The Orange County Register (March 14th 1996)
Band On The Run
There’s No Doubt Anaheim group is riding high
The "Tragic Kingdom" album cover - fashioned like an orange crate label - carries the inscription: "Sunkist Groves of Anaheim, California."
The flipside of the No Doubt CD features an orange "Welcome to Anaheim" sign and a photo of the Anaheim band snapped at the Orange Drive-In on State College Boulevard.
The March 14, 1987, date on the seal of the Anaheim sign marks the band's first live show in Long Beach at a long-since closed club.
Tuesday night, almost nine years to the day since that first gig, No Doubt came home to the big time - playing a sold-out concert at the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim.
"I guess it really hasn't set in yet," bassist Tony Kanal said last week before a Pheonix sound check. "We're still doing the same things we always do - touring, screwing around, changing guitar strings. It's not so overwhelming because we've been together for so long through the frustrating times. We know the music business can be fickle."
The band, originally made up of Loara and Anaheim high school students, has been through many personnel changes over the years - starting out with a four-piece horn section and at one time performing as a male-female duet.
During nine years of relentless touring, No Doubt has played in all but three states: Alaska, Maine and Delaware.
"We never really set out to be big rock stars," Kanal said. "We started so early, it has become a part of our lives."
Used to filling 1,000-seat clubs when touring on their own, No Doubt has been playing this year to sold-out 15,000-seat-plus arenas while on the road with Bush and the Goo Goo Dolls.
The band has had it share of medium-size local gigs in the past: the 1995 KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas, 1991 UCI Bren Center show with Mary's Danish and early dates at the former Celebrity Theater in Anaheim.
But they've never played anything as big as the Pond in Southern California.
"It's been pretty intense," Kanal said. "We were used to the club thing - a few hundred to a few thousand people. We've had to adapt."
The response - in places like Wichita, Kansas - has been phenomenal for the show openers, Kanal said.
"We originally thought when we took the tour that people would be filing in for the first band," he said. "But it's been packed when we've been going on. They're getting there early for us."
The success is propelled by the hit single "Just a Girl" from the band's third album "Tragic Kingdom" - a none-too-subtle sarcastic tip-of-the-hat to Disneyland.
The Top 25 at Tower Records in Brea has No Doubt's "Tragic Kingdom" in the No. 3 spot _ behind only Grammy bigwig Alanis Morissette and a new release from Bad Religion. The No Doubt CD is outselling omnipresent Hootie and the Blowfish, Brit-hit Oasis and even tour-mates Bush.
"Spiderwebs," a follow-up single, has just started getting radio play. An MTV video will debut in a few weeks.
The band's sound: ska combined with punk, pop and reggae.
"We've always had a problem with having so many different influences and kinds of styles," said singer Gwen Stefani, who along with guitarist Tom Dumont and drummer Adrian Young round out the band. "I think on this album we finally found a way to make it work."
Each member brought a unique musical style to the band. Stefani was the ska freak. Dumont prefered head-banging heavy metal. Kanal was a funkmeister.
After the slow sales of the "happy and perky" debut album, released during the birth of Grunge rock, No Doubt spent the next year writing music - and waiting. The record company repeatedly stalled on the band's sophomore effort.
With 60 songs in the bag No Doubt did the unthinkable by music industry standards - releasing its own 10-tune bootleg in January 1995 called "The Beacon Street Collection."
"We'd wrote so many songs that needed to see the light of day," Kanal said. "We were so frustrated with all the trials and tribulations and the politics within the industry."
"Beacon Street" is actually Beacon Avenue - located north of Ball Road a few blocks behind Disneyland. The band house, inherited by Stefani after her grandmother's death, was No Doubt's home during the low times. The garage was turned into a make-shift rehearsal and recording studio.
The band members came off tour behind the debut "No Doubt" release, got day jobs and went back to school at Fullerton College and California State University, Fullerton. Every spare moment was spent at the Beacon house.
"We spent a big part of our lives at that house," Kanal said. "A lot came out of that down period."
Kanal knows bands go up quickly and come down just as fast in the music business, he said.
No Doubt's goal now is to concentrate on the music.
"You can't get caught up thinking you're hot," Kanal said. "There's two things we can control - writing songs and playing live. We'll let the record company worry about everything else."
No Doubt has an Internet address on the World Wide Web: www.hallucinet.com/no doubt/.
The home page has lyrics to older songs, links to the web sites of No Doubt's favorite bands and a chat room that occasionally features live sessions with the group. The web site is also one of the few remaining places to get the "Beacon Street" CD.