Calgary Herald (June 30th 2000)
No Doubt, it’s a big ol’ party
Soap opera storylines involving members of rock bands have been the spark for more than one monster hit on the charts. Remember Fleetwood Mac's Rumors?
And then there was Tragic Kingdom, the 1995 album by No Doubt. It spent nine weeks in Billboard's No. 1 spot, 36 weeks in the top 10 and sold 15 million copies around the world.
Just as Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks traded musical jabs at the end of their love affair in Rumors, No Doubt singer Gwen Stefani lay bare the story of her heart-breaking relationship with bandmate Tony Kanal to the delight of fans.
Stefani's tears drenched the melodramatic songs Don't Speak and Sunday Morning; numbers such as Just A Girl and Excuse Me Mr. were the proclamations of a woman struggling with her independence.
But that, as Kanal says today, is all water under the bridge. Today, Stefani is in love with Gavin Rossdale, the grunge-meets- Brad Pitt charmer who is the lead singer of the popular band Bush. That relationship is four years running and still going strong. Meanwhile, Kanal says he's "single, dating and happy."
With the tension gone -- the spark that fired Tragic Kingdom -- the question was whether No Doubt could produce an equally compelling successor. Fleetwood Mac never duplicated the success of Rumors, artistically or on the charts.
"There's still that creative tension," Kanal said in a phone interview from Boston this week. "Just being with the same people for the last 14 years, everybody has very strong opinions, and it's like being married to three other people. There's always tension -- it prevents us from getting too complacent."
Kanal believes Return to Saturn, the band's latest release, is their "best, most focused" album, but it remains to be seen how it will fare with the public. It peaked at No. 2 on Billboard, and has gone platinum in both Canada and the U.S., but after only 10 weeks it's sliding down the top 100.
Although a strong pop disc, Saturn lacks singles with the impact of those on Kingdom. Stefani's lyrical themes now revolve around the insecurities and hopes she has in her new love life, as in Marry Me, Bathwater, or the whimsical longing of Simple Kind of Life.
Other topics are more lofty, such as the philosophical new-wave- bop of Six Feet Under about the cycles of life. The sense of tragic turmoil is greatly diminished, and the new songs haven't made the same mass connection with pop fans.
"Obviously we want to sell a lot of records, but we told ourselves early in the game that living up to Tragic Kingdom was an unrealistic expectation," Kanal said. "You don't get struck by lightning twice. We made the best record we can make and we're playing it live, and that's what we love to do. Live, we're getting the same response as we do on songs from the last disc."
Some lucky Alberta fans will get a chance to test that assertion for themselves on Canada Day when No Doubt performs before about 1,000 people at the Edmonton nightclub Red's, as part of a Molson Canadian Rocks private party.
MuchMusic, radio stations and nightclubs across Canada held contests to determine who could attend the No Doubt concert, as well as performances by The Goo Goo Dolls in Vancouver, Stone Temple Pilots in Toronto, Third Eye Blind in St. John's, Nfld., and Our Lady Peace in Ottawa.
The five concerts will be linked via satellite and downloaded free to 100 clubs across Canada, bringing together an expected 40,000 viewers from coast to coast. Four Calgary clubs will telecast the Canada Day shows -- Outlaws, The Palace Nightclub, The Taz and Metro.
No Doubt was formed 1986 in Orange County, Calif., by singer John Spence and Gwen Stefani's older brother, keyboard player Eric Stefani. Eric recruited Gwen as a back-up vocalist for the band, which was a ska group at the time.
After Spence's suicide, Gwen became lead vocalist. Kanal came on board while still a high school junior, and guitarist Tom Dumont and drummer Adrian Young rounded out a team that built a huge local following in California. By 1993 the band had morphed into a pop band, with new wave, punk and ska influences.
In the two-and-a-half years it took them to record Tragic Kingdom, the band was doubly jeopardized, not only by the breakup of Kanal and Gwen, but also by the departure of Eric, who left to become an animator on The Simpsons.
Momentum built slowly at first for Tragic Kingdom, but by mid- 1996 it was topping charts everywhere and Gwen was becoming a pop culture icon.
Like a modern day Debbie Harry, Stefani became the focus of countless magazine articles that treated the rest of the group as also-rans. Teenage girls, dubbed Gwenabees, appeared at concerts emulating their idol's belly-button-baring style. The band has resisted this, bringing all the members to the fore in interviews and videos, but still the spotlight shines on rock's Betty Boop.
"When it first started happening in 1996, it was a weird thing for us," Kanal said. "We'd been together since high school and were used to being equals. All of a sudden to be separated by the media, it feels strange. But we've grown accustomed to it and we realize, you can't control these things. . . . We know how important each of us is and it wouldn't be No Doubt if one of us was gone."
Is it difficult to see the see the spotlight dominated by a bandmate -- one who was once much more than a bandmate to Kanal himself? The bassist said his relationship with Stefani remains strong.
"We didn't have the opportunity or the option to leave each other and say I'm not going to see you anymore -- we were on the road for 27 months, living on top of each other. . . . We had to work through it, and having to see each other every day -- even though we were going through a breakup -- it strengthened our friendship."