The Sun Herald (May 28th 2000)
Love Me, Love My Band
No Doubt's Gwen Stefani can't find the time to be just a girl, writes Peter Holmes.
The last time Gwen Stefani took a female personal assistant out on the road to provide some balance to the belching boys' club that is No Doubt the employee ended up marrying drummer Adrian Young.
So she's gone now, said Stefani.
Take two.
"I have a new girl out with us and she is the sweetest. We can go shopping together. It's weird because I have my ex-boyfriend [Tony Kanal] and the rest of the guys, who are just out scamming on girls the whole time.
"You've got groupie girls and all they want to do is be closer to the band, but I'm a girl so they can't scam me. It's a weird perspective I get to experience, but it can be lonely if you don't fit into that scam world, the whole rock'n'roll thing."
After eight years of slogging around their native California and any other US State that would have them, No Doubt finally hit paydirt with the 1995 album Tragic Kingdom.
On the back of the singles Just A Girl and Don't Speak the band spent 21/2 years in hotel rooms, radio stations and venues, off-loading 15 million copies of Tragic Kingdom along the way.
During 1998 and 1999 No Doubt hired a compound in the Hollywood Hills and wrote the new wave, ska and power-pop flavoured material on their new long-player Return Of Saturn.
"We were so excited as we hadn't been creative in a few years," said Stefani. "We had everything set up in the living room and a beautiful view.
"The best part of our success has been we've been able to make this new record. We're finally at a point where we have 13 years of experience behind us, we have world travel behind us and we have the confidence of having played almost every night for 21/2-years straight."
While much of Return Of Saturn was co-written by the band, it also includes two songs (Simple Kind Of Life and Suspension Without Suspense) credited solely to Stefani, whose previous musical input into No Doubt was limited to air guitar.
"I wrote those two songs on guitar," she said. "I know a little bit, enough to write on. I wouldn't necessarily want to perform for anyone, except maybe close friends [laughs], but I've been playing a few years.
"It was a huge breakthrough for me, and I definitely want to get better at it so I have more options. You only need to know a couple of chords to write a song and, although I have a lot to learn, and it's taken me 13 years to get to this point, I feel like I'm on my way up."
Do beware, however: Stefani was playing pretend guitar years before she latched on to the real thing, and breaking the habit is proving difficult judging by the band's recent gig at The Metro.
"Yeah, I have a problem with that," she admitted. "I'm going to try and get rid of that air guitar thing. But I'll tell you a little secret: whenever I record vocals in the studio I am playing air guitar the whole time."
From the candid, mixed-up missive to a past lover on Ex-Girlfriend through the elemental pleas in Simple Kind Of Life and Marry Me to the themes of self-doubt coursing through Artificial Sweetener and Comforting Lie, the new album seems like an premature mid-life crisis for a 30-year-old who has grown up but doesn't necessarily feel grown up.
"A lot of people think the lyrics mean I'm getting broody and I want to be married," said Stefani, "but it's more about the confusion of not wanting to be married, or the confusion of getting to this point in my life where all the dreams I had before seem so far away and being so happy at where I'm at.
"I know there is no such thing as a simple kind of life, and I know as soon as I dive into another [relationship] there's going to be exchanged problems. I'm not naive about that.
"But I used to be the kind of girl that all I cared about was being in love and making my partner happy, yet I seem to not have enough time to get that right. I feel I've accomplished a lot, but at the same time there's lot of things I want to do. I'm so passionate about the band that sometimes my relationships are floundering, and that's what I'm writing about."