The Courier Mail (Oct. 20th 2000)

Do Speak

Revealing her innermost secrets took No Doubt's Gwen Stefani to worldwide fame. And now she's been studying Joni Mitchell and Sylvia Plath. Stand back. Noel Mengel reports

Write what you know, someone once said.

Gwen Stefani took it to heart.

Which is why No Doubt fans know a whole lot more about Stefani's private life than the average rock hero ever lets out.

The band's breakthrough album, 1995's Tragic Kingdom, documented the break-up of Stefani's seven-year relationship with the band's bass player Tony Kanal.

Few people ever pen public break-up letters like Don't Speak and End It On This ("I thought that we would last/Become a little family/Then one, two, three, four"), let alone put them on an album that sells 15 million copies.

Not that Stefani was to know that. At the time it was a battle even to get the album released, since at the height of the grunge wars record companies didn't really know what to do with the energetic, poppy songwriting of a bunch of Madness fans.

Eventually, though, the album took off and Gwen's true confessions became public property.

Of course, that kind of commercial acceptance had been her dream ever since the teenage Gwen had joined her big brother Eric's band. And then she discovered that other eternal truth: fame and money don't equate to happiness.

All of which is there on this year's follow-up, Return of Saturn, which by a long shot is the band's most confident and mature album in their 13-year career.

"When you make a record like Tragic Kingdom you have no idea it's going to connect as it did," Gwen explains.

"We were so lucky that it even came out. But after a year it went to No 1 and it seemed we could have toured forever. Before that I had been living at home and I told my parents, this is a big tour, I'll be gone for two months. About two-and-a-half years later we said, we have to go home now, this is too insane. Which Gwen am I?"

Back home in California -- she's from Anaheim, near Disneyland -- she didn't really know. She calls the time a "deep hole of confusion".

Stefani says: "There are cycles we go through, times of happiness and times of sadness. A human is born and we're aware of who we are and what's going to happen and we spend our time trying to comfort ourselves."

Certainly, those late 20s intimations of mortality were on her mind (see Six Feet Under), and you can't blame a girl for hearing the ticking of the clock (Marry Me).

And she stares down those old relationship blues with Gwen-like clarity on tracks like Comforting Lie and Bathwater.

"I think on the last record I was just blossoming, I had just figured out I could do it. Before that I had my brother who was the leader, and Tony was the person I lived for and all of my happiness stemmed from that relationship. And then both of those things were taken away.

"Eric wasn't the type of guy who could tour. He's a creator, not someone who could go out and play the same songs. He was the kind of guy who rewrites the song five minutes before you go on stage.

"But when he left I was like `what's the point?, he is No Doubt, he started the band, I wouldn't even be doing this if it wasn't for him'. But at the same time this huge creative space popped into my lap.

"This time around, after travelling the world and experiencing all these different cultures, there was this opportunity to say, I don't have to work, I don't have to feel guilty about being in a band, there were none of the pressures we used to have when we were trying to find ourselves.

"I felt a big responsibility to do something that I would be really proud of."

So she did, which is part of the reason why the band took five years between albums. Presidencies and pop careers can be over in less time than that. But it was time well spent, listening to the likes of Joni Mitchell or reading Sylvia Plath.

The human condition doesn't change much, does it Gwen?

"I learnt that reading classic poetry, reading those words about love written about people who lived so long ago. They couldn't figure it out then and you can't figure it out now. It's comforting, you know?"