The Evening News (May 4th 1997)
No Doubt band's hot, and it's cashing in on it
No Doubt are no fools.
The spunky alternative-pop band knows that its current level of success -- more than 6 million copies of "Tragic Kingdom" sold -- isn't destined to last. The world of pop music is too fickle. Just ask Hootie and the Blowfish or Gin Blossoms or the Offspring.
Which is why No Doubt is striking while the CD is hot. Grab the attention and fun while it's offered. And don't forget the money.
"I'd be lying if I said that wasn't true," acknowledges bassist Tony Kanal. "For us to be able to have this experience in our lives -- if it doesn't happen again, we want to be able to say we lived it." Before it's all over, the Southern California band will have been on tour for two straight years, including crisscrossing the United States a couple or three times and several forays to Europe, Asia and Australia.
"If someone in Asia or Australia or some foreign country wants you to come play for them, why not go?" Kanal asks. "What's the reason not to go?"
The band -- Kanal, vocalist Gwen Stefani, guitarist Tom Dumont and drummer Adrian Young -- has just started its last tour of the States to promote "Tragic Kingdom."
The tour brings them to the Bryce Jordan Center in State College on Tuesday. After the tour ends, though, it's time for a break, Kanal says.
"We're going to definitely take a month off," he says.
Wow. A whole month.
"Then maybe another trip to Asia and Australia and Europe," he speculates.
No Doubt's enthusiasm is understandable. The band labored for nine years in obscurity before "Tragic Kingdom" began its slow climb up the charts. The record was the band's second, coming after a self-titled debut that flopped severely in 1992. And even though "Tragic Kingdom" is now a huge hit, it hardly skyrocketed. It took 14 months for the record to hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts, finally placed there by three back-to-back hit singles -- "Just a Girl," "Spiderwebs" and "Don't Speak."
"We've been together for 10 years and have been gearing up for this our whole lives," says Kanal, 26. "We're grateful that we're getting to do this."
With success, though, come a few surprises. For Kanal, the one-time boyfriend of Stefani and the focal point of many of her less-than-happy lyrics, the biggest shock was how the music sometimes gets shunted for "peripheral things."
"I thought that at a certain point, the amount of time and work you put into peripheral things, such as the business, would decline -- when in fact, it increases," he says. "There's just a lot more stuff to deal with when you're playing arenas, and you've got three buses and two semis and a huge merchandising truck. It's the logistics of all that."
But No Doubt has always been a democracy, he says, so all decisions still reside with the four members, even though that means the hassle of daily band meetings. Sometimes several a day.
"There's outside pressures that come into play," Kanal says. "People's opinions that they think matter. But what matters is our four opinions. That's what made this band."
Throughout the band's rise in fortunes, the three males have dealt with the image of the band as Stefani and three nameless dudes. With her bare-midriff, bottled blonde hair and WWII glamour-girl look, Stefani has become the poster hero for thousands of adolescent females as well as the poster heartthrob for thousands of adolescent males.
At first, the news media's fascination with Stefani, often to the point of totally ignoring the other three, was a frustration, Kanal says. After two years, though, it's no big deal.
"It's definitely easier to deal with," he says. "You just have to get through the initial impact of that. You put what's important in its place, and none of that stuff is important at all."
After No Doubt leaves the road, there is no timetable for a new record. And though Kanal took the brunt of some of Stefani's most pointed lyrics on "Tragic Kingdom," he says she will continue to be the band's chief lyrics writer.
"That's how it works best," Kanal says. "When she's singing lyrics she wrote, they're much more sincere. They come from the heart."