The Sun (Feb. 23rd 2007)

Interview: Gwen Stefani

Gwen Stefani is the girl who has it all. She's a superstar singer, successful fashion designer, actress and style icon, plus loving wife and mother to nine-month-old Kingston.

As we meet in the bar of London's plush Home House members' club, she looks the ultimate yummy mummy.

She's dressed in tight jeans and a navy stripy top with her bleached blonde hair high in a ponytail. Her flickering false eyelashes make those famous brown eyes twinkle even more,

It's no wonder everyone else's eyes follow the stunning 37-year- old American across the room.

Sitting down at my table, she pours a cup of herbal tea and joins me with a friendly smile for this exclusive interview.

So how does she manage to juggle it all I ask?

"I feel like some sort of Supermom," Gwen reveals in her Californian drawl.

"It's like I have these superpowers allowing me to do it all," she says as she looks across the room to check on Kingston, who is sleeping soundly on a sofa after a quick stroll in his buggy with his nanny.

"I'm still nursing him so maybe that's what's given me the strength. We flew in from LA just last night so we are jet-lagged. Plus Kingston's teeth are coming through so he's not sleeping at all - maybe two hours at a time. It's not like you get used to it, you just do it."

Energy

With a second successful solo album under her belt, new single The Sweet Escape climbing up the charts, the recent launch of her new L.A.M.B fashion collection and her role as a mother to Kingston and wife to former Bush singer Gavin Rossdale, it's a wonder where she finds the time or energy.

"This isn't going to last forever so I just want to live and enjoy it all now and having my baby with me just adds to the fun.

"I know people might look at me differently and wonder why I didn't take a year off? Well I am the original Catholic girl who has all those feelings of guilt too, but Kingston's here with me.

"If I had to go to 'work' then I just wouldn't, I would just stay with him, but he comes everywhere with me and he makes everyone laugh and enjoy it all so much more."

Gwen's new single is a collaboration with hip-hop star Akon. It's the title track and one of the standout songs from her second solo album, but the catchy feel good duet nearly never happened as she cancelled their first session together.

She giggles: "What was I thinking! He is awesome but I'd just had the baby and was all over the place. I'd been sent his CD and the head of my label kept telling me I just HAD to work with this guy.

"I didn't want to go through the pain of trying to work with someone I didn't know."

She had written with Pharrell Williams again, which was "fun and easy because we knew each other".

Similarly there were tracks with (No Doubt bassist and former boyfriend) Tony Kanal, plus Early Winter which she co-wrote with Tim Rice-Oxley from Keane. She admits: "That was scary but it worked as he is so talented and amazing. But trying to get me to work with Akon took more time.

"But then I decided I would go and within five minutes of being in his company I felt like I'd known him for years. This track was totally left of centre and totally unexpected. We wrote it within ten minutes. I'd totally work with him again and now we're going on tour together."

Gwen started her music career when she was just 17 when she joined ska band No Doubt. After five successful studio albums, she released Love.Angel.Music.Baby, her first solo record, in 2004, which took her to an even higher level.

"On my last tour, it was the success and my fans which saved me. I'd just discovered I was pregnant and so I was dying out there. I felt gross and was getting bigger and bigger but still I couldn't tell anyone why.

"But I'd look out and see all these young eight to 16-year-old girls at their first concert singing along to my songs. They were looking at me like I was Cinderella. It was amazing.

"Some fans don't even know about No Doubt, though making another record with the guys is definitely the next thing on my list."

Gwen says despite the success of Love.Angel.Music.Baby, she never intended to make another solo album, as the first was something she just had to do.

"I recently had lunch with the rest of No Doubt and we talked about how this 'solo career' was never meant to last this long. I just wanted to make that dance record I'd always wanted to make.

"Then it turned into a tour and now there's another record and another tour on the way. I just wasn't inspired to do another album and that's why this one is so different to the first.

"The last one was so stylised but with this, I was a lot more relaxed making it.

"I wrote The Sweet Escape with a pen in one hand and Kingston under my other arm - it just came to me, like magic. By the time I had finished I was going to call the album Candyland but I changed it at the last minute because I wanted to focus on the escape part."

Gwen might be an international superstar but there's nothing diva- like at all about her. I've had no pre-interview demands of what I can and can't ask from her press people and she is a genuinely warm person who still counts her blessings every day.

"I remember being on a plane, sat in first-class, flying to Miami to stay with Pharrell on one of my few weeks off. I just sat there thinking, 'How did all this become my life?'. It's crazy, fun and I have some amazing luck going on!"

Gwen wasn't surprised when first single Wind It Up was criticised by some for its yodelling and inclusion of a sample from The Lonely Goatherd from The Sound Of Music.

"I knew some people wouldn't get it but I think I am enough down the line to not care. The people that did get it are Sound Of Music fans and really got a lot of pleasure from it.

Weird

"When Pharrell and I first wrote it, it didn't have the sample in it. Then I went to my first big New York L.A.M.B fashion show and DJ Jeremy Healey did a mash up for me with it in. When I first heard it I nearly cried.

"I still think it's brilliant and stand by it. Why can't you do something weird once in a while? These songs are all about having fun, silly records that are to be enjoyed and not taken too seriously."

One thing Gwen does take seriously though is L.A.M.B. She has recently launched a new collection for her fashion label and regularly opens magazines to see the likes of Cameron Diaz and Britney Spears wearing her clothes.

"L.A.M.B is super important now and I've been working on it for four years. I've been designing clothes my whole life but at this level I'm still a baby.

"One of the reasons I did it was that I'm not going to be doing music forever.

"I saw the new collection last week and it's ongoing. It's something I am really passionate about that I can do creatively now."

In April, Gwen will begin a mammoth three-month tour across America with Akon and Lady Sovereign, and the tour arrives in the UK in autumn. As usual Kingston will go too, but it's not

a prospect that Gwen feels daunted by.

"I actually think that going on tour is going to be a little easier. For three months every day will be the same. The hardest thing is going to be the lack of sleep and being away from Gavin at times.

"But I do want another baby really soon. I just want to make babies and records.

As long as it doesn't happen on the tour - that would be really hard.

"I don't think I could ever tour while I was pregnant again."