boys to wear! You can’t forget the boys! I didn’t mean to leave the boys out.
I will definitely speak to my team about that. You’ll be the first to know. Look out!

Hmmm. Anyway, you worked with the incredibly dashing Tim Rice-Oxley-the keyboardist from Keane-on The Sweet Escape.
I wrote “Early Winter” with Tim, who I love. I discovered [Keane's] first record when it was given to me. I was actually sent a couple tracks from them for my last record. Do I want these tracks? I was kind of like, I don’t know. At the time, it just didn’t feel right. But this time around, I just really wanted to have a ballad on this record, you know? I know this sounds funny, but I wanted to write “Eyes Without A Face” by Billy Idol, or, like, “Killing Me Softly” or “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper. So I got together with Tim, who’d never written outside of his group before. I can describe him like Superman. He looks like Clark Kent. He’s really handsome, but in a subtle kind of way. We wrote three or four songs together, and “Early Winter” was the one that I liked. It’s beautiful and it’s so addictive. I’m very lucky to have worked with him.

Let’s talk about this sample of “The Lonely Goatherd” in your new single, “Wind It Up.”
It’s just a dream I’ve always had. The Sound Of Music is one of my favorite, favorite movies of all time, and one of my biggest inspirations is Julie Andrews. I don’t know, something about that film, it’s just touched me over the years, and so I’ve referenced it a million times for other things. I did a whole session with [producer] Pharrell [Williams] about a year ago, and we wrote four tracks that were all amazing. The first one was “Wind It Up.” I took the track and, against his will [Laughs], had a friend of mine do a remix with a mashup between The Sound of Music and “Wind It Up.” I actually cried! I know that sounds ridiculous, but it was so good and so fresh and amazing.

And now you’ve single-handedly introduced a new generation to the Von Trapps!
I know a lot of people probably don’t know The Sounds Of Music, and hopefully this is my way of sharing something that I think is really great. Maybe people will go out and watch it. It’s a really good film.

Stefani, along with No Doubt-the Anaheim-based band she fronts-leapt out of the O.C. and into the homes of ten million record-buyers a decade ago. Their biggest hit implored us not to speak, but really we just couldn’t stop talking about how varied the group’s sound was.

“I grew up listening to a lot of different styles of music-everything from the LA punk scene to the local ska scene,” Gwen remembers. “Ska was a major part of No Doubt’s sound. I also remember bobbing along to pop or dance ditties I’d hear on the radio. I work really hard to try and reach into different genres, so I hope that comes through.”

Around the time of No Doubt’s early success, Stefani met Gavin Rossdale, lead singer of Brit-rock act, Bush. The two eventually married in 2002, and this past May, seven-pound Kingston James McGregor Rossdale was born in Los Angeles. Shortly after, as all brand new mothers do, she made a beeline to the studio to finish her sophomore solo album.

“I didn’t have the luxury that I had before, where I would just stay up all night,” Gwen says of the sessions. “I would go in to record and have the nanny there. She had to sit right there with the baby while I did this. I am very blessed because he’s such a chilled little guy. He’s seen me do my makeup four thousand times! He’s been in every studio in LA, every studio in New York, every studio in London. He’s been on a jet. He’s been on a helicopter. He’s been everywhere!”

And as jet-setting Kingston racked up frequent flier miles, mom finished the album, and is now preparing to hit the road yet again this April (her 2005 Harajuku Lovers tour was chronicled on a recently-released live DVD). “We’re going all over the U.S. and the rest of the world,” she says. Then, smiling toward Kingston, she adds, “This time around I’m going to bring something along that I didn’t have on the last tour.”

Let’s face it; your husband is hot! Please tell us he’s got at least one flaw.
Oh, you don’t have to tell me! He is amazing and supportive not to mention gorgeous! Also, he’s a wonderful father. What more could I ask for?

It’s been nearly six years since the last No Doubt album came out. Is there any truth to the rumors of a new project with the band in the next year?
A girl’s gotta have some secrets-wink, wink! I’m sure at some point we’ll be doing something. Right now all I can focus on is The Sweet Escape and the upcoming tour.

The last tour was your first one without the rest of No Doubt by your side. Did that affect you?
Definitely! It was a real adjustment in the beginning. I mean, I had the same guys beside me for 20 years, so it’s a totally different experience. And to some extent, it’s a different energy that you give as well as receive from the audience. But I started to find my ground and a whole other level of confidence in myself as the tour progressed. It was a real challenge, but it was also a great learning curve for me as a performer.

What can we expect from this new tour?
Complete mayhem! A lot of costume changes, of course, and just a great party. I’ve upped the crew, so there are a lot more people on stage dancing with me. I had a lot of fun auditioning the new dancers-four girls and four yummy boys! It’s really energetic and up. The production design is going to be quite elaborate.

Speaking of performing, say, for instance, you woke up one morning and realized you’re actually a drag queen, and you’ve got ten minutes before you go on stage. What’d your name, and how would your act go?
[Laughs] Hmmmm. How about Anna Heim? My act would cover a wide range of styles, from early ska/reggae classics to Broadway classics and a few ’80s dance tunes. Don’t forget the red lipstick and platinum blonde hair. Oh, and great backlighting! Always great backlighting.

Despite her hectic life, apparently flawless husband and that whole business of being a “superstar,” we still can’t shake the feeling that, at the heart of it, Gwen’s the kind of down-to-earth girl we’d love to pal around with. This leads us to wonder, Had we been BFFs roaming the halls of high school together in the ’80s, what kind of naughty shenanigans would we get up to?

“Oh, maybe hit a few clubs in the neighborhood, or maybe hang out at the house and watch one of my favorite movies,” she ponders. “I used to enjoy dancing and checking out new music while growing up. I don’t get to do that as much. Now I just love to hang out with Kingston.”

Ah, yes, Kingston, the small, cuddly reminder that Gwen Stefani is, after all, just a girl in the world. “I dedicated the album to him,” she points out, gathering her son up to leave. “I just want him to grow up and look back and to know how important he is. He’s just, like, the most delicious I’ve ever seen, I have no words for him. Isn’t he yummy?”

Both The Sweet Escape album and the Harajuku Lovers Live DVD are out now.

She’s So Unusual

GWEN ON ONE OF HER BIGGEST INFLUENCES GROWING UP:
“I would have to say Cyndi Lauper. She just blew me away. She really was unusual and unique. Aside from the great songs and the look, she gave you something that came from an outsider’s point of view. She knew what was left of center, and she made it okay for young girls like myself at that time to connect with that within themselves. I got the chance to meet Cyndi six years ago. She came to one of the No Doubt concerts at Irving Plaza in New York. Wow! What an experience!”

All hail the platinum blonde that made pop ace and Akon cool. I sat down with the Californian Grammy winner, who claims this is her last solo album… by Maddy Maspero

Last time you realized you’re an OG in this music game?
[Laughs] Yeah, it’s been a lot of years! I started in No Doubt when I was 17 and we were together for nine years before Tragic Kingdom came out. I’ve had this really long, slow career and I’ve experienced so many different sides to it. At the same time, it’s kind of like, “Oh man, I’m not at the beginning anymore.” But I’ve had such an incredible ride. It’s unbelievable.

Last time you thought about how fab your first solo album was?
You know, Love.Angel.Music.Baby was more like a record I wanted to make in my life. It was a dance record, a one-off. I wasn’t considering a solo career.

Last time someone asked you about your new album, The Sweet Escape?
Er, you, just now! After LAMB, I couldn’t creatively see myself going back, but I had a couple of songs in my computer. I went into the studio with Pharrell and wrote Orange County Girl, Wind it Up and Breakin’ Up. Before I knew it, I basically had a record. I actually ended up writing a lot of it after I had Kingston, which was weird because I thought I was done but I wasn’t. I kind of wanted to make one more. I’m greedy, I guess! I really enjoyed being able to indulge in my chessy, theatrical, fun, cartoony side. As soon as I finished recording it, I felt completed in that world and ready to go do a No Doubt record.

Last time you considered collaborating with your husband, Gavin Rossdale of Bush?
Well, I’ve actually sung a lot of background vocals for him, but it’s kinda like the generic, “Can you sing some background?” I’m in the house and I’m like, “OK”. I don’t know, I always thought it was sort of cheesy to work with your lover! Plus I kinda did that already with Tony so we’ve always kept it separate when it comes to creating things. Except for him (points at baby Kingston). I guess that was really creating something [laughs].

Last time you worked with a UK artist?
Well, Lady Sovereign is on my worldwide tour, and I personally requested her because I really liked her record. There’s not a lot of people right now that I would want to take on tour that mean anything,I just think she’s interesting.

Last time you worked with “hook-for-hire” Akon?
When I went into to work with Akon, I didn’t even know who he was. It was like my label forcing me to go to work with him and I said, “I really don’t wanna work with anyone new right now” so I cancelled it. They were like, “Cancel everything else, but don’t cancel this”. So I went in with him and he’s amazing. There was this instant friendship. We wrote Sweet Escape in, like, five minutes.

So is this really your last solo album?
As far as I know. I can’t predict the future. It’s all about the music and “What am I feeling musically?” I was feeling this ’80s dance record really hard… I just really wanted to do it. In my life, and where I’m at, I don’t want to waste any time. I want to keep doing this as long as I can, as you would if you were me. I feel very lucky and I don’t have any moments to spare. People are like, “Why don’t you take time off?” But why would I?

How can you balance 42 gigs in 70 days, a clothing label, a nine-month-old baby and a spot of yodelling? Gwen Stefani gives Chris Salmon some tips

La! Gur-la! Ah!” Gwen Stefani’s ninth-month-old son Kingston is making so much noise that his immaculately-dressed mother stops mid-sentence to look across the exclusive London members’ club to where he’s sitting with his nanny. “He’s OK,” says the singer brightly, “he’s just in a talking mood.”

For years, Stefani, now 37, spoke of her desire for children, to the point where the frantic “tick tock” motif of her debut solo single, 2004’s What You Waiting For?, was widely believed to represent her biological clock going into overdrive. Now she and husband Gavin Rossdale – the singer of British grunge-era band Bush – have Kingston.

It’s not as though she’s a typical parent, though. Although she has a home in London, she’s staying in a hotel on her current visit. “It’s just so much easier to have all my clothes and my stylist next to me,” she says. “Plus my nanny, my manager, my trainer. It’s a whole team of people.”

Stefani was back in the studio just 13 weeks after her baby was born, making the follow-up to her 2004 solo debut Love. Angel. Music. Baby, which sold 7m copies worldwide (and shared its name with Stefani’s clothing line, L.A.M.B, which she launched a few months before the album). Her second solo effort, The Sweet Escape, was released in December last year, a few days after Kingston turned six months old. Given her relish for parenthood, it’s surprising she didn’t take a longer break. “Well, the good news about my life is that he can come with me everywhere,” she says. “But I didn’t really want more time off. What I’m doing is too fun to stop. If you were me, you wouldn’t take time off either. Y’know, this isn’t gonna last forever.”

Stefani’s ascent to pop princess has been a long and unlikely one, which perhaps explains her desire to make hits while the sun shines. It’s 21 years since she formed No Doubt with friends in Anaheim, Orange County. United by a love of Madness and the Specials, the band were unheralded mainstays of the California ska-punk scene for nearly a decade before their breakthrough third album, 1995’s Tragic Kingdom. That record sold 15m copies, largely thanks to the power-ballad Don’t Speak. The band released two further albums, the second of which, 2001’s Rocksteady, featured a shift towards 1980s-flavoured, beat-driven pop, notably on the peppy Pharrell Williams collaboration Hella Good. That year, Stefani guested on R&B singer Eve’s Let Me Blow Ya Mind single, a collaboration that won the pair a Grammy. Stefani had somehow reinvented herself as a credible, urban-flavoured pop star. Out went the sweaty tracksuit and vest from the ska-punk days, and in came the haute couture threads of a living fashion plate. The style press had found a new hero. “She embodies all the qualities we look for in a cover star,” says British Elle’s executive editor, Christopher Hemblade. “She’s sexy, stylish and spirited, with a genuine love of fashion. Her look never feels forced. She owned the Dior-meets-Japanese Harajuku Girl look of the last album as much as she does the Michelle-Pfeiffer-in-Scarface reinvention of the current one.”

Magazines were suddenly full of articles on how to achieve that elusive Gwen Stefani look; in 2005 Harpers & Queen chose her as its No 1 “fashion icon”; earlier this year she and Rossdale were voted – in a spectacularly meaningless poll – the world’s “most stylish celebrity parents”.

As Stefani’s profile rose, there was speculation that her bandmates were unhappy at being perceived as her backing band. Some sort of solo career seemed inevitable. It duly followed, on three fronts – as a musician, an actor (she played Jean Harlow in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator), and as a fashion designer.

“It wasn’t about wanting all the attention for myself, although I do love attention,” she says of her move from being singer-in-a-band to solo performer. “It was more about being able to indulge my theatrical, cheesy side and make something really fluffy, fun and light-hearted. It was nothing to be taken too seriously, it was just a silly dance record.”

In fact, Love.Angel. Music. Baby was one of the most interesting and unusual pop records in years. Alongside an A-list of collaborators including Pharrell Williams, Andre 3000 and Dr Dre, Stefani made a weirdly wonderful album. Sassy hits such as Hollaback Girl and What You Waiting For? sounded unlike anything else on the radio, yet became permanent fixtures on it, redefining the pop landscape along more experimental lines than anyone had expected.

Stefani’s ubiquity – all over the radio and TV, fashion pages and celebrity pages – inevitably started to rankle with some. She was criticised for wearing fur, and the album’s Harajuku Girls theme led to accusations of near-racism. The real Harajuku Girls are the hip Japanese teenagers who inhabit one of Tokyo’s shopping districts. Stefani borrowed their bugglegum style and employed four Japanese dancers – whom she named Love, Angel, Music and Baby – as Harajuku Girls to fawn around her on stage and in videos. One Asian-American writer suggested Stefani had “swallowed a subversive youth culture in Japan and barfed up another image of giggling, submissive Asian women”. The mood of Stefani’s detractors was summed up in a line from the acerbic US cartoon Family Guy, “I don’t know what a Hollaback Girl is – all I know is that I want her dead.”

Stefani, though, had other things on her mind. She discovered she was pregnant midway through a 42-date North American tour, playing to 12,000 people a night. “I was surprised how much I didn’t enjoy pregnancy,” she admits. “Having something growing in your stomach feels so unnatural. Your body’s changing and you can’t control it. You just feel gross. I was having to get up on stage wearing bathing suits, looking fat. Nobody knew I was pregnant except me. They were constantly having to add extra panels into my costumes. To be honest, I was feeling pretty bad about myself.” Stefani says only her adoring audiences of teenage girls kept her going. “I swear that saved me. I realised I’d got a whole new audience, which is crazy. They’d be looking up at me like I was Cinderella. It was the greatest feeling ever. It makes me wanna cry just thinking about it.”

When her pregnancy reached its halfway stage, she finally put her feet up. “I just sat in bed watching hundreds and hundreds of TV programmes. I’d really earned that.”

With Stefani’s attention focused on her bump and the remote, both Nelly Furtado and Fergie took the chance to sashay into her edgy urban-pop spotlight, releasing albums that were obvious descendants of Love. Angel. Music. Baby. Did Stefani feel threatened?

“Not really, because I was so consumed with being pregnant. Besides, it’s an amazing compliment to see yourself in someone else. It’s also really inspiring. It forces you to move forward in different ways.” In other words, it only made her determined to reset the agenda with another album.

After Kingston was born, Stefani stayed at home. “Then after three months, I was like, enough’s enough, I want my life back. I’d gained 40lb, so I went on a diet. And I decided to go back into the studio.”

She didn’t find those first steps easy. “I remember showing up for the first day feeling really chunky, hormonal and guilty,” she says. “I was like, should I be here right now? I decided that if it felt too hard, then it wasn’t meant to be. But the whole experience turned out to be really great.”

Joining Stefani on that first foray into the studio was Keane’s keyboard player/songwriter Tim Rice-Oxley. “It wasn’t the only offer I’d had to write with people,” Rice-Oxley tells me. “But it was easily the most compelling. She’s undeniably the queen of pop right now, in the genuine sense of pop music that’s in the moment and defines an era. I don’t think she gets the credit she deserves for what she does. She really is the source of all the ideas. You can sit in an office putting a pop-star package together, but unless it comes from the person who’s at the centre of it all, it won’t ring true.”

The pair came up with Early Winter, one of the album’s slow-burning highlights. Having already made five tracks with Pharrell Williams before the baby, the remainder of the album fell together smoothly, apart from one abandoned session with producer Timbaland. “He’s one of my favourites, but I just couldn’t write anything,” says Stefani. “I’d done three straight weeks of songwriting and I was tired and burned out. He got me at a bad time. I had a little breakdown and went home crying. It was so embarrassing.”

Despite that setback, The Sweet Escape was still released in time for Christmas. Then came another setback. The album was preceded by the single release of its least enjoyable song, Wind It Up, a bizarre hotch-potch of hip-hop and Sound of Music samples, which seemed to prioritise experimentation over a decent tune. Stefani can’t have enjoyed the less-than-sparkling critical and commercial reception it was afforded. “It didn’t feel good,” she admits. “But do you think that I didn’t know that me yodelling on a song is not gonna appeal to everyone? I was hoping it would win over people’s hearts, but I understand that it was weird. But I think the most exciting thing I could do was to mash the Sound of Music with a Pharrell track. Nobody was doing that, so I wanted to.”

Her chutzpah is admirable, but, tainted by the single, the album debuted at a lowly No 26 in the UK, with comparatively poor reviews and sales across the globe. Stefani insists she wasn’t too worried: “I’m really proud of this album and I knew that it had other more obvious singles.” She wasn’t wrong. The second release, the album’s title track, is currently riding high in charts on both sides of the Atlantic. “I was like, phew,” she smiles. “It’s always great to have a hit.” Happily for her, the album appears to have several more. Happily for us, none of them feature yodelling.

With the album receiving a new lease of life, Stefani has announced another enormous US tour, in which she’ll play 42 dates in 70 days. “It is a lot, but I feel like it’s going to be easier having a baby outside my stomach, rather than inside.”

When she was a kid, Stefani once witnessed Emmylou Harris breastfeeding in the middle of a show. While it’s unlikely she’ll borrow that idea (“I’m not sure he’ll still be nursing by then”), she does think the tour will be good for her and the baby. “Because we’ve traveled so much, he’s never got into a schedule. I think that this tour is going to be the greatest time to get him on one.” Kingston will have a crib on the tourbus, which will drive all night between venues. By the time they arrive, a room will have been set up with his toys, a changing station and a rocking chair. “So I’ll be rocking him to sleep in the dressing room every night before I go onstage and rock out,” she guffaws.

She has also just finalised the latest collection for her L.A.M.B. fashion label, which could explain why everything in the current range is half-price on its website. “Is it?” she asks, surprised. “I didn’t know that. I do the creative part.” It might explain why she’s not yet making any money from the venture. “It’s gonna take a lot of years before that happens,” she says. “But it’s something I’m passionate about that I can hopefully do for the rest of my life.”

There’s also, she says, going to be a new No Doubt album. “We actually all had lunch yesterday,” she says. “We had a heart to heart about things. I think it could be one of our greatest records because we’ve been starved of each other for a few years. It’s really exciting.”

Last but clearly not least, she’d like another child. “I’m gonna try and enjoy this year of touring and then hopefully get pregnant again. I’m on repeat. I just want to make music and babies.” With a car waiting outside to whisk her to an appearance on Charlotte Church’s chat show, Stefani walks over to pick Kingston up for a cuddle. “He’s going through a real mommy phase,” she beams. “He’s my biggest fan. Things are a lot of fun for me right now. I feel very lucky.”

Platinum pop star Gwen Stefani talks about her hit addiction, yodeling fantasies, and how she kicked her Madonna habit. Now she prepares to conquer the world, with baby in tow. By Joseph Hooper.

You know the story: Blonde Italian-American pop diva, music video eminence, and all-round material girl marries a Brit artiste and moves to England. The relationship hits some bumps along the way, but a baby boy ensues and celebrity life keeps rolling. “It is weird that we have all these similarities,” Gwen Stefani allows as she nestles on a couch in one of the many rooms her entourage has taken in London’s Landmark hotel in mid-November. With a voice that hovers somewhere between sultry and Kewpie doll, the singer has a knack for sounding about seven years old: “Madonna’s had us over to dinner and stuff, and she’s always been very nice to me.”

Undeniably, there is a scale to Madge’s assault on the Old Country, everything from the horsey rural estate to the creeping mid-Atlantic accent. Stefani, by contrast, will lose her flat, half-swallowed Californian vowels when hell freezes over, and anyway, she hasn’t even truly relocated to England; she and Brit rocker husband Gavin Rossdale have for the past 10 years split their time between the house in London’s tony Primrose Hill (neighbors on either side are Jude Law and his ex, Sadie Frost) and a manse in LA. But if Madonna does it bigger, it is no longer heresy to suggest that musically, Stefani does it every bit as well. After 17 years of fronting the redoubtable rock/ska/reggae band No Doubt (she should make the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the strength of one immortal break-up tune alone, “Don’t Speak”), Stefani took the solo plunge. Her 2004 giddy confession of dance tunes Love. Angel. Music. Baby went triple platinum. (“I remember telling Madonna I was going to do an ’80s dance record,” Stefani says, “and she rolled her eyes, because I think when you’ve lived through it like she did, she’s like ‘Whatever.’ But a lot of my influences came from her early work, like directly, like a Xerox.”) That album spawned one monster single, “Hollaback Girl,” a saucy cheerleader chant that taught teenage girls how to spell the word bananas and simultaneously established Stefani’s urban street cred as a white suburban rapper comfortable with the “S” word and with pop-hop notables the Neptunes’ marital beats.

“Gwen was always dope,” says Pharrell Williams, producer and one half of the Neptunes. “If there was an ill black record out there, she knew what is was.”

Linda Perry, the songwriter-producer who made Pink into Pink, says she barged her way onto the Stefani solo team by physically accosting the singer at the Grammy awards in 2004. “I was pokin’ her on the head,” Perry says, “and I was like, ‘Dude, you gotta give me a call for the new record.’ ”

Just last week, Stefani put the finishing touches on her new solo album, The Sweet Escape, which, if industry buzz and early radio play can be trusted, is poised to make a major impact. Less self-consciously retro than it’s prodecessor, The Sweet Escape employs the same working method as L.A.M.B; Lock Gwen up in the studio with a blurry succession of dream-team producers all vying for that one megahit (can you spell bananas?), tape everything, toss it up in the air, and see what sticks. A likely recipe for disaster (which No Doubt purists, partial to human beings playing actual drums and bass, may well judge), but it works, mostly due to Stefani’s feckless, reckless impulse to try anything that pops into her head. Nothing is more out there than the album’s first single and video, “Wind It Up” — typically sinister Neptunes beats and Stefani, backed by a symphony orchestra, singing fragments lifted from The Sound of Music’s “The Lonely Goatherd.” (Yes, that’s right: “High on the hill was the lonely goatherd/ Lay, odl ay odl ay hee hoo.”)

“Some people are freaked out by that yodel,” Stefani confides. “Either people get it or they don’t. But I’ve always had the fantasy of putting The Sound of Music to a beat. I used to quote all the songs like a geek!” (Pharrell, a famous musical minimalist, was less than convinced, but he tells me later, “I just rolled with her. I wanted her to be happy.”) Stefani’s term of art for a tune like “Wind It Up” is a “mash-up,” but, if you wanted to go all High Culture on Gwen, Dada would do as well. Marcel Duchamp has nothing on Stefani, whose brain is as adhesive as flypaper, a trap for pop-culture fragments that almost randomly catch and reassemble.

In her own mind, Gwen Stefani is the Cinderella of pop music. At any moment, it seems, the Landmark could turn into a pumpkin. “The hotel maid walked by today,” she says, “and she’s really pretty and she probably comes from Poland. And here I am about to spend a lot of money on room service and I was thinking, I could have been a maid.” Actually, Stefani grew up solidly middle-class in Anaheim, the second of four kids in a tight-knit family headed by folk-music-loving parents (dad Dennis was a Yamaha marketing executive; Patti was an accountant before becoming a full time mom.) Teenage Gwen was mad for clothes and jumped-up Jamaican-rooted ska music, then enjoying one of it’s periodic rivals. In 1987, her older brother, Eric, formed No Doubt and persuaded his bopping little sister to sing in the band and that, aside from a little college on the fly, would be her life; near-constant touring and a steady romance with the band’s bassist, Tony Kanal. The Cinderella theme kicked in big time with No Doubt’s hit third album, 1995’s Tragic Kingdom (Anaheim being home to Disney’s Magic Kingdom, after all), which transformed the Southern California party band into a pop/rock juggernaut. By then, Tony and Gwen had broken up (providing the raw material for “Don’t Speak) and Eric had decamped to become and animator with The Simpsons. But the band chugged on through 2001’s Rock Steady, by which all four No Doubt members were desperate for a break. (Kanal has since emerged as one of Stefani’s trusted solo collaborators.) As as to whether the success of solo Gwen means the end of No Doubt, Stefani says she hopes not: “I’m looking forward to going back to my little musical family and trying to write a song,” she says. But for the tween girls who are the core of her solo fan base, No Doubt, much beloved by young men, would fall squarely into the “No Clue” department.

With hubby Rossdale in LA recording with Pharrell, Stefani has turned over the London Primrose Hill house to her parents, visiting from Anaheim and eager, like the rest of the inner circle, to get some quality time with their six-month old grandson, Kingston. (“He’s pretty rad,” Kingston’s mom says.) For nine days, Stefani has moved in the Landmark with a small army of publicists and managers, transforming one of the city’s swankiest hotels into a field headquarters for the campaign of a global publicity push behind The Sweet Escape.

“I’m so exhausted,” Stefani announces as she walks into her personal assistant’s hotel room. But just because Cinderella is in a mood doesn’t mean she’s a diva. (“The ghastly thing about her is that she is a really decent human being,” says her pal Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson.) Fame and talent aside, Stefani is the mall girl next door, one who’s very in touch with her emotions. When she’s up, she’s up, when she’s down, she cries easily, and she’s particularly sensitive in matters of personal appearance. Trailed from city to city by a retinue of hair and skin and clothes handlers who have become her intimate friends. (“They are as obsessive as I am and complete mad hatters,” Stefani says), she is still the last word on her high-glam platinum persona that evolved over a decade and a half’s worth of music videos. Today, and all-day photo shoot for another project has let her down. “I started with my hard look – my bangs – but the lighting was like Kmart – ‘Attention shoppers!’- so I had to revise.”

Post-photo-shoot debacle, Stefani has changed into a soothingly rich green tracksuit with the logo of her clothing line, L.A.M.B, running down one side in fancy gold script letters, (She has also launched a teen-friendly line, Harajuku Lovers, her homage to the style-conscious Tokyo girls who hang out in the Harajuku shopping district.) “People always say the same things,” she tells me. “That I’m smaller than they expected and that I look better in real like. Which is kind of a back-handed compliment.”

True enough. The early No Doubt Gwen, the adorable ska kid with a little baby fat, has been updated into a striking 37-year-old woman with angular features and a trim, honed physique. And then there’s the hair, which serves as a kind of Stefani mood ring, never more dramatically than in 2000 when she broke up with Rossdale (temporarily) and opted for the startling pink do that graced the cover of No Doubt’s Return of Saturn. She’s since gone back to Jean Harlow platinum, and over-the-top shade that can be seen to good effect in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, Stefani’s chance to play her Hollywood avatar for about three minutes of screen time, hanging off the arm of Leo DiCaprio’s Howard Hughes, (The movie experiences seems to have slacked her once-ardent film ambitions, but she says, “If Martin Scorsese called me again…”)

Hair color notwithstanding, the past four years have been anything but a cakewalk. After her 2002 marriage to her English rocker, she learned that Rossdale had fathered an illegitimate child, now a teenager, Stefani’s lyrics tend to read like blog entries from her own tumultuous Planet Relationship, so fans interpreted “Danger Zone,” off her first album, as a stinging retort: “Are your secrets where you’ve left them?/ Cause now your ghosts are mine as well.” (In this instance, the fans were wrong; the song was written before the revelation, but Stefani would be shocked by it’s prophetic resonance.)

As for the new album’s gorgeously bleak ballad “Early Winter” (“I can’t fix what you broke”), it turns out Tim Rice-Oxley from the band Keane wrote most of the lyrics and, by all accounts, Stefani and Rossdale are in a positive phase of the moon, thank you very much.) “But [that song] felt weird,” she says. “It felt like I could have lived it and I have lived it. I mean, of course me and Gavin have problems, sometimes. Everyone does. We’ve been together for over 10 years. This is, like, the real deal.” (For more on loving your man in spite of it all, consult “The Real Thing” off L.A.M.B)

In any event, she adds, it’s not like she’s going into the studio these days expressly for emotional catharsis. “I’ll never be as pure as I was when I wrote Tragic Kingdom,” she says. “Once you’ve had a hit, there’s no going back, because it’s so addictive. It’s a drug. I felt I was going back and getting more Pharrell, ‘Hollaback Girl Number 2.’” She giggles. “As you would! It’s not like being ambitious is a bad thing. And I wanted [this album] to be now, to be modern. I want it to be in the clubs. No Doubt was never in the clubs. I want to go out and hear that song pumping in the car next to me. I want bass! I want bump!”

Room service knocks and our tea arrives. “This is perfection,” Stefani says. She may be getting the hang of the England thing after all.

The next day I follow Stefani to the KISS radio station to watch her make nice over the English airwaves. It’s an entourage production, but in addition to the usual handlers we get an appearance by the beguiling Kingston Rossdale, who holds court in the waiting lounge under the watchful eyes of his grandparents. “Kingston is so chill,” Stefani says. “He goes with me everywhere, ’cause I’m still nursing. He’s been to every studio in LA, New York, London. He lives up to his name – total Rasta boy. He gives me real balance. You can go 100 miles an hour, but you still have to stop to hang out with him.” According to Manson, Stefani functions bafflingly well at top speed. “Sometimes you hang out with her and she says ‘Oh God, I had two hours of sleep last night. I was in the studio until 4 A.M. and then up with the baby at 6. Then she throws a big party at night.”

If motherhood is sweet, the pregnancy proved to be an unexpected bitch. “I thought I was going to be one of those Mother Nature girls. I figured, I’ll just squeeze it out,” she says, ” ’cause I’m really strong and I work out and stuff.” Instead, shortness of breath and a host of other physical ills made the latter part of her L.A.M.B tour a nightmare. “I would be seriously crying before I went on stage. I didn’t know how I was going to get through the tour, putting on nice costume changes on a stage in front of 12,000 people every night. And I didn’t want people to know [I was pregnant]. I didn’t want it to become the Gwen Freak Circus Show – ‘Watch it grow on stage.’ ”

Tonight, gearing up for her Sweet Escape tour, Stefani is looking the furthest thing from maternal, in a skintight sweater and clunky neck chain that I assume is a garden-variety hip-hop bling until she sets me straight. It’s a key, she says, formed by two back-to-back G’s, her “Wind It Up” key that’s featured prominently in the video with yodeling and the lonely goatherd and an allusively related Houdini subplot with a struggling Stefani shackled to a chain fence as if underwater. “In the video,” she says, “you can see the key coming out of my mouth. When Houdini used to do his tricks, his wife used to pass the key from her mouth to his mouth. It’s the sweet escape. And I was thinking, The key is the music. It all kind of ties up together.”

Whatever (as Stefani would say), it makes for a cool video. Her new fans are happy to follow her into the woolliest recesses of her imagination, entranced by the fabulous artifice, by the playful tug-of-war between her Jean Harlow and abs-of-steal personas, and by the evident fact that you can be a mega-pop star without the standard issue T & A pander (especially about a zillion preteen girls who take their uncomplaining dads to her concerts.) Something about Gwen Stefani seems to reconcile opposites – humble celebrity, femme jock, surrealist material girl – and has ever since the early No Doubt days when she was the girl in the guys’ band touring the rock dives of America in a van. “I would ‘go off’ in the mosh pit,” she says, “but I was always very glamorous before I dove in.”

If you’re not a fan of Broadway or Hollywood musicals, you might have heard Gwen Stefani’s current single, Wind It Up, and wondered: What’s up with the yodeling?

Those in the know immediately recognized the reference to The Lonely Goatherd, a song from The Sound of Music. Stefani is a die-hard fan of the film version and its star, Julie Andrews.

Like Andrews’ character, the fledgling nun-turned-governess-turned-wife and stepmother Maria von Trapp, “I’m a Catholic girl who sings and sews,” says Stefani, 37. “So there’s a lot about her that I can relate to.”

That now includes maternal responsibilities. In May, Stefani and her husband, British rocker Gavin Rossdale, 41, welcomed Kingston James McGregor Rossdale, who has since bonded with the stylists, dancers and other creative types on his mother’s sizable support staff.

“There’s this huge team of us always hanging out together, so he gets to see the same people every day,” Stefani says. “And he’s this very cool, chilled-out little guy. He’s just like another person, except that he’s super-cute and super-entertaining.”

Kingston was in the studio while his mother recorded her second solo CD, The Sweet Escape, which just entered the charts at No. 3. Though bested by R&B ingénue Ciara and a showcase for Eminem protégés, the album sold more copies in its first week than its predecessor, 2004’s multi-platinum Love Angel Music Baby.

The No Doubt frontwoman hadn’t initially planned on releasing a follow-up to Love so quickly, or returning to the road — where she spent the first four and a half months of her pregnancy, “which was gnarly” — next spring for another tour.

She attributes her energy to breast-feeding: “I’m still nursing, and I think it gives you superhuman powers.”

Still, the singer was “much more relaxed” while working on Escape, which features collaborators such as Pharrell Williams, Akon, No Doubt’s Tony Kanal and Keane’s Tim Rice-Oxley.

“The last one was such a concept album, though I was trying to make something fun, nothing too deep or serious,” Stefani says. “I was into the whole ’80s dance thing, trying to be more creative than personal. And for me, it’s really more natural to write personal songs.”

Yet when Stefani started planning her Escape, “I didn’t have any major direction. I don’t feel like having the baby really shaped my intentions; he was just this magical thing that happened to me.”

During her pregnancy, she acknowledges, “I wasn’t writing much. I tried to, but I guess I was already creating too much — I was on creative overload, you know? So I watched TV and ate.”

After Kingston’s birth, of course, Stefani was intent on whipping her lithesome frame back into standard sex-goddess proportions.

“That was one of the hardest things for me — the pressure of, ‘OK, I need to get into shape so that I can put this record out.’ If I didn’t have that pressure, I don’t think I would have gotten the baby weight off so quickly.”

Still, even with a CD to promote, a new concert to plan and, of course, her thriving fashion line, L.A.M.B., Stefani is already thinking about giving young Kingston a sibling.

“I pray that I can have another baby,” she says. “I mean, it’s such a miracle to have one. And there’s so much I still want to do, because who knows? Things could be a lot harder a few years from now. I mean, I’m not at the beginning of my career. I’m on a ticking clock. And I don’t want to miss anything.”

She’s got a wardrobe of to-die-for clothes and gets to spend all day making music with Pharrell. We tracked Gwen down and demanded to know why she’s so cool.

Hey Gwen! How are you?
“I’m good, thanks for asking!”

You’ve been so busy. We love the Wind It Up video.
“Thanks. It’s so cool looking. I remember when I was a little girl and I saw The Sound of Music. It was such an inspiration to me. My folks wouldn’t let me watch Grease when it came out… but I did see that and it changed my life. I was able to indulge my theatrical side!”

We haven’t stopped playing your new album either…
“Well, when I started thinking about this project, I was like, ‘I want to work with Keane, Akon and Pharrell.’ It wasn’t as hard as my first album. I thought that was going to be a really fun, easy project I could do and put out in a couple of months. But it turned into this super-hard, life-challenging, long, drawn-out thing. On the first day, I went to the studio and cried!

Aww! You’ve been performing Wind It Up on tour, so everyone has had a sneak preview of it. How come it’s a single now?
“There were lots of songs that sisn’t make the first album, because Pharrell and I just had so many tracks. I was going to put out two albums at the same time, but it didn’t work out. So, when it came to the second album, Pharrell and I went into the studio again to record some of them, and wrote some new ones too.”

We here you recorded this CD in no time?
“It’s the quickest album I’ve ever done in my life! It’s the most modern album you’ll hear out there, because I literally did it so recently!”

How’s it different to the last album?
“Loads of Love Angel Music Baby tracks had attitude. The Sweet Escape is definitely more of an emotional album.”

You’re a total style icon and we love your look. Tell us everything.
“Well it’s easier doing media interviews on my own [without No Doubt] because if I want to talk about lipstick or fashion or girlie stuff, I can!”

Go on, then, tell us!
“Fashion is in my blood. My grandma made all my mum’s clothes and my great-gran always sewed. Then all through high school and in the band, I made my own clothes. I used to make corset-style drop-waists with a cheerleader skirt. I wore my boxer shorts, fishnets and Dr Marten boots underneath!”

Sounds a bit mad!
“It was cool to have my own style. I didn’t plan it. When I got started, I was like, ‘How can I compete with the boys, but not sweat?’ At the same time, I’m a girlie girl. I enjoy making myself up and all that stuff.”

How did your fashion label L.A.M.B start?
“My stylist Andrea and I were making so many outfits that we thought, ‘Why don’t we do a clothing line together?’ It’s every girl’s dream. We were going to do something really small and just selling our stuff at a few boutiques, and then I met this guy who said he wanted to do a clothing line with me and pay for it all. The best part was that he said I could do whatever I wanted creatively. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? OK!’ ”

Do you get loads of time to work on the outfits?
“No at the moment! But I do spend a lot of my spare time designing. I’m passionate about L.A.M.B It’s actually beyond a dream come true for me, Because I’ve always made clothes.”

Sounds like you’ve been working really hard?
“No kidding! Come January, I’m going to hibernate, eat pizza and sleep!”

Gwen’s latest single, Wind It Up, and album, The Sweet Escape are out now!

On her second solo album, Gwen Stefani takes on The Sound of Music by Ross von Metzke

If my mom ever slid on a pair lederhosen and channeled the Von Trapp family on national television, I’d like change zip codes. But when your mom is Gwen Stefani and her single is one of the fastest climbing song on the charts, things work a tad differently.

Of course, little Kingston, her son with husband Gavin Rossdale, isn’t even a year old, so he’s got some time before he needs to worry about being embarrassed by mom. And since Stefani is single handedly responsible for inspiring half of the fashion trends we see on runways around the world today, you’ll forgive her the sudden Julie Andrews outburst.

With Tuesday’s release of her sophomore solo album The Sweet Escape, Stefani will likely cement in American’s minds why she’s become such a cultural icon. We sat down with the singer/fashion designer to talk motherhood, the new album and why the love of her gay fans finds her humbled.

Let’s just start with the first single, Wind It Up. What does it mean to you—that phrase—and what does it mean in the context of this record?
Wind It Up basically is just the idea of the music getting you wound up. To me, that’s what the idea was. It’s pretty simple. There’s (laughing) not a lot of depth to it. It’s basically about trying to get the energy up and get people dancing on the dance floor.

Is that your goal in terms of a song like Wind It Up—to get everyone out there and ready to party?
It’s really weird because I basically was on tour and then I found out I was pregnant. And I had done the record like a year ago. So, I really wanted to put it out last Christmas. So, it’s kinda been sitting for a while. So, I’ve been wound up about this single for a long time. Now it’s finally coming out, and I was hoping I was gonna be this excited about it, knowing that I’ve had it for so long. I even played the song on tour. But it’s still just as exciting, and it never gets old.

And it’s, oh, so different from the last album and all my inspirations were completely different on this record, you know. I mean, the last record, it was all about ’80s-inspired music, the music I danced to when I would go dancing growing up. But this time, I kind of was over all that and felt like I was in a whole different place.

You’re getting known for these very unlikely combinations of songs from different eras and Broadway and what-not. How do you discover that these things will work?
Honestly, I didn’t come up with it. It was just an obvious—something that I’d talked about doing for a long time. It’s just something I’ve always loved my whole life. And then I thought, ‘Gosh, put a beat to the Sound of Music, that would be ridiculous,’ you know?

It was just somethin’ I said. And then when the fashion show came around, I just did it. And when I heard it, it was like, ‘I have it.’ I have it all on film, actually (laughs) because my brother was filming me at the time and we were doing the fashion show, and I just remember the first time I heard it. I know a lot of people probably don’t know the Sound of Music. And, hopefully, this is my way of sharing something that I think is really great. Maybe people will go out and watch it now. It’s a really good film.

Hollaback Girl and What You Waiting For? were inescapable in gay clubs all over the country for months. Were you aware that you were becoming an official gay icon?
I’m always in awe of the energy, love and support I get from my gay fans. I wasn’t surprised as much as I was ecstatic and humbled. I worked really hard on that album and to see it connect with everyone on so many different levels—it makes what I’ve worked so hard for, all the more worthwhile. I want the community to know that I feel ‘em and I’m glad they are feelin’ me.

Justin Timberlake was put on the spot to give his opinion when fellow ‘NSync-er Lance Bass came out of the closet. So, how would you react and what would you say if any of your No Doubt band mates ever came out of the closet?
I would support him, or anyone for that matter, 100-percent in coming out.

Let’s talk about fashion a little bit. Why do you think fashion and music mix so well?
I always look at it like this. You work so hard on the music. It’s such an emotional, kind of outlet and it’s kind of, for me personally, the hard part of everything. But it’s also the fire for everything because it’s so emotional. And when you’re all done with it, to get all made up and celebrate and show it off to everyone, that’s the obvious thing to do. It’s a self-expression of your personality and it shows who you are without having to say anything.

Were you able to test-drive some of these songs on the runway? Did you play them for your shows?
Yeah, last year, right when I got out of the studio with Pharrell, I had, I think it was four new songs with him. I took all those tracks and I did this big mash-up for the whole fashion show. And tracks like Orange County Girl and Wind It Up I played on tour ‘cause I was just so excited about them. And I really didn’t know if I was gonna do another record so I was, like, ‘Well, might as well play ‘em right now, they might get wasted.’ The one thing that’s always hard for bands is when you go out there with your new songs you’re so excited about—but nobody wants to hear them. They just want to hear the old ones. The response was just so good. I never had that with any other songs live, playing new songs. Usually it takes a minute, but those were really instant, which was fun.

So you had a good indicator. Is there a fashion trend that you just don’t get, no matter how hard you try?
Fashion trend that I don’t get? Not really. I mean, usually there’s a reason behind every fashion thing and, you know, even someone that wears… I dunno. I don’t even want to say something rude about anyone, so never mind.

With the writing of these songs did motherhood seep into the songwriting? Did it affect you as a mother? Did you dedicate the album to Kingston?
Yeah, I dedicated the album to Kingston, ‘cause I just want him to grow up and look back and just know how important he is. He’s just like, he is just like the most delicious… I can’t even—see, I have no words. I have no words for him.

It was definitely scary for me because I didn’t want to miss any of that. Because it’s just the greatest thing that you could ever experience. And it goes so fast. And everybody warned me, but it goes so fast. And he’s just growing up so quickly. It’s a shame that it has to go so quickly, you know. So, to be able to go into the studio and put the time in and the hours… I didn’t have the luxury that I had before where I would just be like, ‘Oh, I’ll just stay up all night.’ It wasn’t like that. I was really condensed and focused and like, ‘Okay, I’m going in, I have the nanny, she has to sit right there with the baby while I do this.’ He was in so many studios. He’s been in every studio in LA, every studio in New York, every studio in London. He’s been on a jet, he’s been on a helicopter. He’s seen me do my make-up four thousand times (laughs).