The Los Angeles Times (Feb. 16th 1997)
Orange, Blond, Platinum
After a sometimes tragic 10 years, No Doubt has the No. 1 album and Grammy nods. But can the band survive Gwen Stefani's sore throat?
No Doubt may be the decade's most well-adjusted multiple-platinum rock band--which is a good thing, considering all the adjustments its four members have had to make.
In the decade since it was hatched in Anaheim by teenagers who worked at a Dairy Queen and loved ska music, No Doubt has ridden out the tragedy of a founding member's suicide, the soap opera of a rocky inside-the-band romance that inspired most of the lyrics on its breakthrough album, "Tragic Kingdom," and a long, doubt-fraught period of creative struggle and career frustration that preceded the album's release.
"Tragic Kingdom" has sold more than 5 million copies in the United States since its fall 1995 release, according to SoundScan, and is No. 1 on the national chart, for the ninth time out of the last 10 weeks. The collection is nominated for a Grammy as best rock album, and No Doubt, which will perform during the Grammy ceremony Feb. 26 in New York, is a contender for best new artist.
Along with the Offspring, the multimillion-selling punk band from Garden Grove, No Doubt finally has drawn attention to Orange County's vibrant, long-established alternative-rock tradition.
But No Doubt's massive success, understandably, has demanded further adjustments for the group members.
Singer Gwen Stefani--the self-described "girlie girl" whose athletic, bleached-blond, highly made-up look and prancing, upbeat stage persona mark a radical break from the raggedy queens of angst and rage who have ruled over '90s rock--says she has learned not to agonize when critics assail her as a throwback to a time before women rockers had established their right to be angry.
Guitarist Tom Dumont, bassist Tony Kanal and drummer Adrian Young also say they no longer take it to heart when writers dismiss their work as fluff (a panel of critics for Rolling Stone voted No Doubt the third-worst band of 1996, buffered from uttermost contempt by Bush and Marilyn Manson).
No Doubt, too, has had to come to terms with the prospect of its own career mortality--not just because of the stylistic flux and audience fickleness that are conditions of mid-'90s pop, but because troublesome nodes have formed in Stefani's throat, placing in question her continued ability to perform.
Having learned to keep their balance through hard times, No Doubt's members say, they simply have tried to keep doing the same now that times are flush.
"When the success was building, we kept it in mind that so many bands these days have one big record and then it's all over," Dumont said over dinner recently at a family-style Mexican restaurant in Anaheim that has been a No Doubt fueling stop for years. "We've remained conscious of the fact it could happen to us, so we made a conscious effort to remain humble."
Stefani, who was in tears a few months ago when her voice gave out after a series of shows, is combating her throat ailment with a regimen of vocal exercises and extra rest between dates. Her voice held up as No Doubt played a limited number of concerts in December and January; a current two-month tour of Israel and Europe will tell more.
"If everything was taken away tomorrow, it would be a {expletive} rad ending," said the cheerful singer, whose cussing seems born of enthusiasm rather than an attempt to cultivate a raunchy image. "We've had so much success, I feel guilty about it. If it was taken away and I couldn't sing tomorrow, I would feel sad because I like to sing. But as far as the band goes, we've had a {expletive} great time this year, and this 10 years, and {even if it ended} I'd feel really blessed. You do get greedy, though. I want to do another record."
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No Doubt took its first cues from Madness, the Selecter and other English bands of the early '80s that combined sprightly Jamaican ska rhythms with new wave-ish pop hooks.
The outfit soon found a loyal following on the sizable Southern California ska scene. Part of the attraction was John Spence, an acrobatic performer whose punk-howler's edge offset Stefani's breathy voice.
It was Spence's upbeat pet expression, "No doubt!," that gave the band its name; however, he had family problems and was prone to depression, which culminated in his 1987 suicide.
By 1989, Dumont and Young had joined Kanal, Stefani and her piano-playing older brother, Eric, in a lineup of kids from solidly middle-class homes.
Together, the No Doubt members came up with a diverse stylistic hybrid of ska, new wave rock, funk and heavy metal, and put it across in high-energy stage shows geared toward lighthearted fun. It won them a deal with Interscope Records, but more obstacles awaited: A 1992 debut album flopped, and Interscope rejected an album's worth of material No Doubt submitted for the follow-up.
Eventually, No Doubt's members learned to focus their sometimes sprawling and diffuse songwriting into catchy, hook-filled pop-song forms.
The band still felt like a stepchild at Interscope, but that changed early in 1995 when Paul Palmer, co-president of Interscope-affiliated Trauma Records, heard the nearly finished "Tragic Kingdom," fell for it and transferred the band to his label.
Eric Stefani, the band's most prolific songwriter, was a casualty of the long wait; he left toward the end of the recording process for "Tragic Kingdom" to work as a cartoonist on "The Simpsons." Also succumbing was an intense, seven-year romance between Gwen Stefani and Kanal, who say they remain good friends despite the difficult relationship end-game Stefani chronicled in her song lyrics.
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Opinions vary as to what has made "Tragic Kingdom" such a big hit. Geoff Mayfield, director of charts for Billboard magazine, says the bulk of the album's sales can be attributed to the appeal of its lone downcast ballad, "Don't Speak," which came out last fall and turned No Doubt into a pop-crossover success.
Others, including Patti Galluzzi, MTV's senior vice president of music and talent, theorize that after a long run of pervasive moody brooding in alterna-rock, No Doubt helped satisfy a growing appetite among listeners for "something that was lighter and fun and upbeat."
About the band's low critical standing, No Doubt's Dumont says, "When I see criticism of us, a lot seems to be the kind where people see a pretty blond girl and can't think there's anything of any depth there. I think that's a bias. {The album} is a snapshot of a suburban female in the '90s, and there are a lot of honest, heartfelt things she's singing about."
Stefani says she has done some soul-searching as to whether she is guilty of purveying a fluffy, stereotype-serving sex-bomb version of '90s femaleness, and she can't find any grounds for the accusation.
While unwilling to tag herself a feminist, she thinks she deserves credit for persevering during the late '80s and early '90s as one of the very few women on an Orange County alternative-rock scene dominated by men--most of them raging punkers.
As for her "girlie-girl" sensibility, Stefani says, "I decided the best thing was to be myself and go with my heart. I've never thought of myself as sexual, in that I tried to get up on stage and be sexy. If people think I might be, that's fine. I decided that if I just reflect the things that make me happy and move me, that's worked best for me, and other people can relate to it."
And how.
Stefani is amused that wannabes she wryly calls "Gwen girls" have been showing up at concerts sporting her trademark hip-hugger slacks and bared navel. "It's become a challenge to keep up with my own fashion," she says with a laugh.
While the other band members are happy that they can still sit through a long restaurant interview in their hometown with hardly a glimmer of public recognition, Stefani, who was interviewed separately, is learning about the impositions and restrictions that come with celebrity.
She was mobbed in December during a solo shopping excursion at the Brea Mall, and celebrity-seekers followed her on the freeway while she and her younger sister were driving to a charity gig No Doubt played last month at the Glass House in Pomona.
Having taken up with a handsome new celebrity beau, singer Gavin Rossdale of the hit British hard-rock band Bush, Stefani is now prime fodder for the rock rumor mill. She denies that she and Rossdale are engaged or that she is pregnant, as the gossip has it. "No, but I have a huge crush on him," she says.
So far, it seems, Stefani, Kanal, Dumont and Young, whose ages range from 26 to 29, have lived up to their goal of keeping their perspective and staying on an even keel.
But Stefani's step onto the conveyor belt of celebrity (she is starting to get feelers to act in films, which she is eager to try) could be the unaccounted-for variable that upsets No Doubt's well-maintained balance and makes the well-adjusted life impossible.
Concern over the potentially distorting impact of extreme fame "sometimes enters my head," she says. "Then I think, 'Whatever goes up comes down, and it's not always going to be like that.' I should just indulge in the weirdness of it and go, 'This is such a {expletive} trip.' "