NME (July 5th 1997)

Ska Spangled Banter!

Why has Beavis & Butt-head country gone mad for No Doubt’s peculiar brand of ska-pop-funk- type-thing? And how has singer Gwen ended up as some sort of feminist icon? Johnny Cigarettes meets the band on their tour of Midwest enormodomes in a noble bid to find out.

Now, while y’all is stayin’ here in Kansas City, be sure to order your steak real super well-done. That’s the way we like it round these parts.” When travelling abroad, you can always trust a taxi-driver to fill you in on those crucial local customs that the guide book doesn’t tell you about. Be sure, however, to respect their culture, and not offend their sometimes delicate sensibilities.

“I’m vegetarian,” announces mild-mannered photographer.

“Whut?” twitches the moustache and baseball cap in front. “Hell, sorry, never heard of it.”

“No, vegetarian.”

‘‘That somewhere near Russia? Hell, I coulda swore you boys was Australian.”

‘‘No, I’m a vegetarian. I don’t eat meat.”

Some confusion is in the air. Our driver isn’t entirely acquainted with the latest in dietary and lifestyle options for the discerning liberal Westerner.

“Well, ain’t that the darnedest thing I ever heard. You don’t eat meat in your country? Whut the hell do you eat? Rice or somethin’?! Heh heh!”

‘‘I eat fish occasionally.”

“Well, like I says, whatever you eat in your country, while vou’re here in Kansas City, you should order a steak. That’s what we eat round these parts. And be sure to get it real super well- done.”

“But... oh, never mind.”

This, dear reader, is the Midwest of America. Life is simpler here. Eat Meat. Drink Beer. F— cows. And listen to Rock. Big Rock. For big men with big appetites, big trucks and big women. You may have been under the impression that America consisted of New York, Los Angeles, and a few cities in-between. Wrong. This here is the real America, and when you talk about bands being ‘big’ in America, this kind of place is where they mean. This is a land ruled by MTV, populated by Beavis & Butt-head and The Simpsons, and soundtracked by rock’n’roll radio. Whatever those hip sophistos back East make of you, it don’t mean a thing if it don’t mean anything to the vast, unheralded heartlands of America.

For many years, however, the proud new generations of the British art school guitar pop tradition have been met here with the same kind of reception as pisci-vegetarian culinary ethical systems. Somehow, super well-done all-American steak rock has always said more to these people about their lives than skinny- ribbed androgyny, cross-pollinating dance esoterica, snotty attitude or songs about cross-dressing commuters.

That’s us f—ed then. But you may still ask how, in the name of Roscoe P Coltrane, has a deeply unorthodox bunch of, albeit American, ska-pop cartoon funk punk funsters whose main influence is a short-lived Coventry-based revival scene from the early-’80s, managed to sell upwards of ten million records? The ska revival as the new stadium rock? Some mistake, surely?

BACKSTAGE AT the Sandstone amphitheatre (outdoor version of ‘Enormodome’), in Bonner Springs, Kansas (that’s right, sounds like ‘Boner’. Huh. Huh.), you notice a theme among the pictures on the wall of bands who’ve played here in the past. Bon Jovi. Van Halen. The Scorpions. Bryan Adams. Jimmy Buffet. Jimmy Barnes. Jimmy Page. Jimmy Ray Cyrus. Billy Bob Joe Brooks. Plus umpteen other poodle and mullet rock suspects, such as The Cranberries.

Is there perhaps a lowest common denominator we can detect here? Hell, darned if I know whut it is.

And what do No Doubt have in common with all this?

‘‘Music’s changed a lot since we started,” reckons bass player, Tony Kanal. ‘‘In 1987, there’s no way a band like us would have been played on the radio. And even when the grunge thing happened, it was still basically serious rock, and we were a little too upbeat to be cool. I think people just wanted a change from all that staring at your shoes stuff. It’s about entertainment, it’s about energy and having fun.”

I’m sure Angus Young would drink to that. As such, No Doubt have been characterised as some kind of reaction to the miserablism, self-indulgence and angstier-than-thou tendencies of the grunge years.

‘‘We’re not reacting to anything,” claims singer Gwen Stefani. “We’re just playing the same music we’ve played for ten years. We were always the band who were going to be a cult at best. We played ska in California, for Christ’s sake! And we also had a hard time because we were from Orange County, which is considered middle-class. And because we didn’t stand looking pissed-off and pretend to shoot up heroin under the bridge, we weren’t taken seriously. And now all of a sudden, Anaheim is really cool. People are saying they wanna move there! It’s like it’s the new Seattle or something! It’s so stupid.”

They did it, inevitably, by touring woe-begotten places like Kansas, and relying on a relentless sense of innocent, wacky fun to inspire the nation’s youth. And when we see them tonight, flitting about the stage like turbo-powered Duracell rabbits, shamelessly adhering to the manifesto of the 24-hour party and lighting up the faces of 18,000 typical girls and boys, you can’t deny their charm.

They do benefit from that legendary lack of cynicism inherent in Middle American people and their culture, mind, because an encore ska version of ‘Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da’ would be enough to curl the toes of most British audiences.

Meanwhile, the whole thing doesn’t half start to resemble pantomime at times, like when Gwen sits down on the stage in the middle of ‘Just A Girl’, looking sad and fwightened and lonely like a lickle bunny wabbit, until a boy comes up and gives her a rose, and she goes all big-eyed and cute, wipes her eyes and gets happy again. Sure, it’s all done in their trademark cartoony style, and they are no strangers to irony, but the sick bag remains at hand.

Not for the majority of the crowd tonight, though, most of whom, significantly enough, are teenage girls. While you half expect, in a place like this, to be confronted with thousands of low foreheads, lumberjack shirts and ferrets on their heads, what jocks there are are comprehensively intimidated and out- shouted by their female counterparts.

And thus it came to pass that Gwen Stefani became a reluctant female pop icon. Which means everyone in America has to have an opinion of you, and you’re meant to have an opinion on everything, especially to do with your massive, legally-bound responsibility to promote the interests of 50 per cent of the population. This may be why the new single, ‘Just A Girl’, a song essentially about frustration with the limitations of what’s expected of female behaviour, has been seen by some as a feminist anthem.

“We’ve never been a statement band. I’ve never felt representative of anything. Being in a band since 1987, I can tell you that it’s changed soooo much - people have changed. Where I came from in Orange County, there were no girls in bands. Maybe as a backing singer but not in a garage band. Everyone would be like, ‘Wow!’ as if it was some kind of gimmick. Then there was a phase where you had to be really folky sweet and wispy to get any attention, like 10,000 Maniacs. Then it was, you had to be like L7, saying, ‘F— MEN!’. Then this riot grrrl thing happened.

“For me, with the riot grrrl thing, I always felt I didn’t fit into that, wouldn’t be accepted because I was a little more feminine, I like to wear lipstick and, hell, I won’t deny I played with Barbie dolls when I was growing up. But I learnt that if you just be yourself and don’t worry about what statement you’re making with your image, people relate to that far better. You end up being far more unique and original because everyone else is worrying about what statement they’re making. It’s pretty good now, though, because it’s like all kinds of women are accepted. There’s not a big thing made of it any more.

“As far as feminism goes, I have my views. I mean, I went ten years being the only girl in my situation having to see everything from the guys’ point of view.

'Just A Girl’ was made out to be some big feminist statement, but I don’t think it really is. In some ways*maybe because people relate to it, but I was just writing about being myself. You get a lot of energy from other girls at gigs. It’s makes you confident enough to be yourself.”

But that’s not good enough for some. For a start, she’s far too pretty and fun- loving to fit into the dumbo rock critic and rad-fem ideas of ‘meaning it’ and being a 'serious artist’

“It’s hard sometimes. Everything’s so great on tour because all you hear is, ‘You’re rad!’ from all the girls. Then again in Vogue magazine recently I noticed myself and someone said, ‘Gwen Stefani is every trend that I’ve ever hated’, and someone else saying, ‘She’s a Madonna wannabe’. Everyone has to have an opinion. And you just think in some ways it’s a compliment. If I’m too cute to mean it, then cool. Then it’s like I’ve written these songs about my life, and maybe if you’d taken a second to read the lyrics or look at the history of the band, see the show, there’s no way you could write it off. But that’s not really my problem.”

IF THE Madonna comparisons were only to do with the blonde Hollywood bombshell haircut Gwen sported for a while, then maybe she has more in common with the Spice Girls, in the vague sentiments of girl power, without saying anything that controversial, and the fact that she appears to have caught the imagination of teenage girls across America like Spice fever did in Britain.

“Oh God,” she rolls her eyes. “Well, people have said before that No Doubt and the Spice Girls are the same thing. And I’m like, ‘Waiiiiiit a minute! We’ve been around for nearly I I years’. Which is almost embarrassing. We’ve done it all ourselves. We’re a band. I write lyrics of my own, and it doesn’t come with the help of some record company guy.

“People just see a cute girl singer,” reckons guitarist Tom Dumont. “The Spice Girls have some catchy songs, whoever wrote them, but they’re a showbiz act really. They’re not a band, like us.”

No Doubt would like it to be known, in no uncertain terms, that they are a band. Oh yes. A living, breathing, four-piece, who do not know the meaning of the word ‘Sleeperbloke’.

“Sweeperbloke?” asks drummer Adrian Young. I give a brief explanation. They are not entirely amused.

“Well that’s what we’ve been trying to educate people about,” explains Tony. “We’re a band who all collaborate in writing our own songs, we play our own instruments and we always have. So it kind of pissed us off when we first had success in America, where we were seen as Gwen’s backing band.”

Sure. You wouldn’t have got far without her, though, would you?

"Who knows,” shrugs Tom. “Sure, Gwen’s ‘star quality’ or whatever you wanna call it has helped us a lot in getting people to notice us. And it’s because it’s very easy to be drawn to Gwen visually and as the singer that we stress the fact that we’re a band.”

You have to wonder what they expected, though. They admit to being a pop group, and in pop groups, it’s performers who matter. It’s always going to be the singer and lyricist who everyone is interested in, not what plectrum the guitarist is using. Besides, Gwen looks like a pop star, and the others look like musicians. Would they have cared who the keyboard player was in Blondie? And maybe they’d have remembered Clem Burke, but only because he looked like a star and had a top haircut. Go, and while you’re at it, figure.

Such considerations are rumoured to have caused considerable friction within the band. Perhaps as a means of therapy, they even made the video for ‘Don’t Speak’ about not getting on as a band when, in fact, the song is about the end of Tony and Gwen’s seven-year relationship. This is, allegedly, another cause celebre of disharmony in the band.

“All that stuff has really been blown out of proportion,” says Tony, predictably enough. “Maybe a year ago we weren’t getting along, but relations within the band have rarely been better than right now."

Gwen is now seeing our old friend Gavin Rossdale from Bush, to whom Tony supposedly refers, only half-joking as, ‘Your big rock star with a private jet’. Blokes eh? Can’t live with ’em, can’t go solo...

“We’ve had those arguments where everyone threatens to quit,” admits Gwen. “But I think we’ve passed through that stage. We’ve been together I I years as a band, and we’re not going to throw it all away now.

“It was hard for me at first when we got really popular because we’d been this underground band with a hardcore audience for so long, then suddenly people were treating us like Paula Abdul and a backing band. I’m like, ‘I’m sorry, it’s not my fault, I can’t do anything about it! We should just be happy that people are getting into the music’. It was a problem, but I think because we made a big deal over stressing that we are a band, people began to understand.”

Meanwhile, if that weren’t enough stress, this being America, there’s always the sobering thought of being stalked and killed just for being pretty and on the TV a lot. “One night I was in our tourbus, and I got this gift. And inside was a picture of this middle-aged man naked, bent over doing something disgusting. So I just threw it away, and didn’t read the letter with it. Later on in the club our security guy says to me, ‘Don’t worry, he’s been sending that sort of stuff to you for months. We’ve intercepted most of it. And we’ve checked him out on the FBI’s lists and he’s pretty harmless...’. And I’m like, ‘FBI?! What the f—?’!”

Most of the time, though, it’s those same old preconceptions about what a female person who happens to be famous should be like.

“Usually it’s backhanded compliments that freak you out. People say, ‘I can’t believe you’re so small! I thought you were so much bigger, with big breasts!’. Then another time I was in a gym and someone said, ‘I think it’s so great that girls have someone who’s not thin to look up to, who’s a little bit fat’. Meanwhile, I’m on the running machine, sobbing...”

Aww. By design or default, though, Gwen Stefani as a star and No Doubt as a band have left a mark on American music and the star culture that can only be positive.

See, No Doubt are such an unlikely sounding bunch that you’re amazed a nation built on simple conservative pleasures and a generation fed on a diet of one-dimensional rock music could get their heads, let alone their hearts, around it.

IN MANY ways No Doubt do what all the New Eclecticism class of 1993 tried but didn’t have the pop sensibility to pull off. Listening to Tragic Kingdom’, we’re confronted with old-school reggae and choppy ska, intermingled with stabs of squealing rawk guitar, harmony pop choruses, vocals which are angsty, sassy and angelic by turns. Invariably during the same song. Then you’ve got the likes of ‘Excuse Me Mr’, snotty speedpunk shot through with gawky anxiety, then just when you think they’ve been wise enough to stylistically limit themselves, there’s a Hispanically flavoured mega-ballad (‘Don’t Speak’ - you might have heard this one) followed by a glitterball disco anthem (‘You Can Do It’). And just to keep us on our toes to the end, the album closes with the shamelessly melodramatic title track, full of Disney-esque mystic lyrical silliness about kings and jesters, castles and dungeons, complete with Eddie Van Halen-style squiddly guitar solo in the middle. Somehow it works, probably due in no small part to such uncomplicated qualities as, er, top tunes.

Meanwhile, Gwen Stefani’s unassuming lyrics strike a pretty universal chord, even when she’s not singing about a broken relationship. ‘Sixteen’ is surely the collected thoughts of frustrated adolescence distilled into song, while ‘Just A Girl’ makes no claim to great wisdom but says a lot more about the female condition than ten tedious therapy-screechers could. Likewise, ‘Different People’ is so innocently hopeful you can’t help but feel a sneer coming on, but it’s equally resonant stuff.

The upshot of all this is that, quite apart from Gwen’s elevation to spokeswoman for a generation in American teen mags, generic barriers in the American music scene are less certain than ever. Switch on the radio or MTV in America now and you’ll hear an infinitely more diverse, left-field range of records than you would have ten or even five years ago.

Sure, they’re probably only part of an ongoing process that’s also being seen in Britain, but some of their influence is impossible to miss...

“It’s a weird trip in America for us to listen to the radio now,” says Gwen. “People are experimenting musically, and people are prepared to listen to that. Then again, there’s loads of little ska bands, and they almost make me wanna puke because a lot of them are like ’90s ska. They play it really fast and punky, and it’s as if they’ve never really heard the original records. Mind you, people would probably say that about us.”

And they have. But whatever the purist verdict on such slaughtering of sacred musical cows, at least they’ve served them all up rare, exotic and full of loony juice. And if their lead is followed, before long American rock will no longer be synonymous with beef, hair and moaning. And even Midwest taxi-drivers will know there’s an alternative to super well-done steak.