Kerrang! (July 13th 1996)
Supervixen
The hottest superbabe in rock is here! She’s Gwen Stefani, she fronts million-selling US sensations No Doubt, and once she’s had her eyebrows plucked, she’ll tell Paul Elliott why their ‘Just A Girl’ single is the song of the summer...
CUTE blonde singing a top tune. What could be better? In America, No Doubt have scored one of the summer’s biggest hits with ‘Just A Girl’, a fizzy burst of punky pop sung cheekily and saucily by the gorgeous Gwen Stefani.
The five-piece band from Orange County, California - home of Offspring, all-round punk rock central, USA - also landed a gig on one of the hottest tours of the year, supporting British grunge messiahs Bush. As No Doubt’s latest LP ‘Tragic Kingdom’ racked up a million sales, rumours spread of a romance between Gwen and Bush heart-throb Gavin Rossdale. Right now, No Doubt is the name on the lips of every sussed Yank rock fan - and the UK is the band’s next target
GWEN THINKS it’s all a bit of a laugh. At least, she would be laughing if she wasn’t having her eyebrows plucked in preparation for Kerrangl’s photo shoot. Poor Gwen winces as an apologetic make-up girl yanks another hair from her brow using a mean-looking pair of tweezers. Beauty and fame have their price.
“I don’t think I ever had any expectations of getting out of Orange County,” Gwen smiles, incredulous that her band, the no-hope combo that spent years in her Dad’s garage, is suddenly big news across America. Hell, Gwen didn’t even want to be in the band in the first place.
“My older brother (pianist Eric) got the band together - he had all the creative energy,” she says. “I was sitting on the couch watching The Brady Bunch’. He forced me to sing. And he brought a Madness record home, which is what got us started.”
Oh yes, No Doubt are big fans of the Camden Town nutty boys. You can hear it in the busy ska grooves of ‘Excuse Me Mr’ - a right old knees-up of a song. If you like Dog Eat Dog and Rancid’s ska flavours and don’t mind a little more pop in the mix, No Doubt could be your soundtrack for the summer.
“We’re like a salad of sounds,” says Gwen. “There’s a lot of different things going on, which was always a problem in the past, but for some reason people don’t seem to mind it on this record.
“When we were 17, we were really into Madness and the Specials, but Tom (Dumont), our guitar player, grew up loving Kiss and Black Sabbath.
“And when I met Tony (Kanal), our bass player, he was really into Prince and was wearing a lot of purple.”
BY NOW, you’ll have got the idea that No Doubt are very different to most of the bands in Kerrang!. ‘Tragic Kingdom’ is essentially a pop album, but it rocks too. No Doubt could be to the ’90s what Blondie were to the ’80s. Both bands originated from punk rock scenes, and when Gwen sings low, she comes on like Blondie’s eminently shaggable megababe Debbie Harry.
“When Nirvana came out, everything changed. What was alternative is now pop,” says Gwen.
“We’re a pop band, but not in that sense where you have a manager who puts the band together and choreographs your moves. I think we paid our dues.
“We grew up in Orange County, and although I’m not a punker, the spirit is definitely there. We played with all those punk bands bands. But we sold out, of course!” she chuckles, ruining the make-up girl’s attempt to smear on the lipstick.
“Do people care about bands selling out?” she shrugs. “Yeah, they do. We did a free concert in Orange County and these girls came up to me; they were probably 13 or 14, and they were really pissed off that we were on the radio. Like, ‘You’re our band! - how could you be on the radio?’.”
HEY, THAT’S life. And these days, life is pretty sweet for Gwen and No Doubt. But it wasn’t always this way. The band’s original singer, John Spence, committed suicide nine years ago, and for the last five years nobody wanted a fun band like No Doubt, not when grunge was the drug of choice.
“John was the one who really wanted to be in a band,” Gwen recalls. “That was his dream, but he really couldn’t sing. He was more of a screamer, but he had an amazing stage presence. He would do backflips on stage, all this energy. I was his shy little sidekick.
“You know, we never really thought this was a career. We just kinda got lucky in the last year and our childhood got extended a little bit. It’s so weird that we play every day. I remember times when we’d be thinking, ‘Oh we have a show in a month’. I’d be sitting in class thinking, ‘Omigod, what am I gonna wear?’. Now it’s so different.
“With Bush we played for 10,000 people a night. People were there early and the kids were so energetic and excited, it was perfect. It was supposed to be three weeks and it ended up being three-and-a-half months.” Gwen smiles her lovely smile.
For No Doubt, life’s becoming a landslide.