Every time Gwen Sefani ventures outside her parents’ Orange County home she gets the same question.
”Does anyone ever tell you that you look like that girl?”
By “that girl”, they mean the effervescent frontwoman of No Doubt, currently sitting pretty at Number One on the nation’s album chart, "that girl' who is on the cover of all the national music magazines, and constantly on MTV. And Gwen Stefani just shrugs and walks away with a smile. Being “that girl” has never been so much fun.
For the first nine years of their career, No Doubt were in their own words “illegal”. They released their self-titled debut album on Interscope Records in 1992 and literally no-one looked up from their grunge albums. Pissed off and not a little embarrassed, they returned to Gwen’s father’s garage and knocked out a self-financed album titled The Beacon Street Collection in 1995. And still no-one outside of of their immediate families cared. The following year, the dogged quartet - completed by guitarist Tom Dumont, bassist Tony Kanal, and drummer Adrian Young- stuck out a third record, Tragic Kingdom and hoped for the best.
You probably know the rest: the arena tour with Bush, the three smash hit US singles, Tragic Kingdom hitting the top spot on the Billboard 200 just before Christmas '96: it has remained there ever since, selling six million copies to date. Now, things are set to get really wild.
This week, Gwen Stefani wanted nothing more than to reunite with her boyfriend, Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale, on holiday in London. Sadly, the demands of pop stardom being what they are, she will spend large chunks of this ostensibly free time chatting to UK journalists, as will Tom Dumont back at home in California.
At various points today, the pair will use the words “weird”, “brilliant”, and “fun” to describe their 'overnight' success.
“So many good bands never even get in the charts, never mind get to number one,” Gwen says in her sugar-sweet drawl. “So for this to happen after all the years of being a cult underground band is incredible. I have to get people to slap me across the face in case it’s all just been a dream.”
Self-confessed “nice middle class kids”, both Gwen and Tom are extremely polite and pleasant. And frankly, you could forgive a little rudeness or arrogance from the pair, given that recent critical appraisals of the band have ranged from “lightweight mock rock” to “fronted by the most irritating woman in rock”.
“That sort of criticism still hurts,”Tom says. ”I don’t think we’re incredible artists, but I think we have some redeeming qualities.”
“Whatever,” is Gwen’s succinct response. “Critics aside, it feels so cool for us to be getting some respect from our peers after all this time. We were playing one festival and I noticed that a lot of the other bands were watching us from the side of the stage, and I was like, Wow!”
People from LA looked down on us because we were uncool and suburban and didn’t take drugs
Gwen Stefani
“Before, we were the nerd band from Orange County, and even people from LA looked down on us because we were uncool and suburban and didn’t take drugs. People laughed at this kind of music when Nirvana were huge.”
Back then, No Doubt were more of a pure ska band, kicked into life when Gwen’s brother, their former keyboard player Eric, brought home his first record by Camden nutty boys Madness.
“Our whole family got into it and it was kinda embarrassing,” Gwen giggles. “At Thanksgiving, we watched these old videos that my Dad had shot when we were kids, and there was one where the four kids recreated a Madness video. I just looked so awkward and stupid in front of the camera.”
“It’s funny to think that 15 years later I’m still doing stuff like this and people actually take me seriously.”
America takes ska-punk very seriously now too, thanks to the success of No Doubt’s So-Cal brethren Rancid, Sublime and Goldfinger.
“The whole ska scene in America used to be so underground, and we were happy initially just to imitate British ska bands seven years after they were happening,” Gwen recalls. “But the ska-punk people are so strict with their rules. Our whole attitude was to play whatever makes us feel good. We just stole from everyone, like, ‘Hey, let’s stick that Nirvana chorus with that Specials riff’, to make this big salad of sound.”
This “big salad of sound” has proven very appetising to American record buyers. Gwen and Tom are extremely modest about their success, claiming they were just in the right place at the right time, as music fans tired of “male-oriented hard rock” sought out something fresh and popular.
“I still take the trash out and clean the toilet just like everyone else,” Tom insists.
But then Tom doesn’t get recognised as much as “that girl”.
“I still live with my parents, which is embarrassing I know, and Dads will drop their kids off at our house with a camera and their No Doubt stuff,” she reveals. “I’ll casually open the door and all these little girls will be there, like Trick-or-Treat or something. It’s kinda rude and weird, but I know it won’t last forever and so I just try to enjoy it.”
“We don’t want to be dicks,” Tom adds. “Coming from that punk scene in California, we’re real careful not to get too full of ourselves.”
So how have your friends and family reacted to No Doubt’s nine-year overnight success?
“We’re pretty lucky because our parents are super-proud for us”, Tom says. “My parents have always been really supportive, but now they’re just crazy. They think that they’re stars. Mind you, I haven’t seen my friends for ages, so they probably think, ‘Asshole now he’s a big rockstar, he hasn’t got time for us’.”.
Looking ahead, Gwen, who admits to being “so tired I can’t breathe”, simply wants to cuddle up to Gavin Rossdale and “pretend I have no life.”
“For 13 years we were the band that sat in the garage making fun of everyone on TV and radio,” she admits. “To be in that position ourselves now is a real trip. I don’t know how good we are, but I know we’re having fun.”
A version of this article was published in Kerrrang! in February 1997.
