The Daily Telegraph (Nov. 18th 2004)
Rise of the queen of kook
She stars in Scorsese's latest film, her fashion label is big in Japan - and her new solo album is a thumpingly infectious triumph. Gwen Stefani, No Doubt's irrepressible singer, talks to Craig McLean
A whirlwind of tottering heels, toe-less white tights, micro-miniskirt, Vivienne Westwood-type fitted jacket, creamy skin and platinum blonde hair blows into the hotel room. Gwen Stefani, frontwoman of multi-million-selling US band No Doubt, enters the interview suite and, barely pausing to adjust the flowery shirt gaping almost to her navel, she's chattering before she has even sat down.
It's a Monday morning. Stefani's debut solo single, What You Waiting For?, has been in the shops all of two hours. Her album Love Angel Music Baby, featuring contributions from OutKast's Andre 3000, Dr Dre, the Neptunes, New Order and Pink songwriter Linda Perry, is due in seven days. And her first film role, as Jean Harlow to Leonardo DiCaprio's Howard Hughes in Martin Scorsese's biopic The Aviator, is out at Christmas.
In the US, No Doubt are huge and Stefani is a well-known face. From their first shows in the late 1980s, the band's ska-based rock struck a chord in a country that maintained an affection for the genre long after it fell out of favour in the UK. Stefani's personal style also drew attention. Minnie Mouse chic, the St Trinian's dominatrix look, blue-haired beach babe - Stefani has done the lot.
But, despite Stefani's iconography, despite the cooler collaborators (Prince, the Neptunes) on their last album, and despite selling 20 million albums worldwide, No Doubt have never really found favour in the UK. To British ears, Stefani's band has always sounded a bit awkward. Naff, even. Her new bright, bold, dance-pop record should change all that.
Now 35, Stefani spends much of her time in London with English husband Gavin Rossdale, formerly of grunge band Bush, but her Californian accent is intact.
Such is her excitement, her end-of-sentence uplifts almost propel her out of her seat. "I had the specific idea that I wanted to make a dance record before I died," she says. "But, at the same time, I really wanted to take a rest and sleep. I had just gotten off tour, I was really burnt out, and there was this pressure to go in the studio and start.
"But I also wanted to start. If I didn't, then when's the next No Doubt record? When am I gonna have a baby? It was like this big clock ticking in my ears. Plus, this dance record was supposed to be this fun, easy project that me and Tony [Kanal, No Doubt bass player] talked about doing, based on Prince, the Time, Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam and all the groups we like. But it just turned into this whole, whaddayacallit, challenge for me, to go out and work with all these new people." She gives a satisfied smile.
Stefani is mildly batty, but in an entirely entertaining way. And she has made a fantastic album.
Love Angel Music Baby is a thumpingly infectious record. Its many single-friendly tracks will be filling dance floors for months to come. What You Waiting For? is an electro-pop gem. Rich Girl pulls off the tricky feat of marrying production from Dr Dre and lyrics from Fiddler on the Roof. Hollaback Girl sounds like a colliery brass band working with Nine Inch Nails.
Then there's Harajuku Girls, named after a Tokyo shopping district. This track is linked to a woolly performance concept cooked up by Stefani to promote her album with four Japanese- American girl dancers. The girls recently performed with her on Jonathan Ross's show and Top of the Pops. They were meant to sit in on our interview, silently, like ornaments. Each, apparently, represents one of the elements of the album title Love Angel Music Baby.
"They're like my dream, my muse, my fantasy," Stefani says. Their inclusion reflects her obsession with Japan, sparked when she first visited on tour with No Doubt in 1996. Her fashion label, Lamb, is influenced by the exuberant street styles favoured by teenage girls in Tokyo.
Lamb was launched to huge success last year. Her arrival as a pop icon - a kind of update of Desperately Seeking Susan-era Madonna - was cemented when she provided guest vocals for rapper Eve's Grammy- winning Let Me Blow Ya Mind in 2001.
With her platinum-blonde look and kooky image beloved of style gurus and teenage girls the world over, it's little wonder that Scorsese was enamoured enough to cast her in The Aviator.
All of which has resulted in a healthy tailwind for Love Angel Music Baby. On paper, it could have been a disaster, a record with multiple contributors recruited by committee. The Real Thing, for example, is co-written by Stefani and Perry, has former Prince band members Wendy and Lisa on piano and guitar, New Order's Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner on bass and backing vocals, and was produced by Nellee Hooper.
Was Stefani ever worried the album was turning into a Frankenstein's monster?
"I wasn't worried about anything," she beams. "I was only doing it for my own experience. The only worries were the immediate ones, like `Oh my god, I'm in a room with Andre 3000, I hope I think of something to say!'"
Stefani has made no plans to tour in support of Love Angel Music Baby; she says she's done enough gigging with No Doubt to last a lifetime. But as a born performer, budding actor and keen lover of fancy dress, she wants to "make as many videos as they'll let me".
This, she says, was the whole point of her album. "No album tracks allowed. It was all about singles. And making a record that's really gonna be your guilty pleasure - even if you hate me!"