Vancouver Sun (Feb. 18th 2004)
There's No Doubt - Gwen Stefani has the floor
People move on, especially in show business - especially if you're in a band, and all eyes are on you. Destiny's Child frontwoman Beyonce Knowles and `N Sync's Justin Timberlake know the benefits of moving on better than anybody right now.
It's a fact not lost on No Doubt frontwoman Gwen Stefani, who is making a move into the solo spotlight herself. The platinum-haired, svelte, flamboyant and super-stylish 34-year-old has long possessed the makings of a major celebrity.
With a successful clothing line to her credit, she's also recently portrayed screen legend Jean Harlow in Martin Scorsese's Howard Hughes biopic Aviator, and she's in the midst of recording a solo album. In other words, Stefani is poised to take the reigns on her own. Tellingly, she appeared solo at Britain's biggest awards bash Tuesday, the Brit Awards, singing Prince's Kiss alongside Missy Elliott and Alicia Keys. Although she's collaborated on her own with Moby and Eve (the latter of which resulted in a Grammy win for Stefani), we might get used to more conspicuous solo sightings.
No Doubt fans may detest the idea of Stefani busting up a good thing - and if the band does split, she's sure to be blamed - but at least one bandmate doesn't begrudge his friend solo success.
"You realize being in a band, we're not married to each other," says guitarist and co-writer Tom Dumont. "We haven't an agreement or contract that you can't do other things outside the band. And it's a really healthy thing, her doing music with other people. It's not like she's cheating on us. She's expanding her horizons. And someday if we get back together to do music, we'll all be better for it."
You might have noticed the emphasis on "if." Dumont says he's been fretting over the band splitting, but he sounds fairly certain that they've got another album in them yet. If not an album, then a tour, anyway - the band is scheduled to tour with Blink-182 this summer.
Besides, he wouldn't want the band to go out on the blaze of a hit cover song as opposed to one of their own. No Doubt recently surprised themselves with their top 10 cover of Talk Talk's It's My Life, which the band included on their greatest-hits box set released late last year. Unlike a lot of covers, their version actually came off better than the original, and the band got to lampoon itself with an accompanying video that shows a fur-clad Stefani coldly killing off her bandmates before going to the electric chair for it. Unlike what the video suggests, the band was brought together by the greatest hits release, and it might have given Dumont some comfort for their future.
"I had worried about [splitting up] a lot this last year, the last couple of years," he says. "But we had six months away from each other, at least professionally, and everything feels pretty good. We did a couple of shows to promote this singles record, and we've been hanging out a lot lately. We get along really well. There's no reason why not [stay together], I don't think."
But making another record depends on more than just a desire to stay together, he adds. Stefani, newly married to Bush singer Gavin Rossdale, is wanting to start a family _ no surprise to fans, considering her often autobiographical lyrics allude to marriage and children.
"[A new record] depends on Gwen's schedule with having a baby," he says. "If she does have a baby, that will probably delay the new record for a couple of years. If she doesn't have a baby, then I predict we'll start working on one in 2005."
Stefani has more immediate concerns with her own solo project, which is reported to feature Outkast and Missy Elliott, although Dumont is not so sure about that. (He does know that No Doubt bass player and former boyfriend Tony Kanal is collaborating with Stefani - odd for someone supposed to be changing gears.) The singer is famous for writing about dying relationships, feelings of jealousy and betrayal, but now that she's got it all going on, she might have run out of subject matter.
"I think in some ways, her solo album is taking awhile to do because she's super happy," says Dumont. "Her life is great, and she has a hard time writing about those things. It's much easier to write about turmoil and difficulty for her. She's like, `I don't know what to write about. Everything is good. I'm at home, I'm married.' So it'll take a bit of work."
If No Doubt doesn't find time to do another album, it would be a major loss for fans of their super-charged ska-pop, on which Dumont, a former member of a metal band, supplied the chunky guitar parts. It's not a stretch to say the band has written some of the best, and most joyous pop songs of their generation. At least a handful of them came from their 2001 full-length studio release, Rock Steady. The album was a comeback of sorts considering the commercial failure of the band's Return of Saturn 2000 album, which made them reconsider their approach to music and take another run at it.
Rock Steady spawned hits Hey Baby, Hella Good, Running and Underneath It All, and returned the band to its Southern California ska-punk party roots, the style that got them famous in the first place. With a sparkling clean production and big-name producers like Ric Ocasek, Sly & Robbie and William Orbit on hand, however, No Doubt had also raised the stakes considerably since the early days, and some fans cried sell-out.
"It wasn't like we were chasing anything off mainstream radio," says Dumont. "We were chasing this thing we felt we had discovered, this Jamaican dance hall music, which was pretty underground at the time. It was partially that idea, and what we had learned from the Return of Saturn, which is what fans want from us, and not the melancholy, important music. What they wanted from us was a party.
"But definitely, it wasn't a calculation to compete with the Britneys of the world, or any of that business. We were kind of shocked when our own fans accused us of that."
Despite the backlash, the album scored No. 1 hits and enough TV exposure so that No Doubt seemed like an overnight success story despite more than a decade in the business. And Stefani, in particular, has become a People magazine regular.
But since No Doubt emerged in 1995 with chart-topping album Tragic Kingdom and singles Just a Girl and Don't Speak, the universe was conspiring to make Stefani the star. When it was clear that the Grammy nominated newcomers had scored a platinum hit, music magazine Spin asked Stefani to pose for its cover - alone. Dumont admits the episode had caused friction, but the strength of the band, he says, is that they could overcome a serious obstacle that would kill a less-functional band.
"When that happened we were post teenagers, but we were living in Anaheim and playing in this garage five days a week, playing live shows together, this little crew of friends. And we were definitely naive to the idea of getting popular as a band, and all of a sudden we found one of our friends being pulled away from us. We were protective and jealous and all those things that friends would be in that situation. `Why is Gwen flying in a private jet and we're coach? I don't understand. What's going on here?'
"But we definitely proved a lot of people wrong and persevered through it all. It certainly feels good to have gotten past that stuff, and past being one-hit wonders, so that here we are, still here and lucky enough to be successful."