Hello UK (March 20th 2007)
Pop superstar and new mum Gwen Stefani on what really matters: ‘I just want to make music and babies’
Gwen Stefani‘s nine-month-old son Kingston is making so much noise that his immaculately dressed mother stops mid-sentence to look across the exclusive London members’ club to where he's sitting with his nanny. “He’s okay,” says the singer brightly, “he’s just in a talking mood.”
For years, Gwen, now 37, spoke of her desire for children, to the point where the frantic “tick tock” motif of her debut solo single, 2004’s What You Waiting For?, was widely believed to represent her biological clock going into overdrive. Now she and husband Gavin Rossdale - the singer of British band Bush - have Kingston.
It’s not as though she’s a typical parent, though. Although she has a home in London, she’s staying in a hotel on her current visit. “It’s just so much easier to have all my clothes and my stylist next to me,” she says. “Plus my nanny, my manager, my trainer. It’s a whole team of people.”
Gwen was back in the studio just 13 weeks after her baby was born, making the follow-up to her 2004 solo debut Love. Angel. Music. Baby, which sold 7m copies worldwide (and shared its name with Gwen’s clothing line, l.a.m.b, which she launched a few months before the album). Her second solo effort, The Sweet Escape, was released in December last year, a few days after Kingston turned six months old.
Given her relish for parenthood, it’s surprising she didn’t take a longer break. “Well, the good news about my life is that he can come with me everywhere,” she says. “But I didn’t really want more time off. What I’m doing is too fun to stop. If you were me, you wouldn’t take time off either. Y’know, this isn’t gonna last forever.”
Gwen’s ascent to pop princess has been a long and unlikely one, which perhaps explains her desire to make hits while the sun shines. It’s 21 years since she formed No Doubt with friends in Anaheim, Orange County, California. It took nearly a decade before their breakthrough third album, 1995’s Tragic Kingdom, which sold 15m copies, largely thanks to the power-ballad Don’t Speak. In the same year Gwen met Gavin and they began a long distance relationship that culminated in their marriage in 2002. Meanwhile, in 2001, Gwen had guested on R&B singer Eve’s Let Me Blow Ya Mind, a collaboration that won the pair a Grammy. Gwen had somehow reinvented herself as a credible, urban-flavoured pop star.
Out went the sweaty tracksuit and vest from the early days, and in came the haute couture threads of a living fashion plate. The style press had found a new heroine - in 2005, Harpers & Queen chose her as its No. 1 “fashion icon”. “She embodies all the qualities we look for in a cover star,” says British Elle’s executive editor, Christopher Hemblade. “She’s sexy, stylish and spirited, with a genuine love of fashion.”
As Gwen’s profile rose, some sort of solo career seemed inevitable. It duly followed, on three fronts - as a musician, an actor (she played Jean Harlow in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator), and as a fashion designer.
Gwen, though, had other things on her mind. She discovered she was pregnant midway through a 42-date North American tour, playing to 12,000 people a night. “I was surprised how much I didn’t enjoy pregnancy’,” she admits. “Having something growing in your stomach feels so unnatural. Your body’s changing and you can’t control it. You just feel gross. I was having to get up on stage wearing bathing suits, looking fat. Nobody knew I was pregnant except me. They were constantly having to add extra panels into my costumes. To be honest, I was feeling pretty bad about myself.”
Only her adoring audiences of teenage girls kept her going. “I swear that saved me. I realised I'd got a whole new audience, which is crazy. They’d be looking up at me like I was Cinderella. It was the greatest feeling ever. It makes me wanna cry just thinking about it.”
When her pregnancy reached its halfway stage, she finally put her feet up. “I just sat in bed watching hundreds and hundreds of TV programmes. I'd really earned that.”
After Kingston was born, Gwen stayed at home. “Then after three months, I was like, enough’s enough, I want my life back. I’d gained 40lb, so I went on a diet. And I decided to go back into the studio.”
She didn’t find those first steps easy. “I remember showing up for the first day feeling really chunky, hormonal and guilty,'’ she says. “I was like, should I be here right now? I decided that if it felt too hard, then it wasn’t meant to be. But the whole experience turned out to be really great.”
Joining Gwen on that first foray into the studio was Keane’s keyboard player/songwriter Tim Rice-Oxlev. “It wasn’t the only offer I’d had to write with people,” he reveals. “But it was easily the most compelling. She’s undeniably the queen of pop right now, in the genuine sense of pop music that’s in the moment and defines an era. I don’t think she gets the credit she deserves for what she does. She really is the source of all the ideas. You can sit in an office putting a pop-star package together, but unless it comes from the person who’s at the centre of it all, it won’t ring true.”
The pair came up with Early Winter, one of the album’s slow-burning highlights. Having already made five tracks with Pharrell Williams before the baby, the remainder of the album fell together smoothly, apart from one abandoned session with producer Timbaland. “He’s one of my favourites, but I just couldn’t write anything,” says Gwen. “I was tired and burned out. He got me at a bad time. I had a little breakdown and went home crying. It was so embarrassing.”
Despite that setback, The Sweet Escape was still released in time for Christmas. The first single taken from it was less than successful but the album’s title track is currently riding high in charts on both sides of the Atlantic. “I was like, phew,” she smiles. “It’s always great to have a hit.”
With the album receiving a new lease of life, Gwen has announced another enormous US tour, in which she’ll play 42 dates in 70 days. “It is a lot, but I feel like it’s going to be easier having a baby outside my stomach, rather than inside.”
When she was a kid, Gwen once witnessed Emmylou Harris breastfeeding in the middle of a show. While it’s unlikely she’ll borrow that idea (“I’m not sure he’ll still be nursing by then”), she does think the tour will be good for her and the baby. “Because we’ve travelled so much, he’s never got into a schedule. I think that this tour is going to be the greatest time to get him on one.”
Kingston will have a crib on the tour bus, which will drive all night between venues. By the time they arrive, a room will have been set up with his toys, a changing station and a rocking chair. “So I’ll be rocking him to sleep in the dressing room every night before I go onstage and rock out,” Gwen guffaws.
She has also just finalised the latest collection for L.A.M.B., which could explain why everything in the current range is half-price on its website. “Is it?” she asks, surprised. “I didn't know that. I do the creative part.” It might explain why she’s not yet making any money from the venture. “It’s gonna take a lot of years before that happens,” she says. “But it’s something I’m passionate about that I can hopefully do for the rest of my life.”
There’s also, she says, going to be a new No Doubt album. “We had a heart to heart about things,” she says. “I think it could be one of our greatest records because we’ve been starved of each other for a few years. It’s really exciting.”
Last but clearly not least, she'd like another child. “I’m gonna try and enjoy this year of touring and then hopefully get pregnant again. I’m on repeat. I just want to make music and babies." With a car waiting outside to whisk her to an appearance on Charlotte Church’s chat show, Gwen walks over to pick Kingston up for a cuddle. “He’s going through a real mommy phase,” she beams. “He’s my biggest fan. Things are a lot of fun for me right now. I feel very lucky.”