Hartford Courant (July 9th 1997)
No Doubt makes a triumphant return to city
When No Doubt last came to town just over a year ago, the band was playing the Webster Theatre, opening for 311.
The band's return Friday with a concert at the Meadows Music Theatre culminates its biggest tour. It's been --headlining amphitheaters after a swing headlining arenas.
And while the final U.S. show on its tour here is not exactly sold out, guitarist Tom Dumont knows he ought to keep it all in perspective.
"The Hartford show, for example," Dumont says, "is not selling the greatest tickets compared to the rest. But a year ago, we would have died to play before 6,000 people, you know. Two or three years ago, it would have been the biggest thing ever -- we would have been bragging the rest of our lives about it. So it's weird how people can get used to things and perception can change depending on where you're at."
Here's where No Doubt is at: Its 1995 album "Tragic Kingdom" hit No. 1, sold 7 million copies and is still in the Top 40 after 79 weeks, the longest reign of any album there. And the Southern California group, celebrated as fresh new faces in the rock world, is marking its 10th anniversary.
When the group started, it was at the behest of John Spence, who commited suicide early in the band's career. GwenStefani, the band's most recognizable face, had been brought in originally as a reluctant second singer, recruited by her big brother Eric Stefani, the band's keyboardist, who left in the middle of recording "Tragic Kingdom" to become a full-time animator for "The Simpsons."
Left to their own devices as a quartet with a single lead singer, the onetime ska band evolved in other kinds of pop. And after a pair of obscure releases -- an ignored self-titled release for Interscope in 1992, and a self-released album called "The Beacon Street Collection" -- "Tragic Kingdom" grabbed the rock world's lapels on the basis of Stefani's declarative "I'm Just a Girl."
The spotlight on the band -- and then on Stefani herself -- brought a weird dynamic to the band.
"We just kept getting into these situations where -- after being in a band for eight years together and being like the Four Musketeers or something -- when popularity struck, people started treating us different," Dumont says.
"I think there's a lot of misconceptions in the general public that the band is just Gwen," he says of the glamorous singer, who has been romantically linked lately with singer Gavin Rossdale of Bush. "We understand why it happens," he says on behalf of the other members, bassist Tony Kanal and drummer Adrian Young.
"We have no illusions about our roles in the band or anything. But it just felt terrible after a while to have people who work around us or in the press write off the contributions of three members of the band, people who have been writing songs and that sort of thing."
Dumont, for example, is the co-writer with Stefani of the breakthrough hit "Just a Girl."
Their feelings about Stefani getting the spotlight were evident in the video for "Don't Speak," a song ostensibly about Stefani's romantic breakup with Kanal that served to symbolize her estrangement from the band.
"I knew when Gwen was putting the song together, it was about her breakup with Tony," Dumont says. "But the idea of the video was to make it about us breaking up; that told the story of the tension between us all."
What's significant to note, he adds, is that "when we got together and hung out, or when we got together to make this video, we all got along fine. There was all this incredible chemistry that kept us together despite the most terrible things that happened through the last eight or nine years."
No Doubt continued to reflect the effect of stardom in the video for "Excuse Me Mr.," with media swirling around the band and focusing on what Dumont calls "the blond girl with the cutoff shirt."
In contrast, the last single from the album, "Sunday Morning," harked back to earlier days of the band.
"That's what we used to do when we relaxed. We'd rehearse and go to the store and make a big huge dinner," Dumont says. "We usually didn't throw it at each other, though."
"We wanted to end everything on a positive note," Dumont says of the "Sunday Morning" clip. "It's my favorite one."
"Making videos, we get to throw our own spin on things," he says. "It's interesting how people read into them."
For now, Dumont is looking forward to having time off until January, when No Doubt is scheduled to begin recording its next album. The break will be interrupted by a fall trip to Europe, where the band's career is lagging a bit.
"Don't Speak" was a hit there and most places across the globe, but the original release of "Just a Girl" flopped. So they're issuing it there again.
"There's some weird thing in Europe where you can release a single twice," Dumont says.
Other than the European jaunt, Dumont is looking forward to the end of incessent touring that's been going on for nearly two years straight, saying it's a miracle No Doubt survived being in such close quarters for such a long time.
"It is quite incredible the way we live together," Dumont says. "I guess it's a nice, luxurious tour bus. But it gets kind of cramped after a while. And to be living literally on top of each other for this long, I think we've done pretty well. I don't think anybody really has any deep-seated hate for each other. We're just kind of all tired, you know. Tired of hanging out."
After the wild ride of success, performing on the Grammys and MTV Awards, and before a huge crowd at a stadium concert in Texas last month, "it's nice to be getting to the end of it, actually," Dumont says.
"I mean, it's been the most incredible thing -- it's been the most life-changing thing I think we've all gone through. But it's taken a lot out of us. We just want to go home and put our lives back together."
Even so, he wants to go out on a high note in Hartford -- and not collapse in exhaustion.
"I hope we do something special," he says. "I hope we don't get to the collapsing stage. We are getting to a tired state. But we don't want to put on a tired show."