Reverberation (May 1996)
No Doubt
Tony Kanal fainted a few months ago when he went to have his nose pierced. That didn't make headlines. Not so his band. No Doubt are big print.
Trawling through the American wire services a few weeks ago, a headline flared, "No Doubt band understands teens"; clever - but significant. The New York Times doesn't waste space on small fish.
No Doubt, after eight years watching other Californian renegades storm the charts, are finally getting their shot at the big wazoo. Their ridiculously infectious pop rocking Just A Girl single is searing the charts with its candy-coated pop goo while its parent long player, Tragic Kingdom (featuring one of the best album covers of recent years), is already embedded in the US Top 40.
All that's surprising is that it didn't happen earlier. No Doubt may come from Annaheim, Orange County, but that's where the similarity ends when it comes to comparisons with celebrated peal such as Offspring.
No Doubt recognise punk but their roots sprawl long and broad through a musical soil that blurs the lines between pop, ska, new wave and punk with just a subtle trace of techno beats. Rancid would love to be this original, Green Day as exuberant and fresh. No Doubt are way beyond the beg, borrow and steal conformity of the "new punk".
Again it's not surprising.
Eclecticism and cornucopia is in-bred in No Doubt like the musical paradox they embrace. There's a snuffle of amusement from London-born bassist who's struggling to wake up on a direly warm LA morning after the night before when yet again No Doubt have flamed a mid-size club: "No Doubt they're good" reads the review headline.
"Gwen (Stefani, lead singer and weapon) worshipped Madness in high school. She was full on nutty girl," Kanal says blurring the line between character and taste deliberately. "Her brother Eric who's now left the band to concentrate on cartooning (he works on The Simpsons) was big on soundtracks like The Sound Of Music. Adrian (Young, drums) grew up on '70s rock like Hendrix, Journey, Steely Dan; Tom (Dumont, guitar) was a big KISS fan who then got into Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and all those heavy metal and Brit rock outfits and for me, Prince was the first major musical thing, so I guess when you take all that we're bound to produce an open-ended sound. None of us would want it any other way. You know, just one sound would be so limiting and boring.
"But for a long time it didn't work in our favour. While record companies were running around signing up everybody that could play a note in Orange County we were totally overlooked. Even the press overlooked us. It got frustrating. We'd be sitting there reading these articles about the Orange County scene and there'd be all these bands and no No Doubt. No matter how well we were doing, how big the vibe was on us, how many shows we played, we were just overlooked.
"And it was a problem with the record companies because they didn't know how to pigeon-hole us. But we seem to have overcome that now. They call the sound 'No Doubt'," he laughs, ironically. "We have stories of other record companies going out and trying to find bands like No Doubt now. It's so funny. It's all bullshit.
"For so many years you have these record companies telling you 'you've gotta focus, you've gotta focus', you've gotta have all the songs sounding the same and then you overcome that shit and people are running round telling you how good it is that you have such a broad range of sounds and that the songs are so different. And we've always been that." He sounds vaguely exasperated.
"We've always been about having no rules, experimenting with different styles, being able to play whatever makes us feel happy."
Thumbing their noses at the fashionable punk and pop mentality, No Doubt produce a stew where punk is just a soupcon in the body of hooks, riffs, melodies and harmonies. Somewhere they learnt the A-Z of songwriting and got it right - and NO ANGST! "I think people are sick of it," Kanal says. "Not that we've ever been an angst band. I mean if you're already feeling bad do you really want to come along and see a band or turn on a record that's only going to make you feel worse? We try not to take ourselves too seriously but still have something to say."
Much of that comes down to Stefani, a peroxide blonde and leggy cross between Ilona Staler, Madonna and Betty Grable, with a warble not unlike (variously) Cyndi Lauper without the shrill, Debbie Harry on heat and Courtney Love with a few octaves more at her command, less roar and some sensuality. And she's a bit of a rabble rouser.
The NY Times commented, "For teenagers who come to pop music looking for an authority figure who seems to understand them better than their parents, No Doubt is a perfect fit. During Sixteen ... Stefani empathised, 'Now you're finally 16 and you're feeling old/But they won't believe that you got a soul". And in "Just A Girl", she sings "I'm just a girl, all pretty and petite/So don't let me have any rights/Oh ... I've had it up to here."
"I really don't think a lot of guys know what a burden it is to be a girl sometimes," she commented recently.
All this translates.
Guys hang on her oozing physicality and fried bad girl/good girl antics; girls endorse her friendly liberation. Thus No Doubt fans are feral and suspiciously close to mad obsession. Cars are daubed with the band's stickers, bodies with No Doubt tatts and their shows tend towards the hyperkinetic.
"Gwen's pretty amazing," Kanal admits, "and our live show is definitely the strongest side of what we do; going into the studio has always been another challenge. It's been hard for us to capture what we do live in the studio because the live band is just really energetic; we like to give everybody a good time everytime, let people know they get a great show.
"Something happens that really transcends the music. Gwen gets the girls into it, lets them participate whereas with a lot of other bands it's just a testosterone thing. Our audience is spread right across the board. Gwen will definitely get the girls involved, give them songs that are their songs and their time to get boosted, be in the pit whatever. Everybody feels part of it; nobody gets left out.
"We've always tried to take care of our fans. We used to write back to every letter we got - every single letter, even up to last December. We can't anymore but we still look after them with ticket prices - as inexpensive as possible, giving them the best parties and great shows. But their dedication blows my mind.
"I definitely don't advocate people getting No Doubt tattoos though because it isn't going to last forever and they might regret it one day." And then he remembers the "sheer fucking intensity" of the pain of his ceremonial nose-piercing, the legacy of losing a bet with Stefani who was looking on. "People are crazy, man. The chances of me getting a tattoo ... oh, no way."
No Doubt about it, whatsoever.