After years as also-rans, ska/punk band No Doubt thought it was time for a little reinvention, and now they're front-page cover makers. 'That sort of coverage is really strange,' singer Gwen Stefani tells Brian Boyd.
'I'm sexy and I'm hip." Gwen Stefani throws her arms in the air in mock-triumph as she sits in her art-deco Los Angeles hotel room. Composing herself, she straightens her top and frowns: "You know, this band have been going since 1987, with a lot of downs and few ups, and just in the last 12 months, people have taken it on themselves to say that I'm somehow 'sexy' and somehow 'hip'. Dude, what's going on?"
Poor little Gwen. The more-ear-nest-and-serious-than-you-would-expect Californian singer is tonight trying to wrap her head around the past 15 years. As the lead singer of ska/punk group No Doubt, she's at a loss to explain why she's suddenly front-cover news. Just off a support slot on the U2 Elevation tour, currently adorning the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, recently voted the winner of the "Rock Style" award by Vogue magazine and now sitting on her band's most acclaimed album to date. Throw in two high-profile collaborations - one with Eve on last year's almost single of the year, Let Me Blow Ya Mind, and the other with Moby on the US-only release, South Side - and it looks like we're talking Madonna-style reinvention.
Indeed, No Doubt's new release, Rock Steady, has a bit of Ray Of Light about it. Not only did super-producer William Orbit work on both, but Stefani and her band managed to assemble a stellar cast of knob-twiddlers to help to produce an irresistible dancehall-meets-electronica album. The list of credits is dizzying: not only are über-hip producers the Neptunes on board, but so too are Prince, Nellee Hooper and reggae legends Sly and Robbie.
"That was the real buzz," she says. "Going to record some of the album in Jamaica and working with Sly and Robbie. We've always been about ska and reggae since we started; in fact, we're still really inspired by The Specials and Madness.
"We're all huge fans of dancehall [a form of slowed-down reggae] and, with listening to it all the time, it was only natural that some of the rhythm would seep into our new songs. The Jamaica thing was really strange, because we went there not knowing what would happen. It was always a dream of ours to go there - and working with Sly and Robbie and Steely and Celvie, who are this great dancehall duo, was just incredibly exciting."
It was, she insists, a make-or-break album in that the group has rarely worked with anybody else; this time, they threw the whole thing open. "I think after so many albums, we wanted to find out what other people could bring to the No Doubt party," she says. "We even had Dr Dre and Timbaland produce some stuff for this album, but the songs just didn't fit, so they'll be released later. There was just a spontaneous feeling around the whole work. Certainly for me, writing the lyrics, I threw away all my influences - people like Joni Mitchell and Sylvia Plath. This was written directly from my thoughts and feelings."
Though still ska/punk, Rock Steady has a contemporary gloss to it. The bumping single, Hey Baby, sees the band meld its trademark sound with electronic flourishes, while elsewhere Nellee Hooper brings a beats-laden,trippy feel to the proceedings.
"I find that Bristol sound that Nellee worked on [Massive Attack, etc] really interesting- that mix of reggae and rock. And dub," she says. "We'd really love to do some really dubbed-out remixes of tracks on this album."
Coming out of the vibrant southern Californian scene in the 1980s, No Doubt were, at best, always seen as also-rans - particularly because of their then unfashionable ska revival sound. While others were indulging in the more traditional musical pursuits of hardcore and metal, No Doubt sounded like a band who would be permanently on the undercard at a Specials concert.
The band's eponymously titled first album (1992) was released just as the musical world had its focus fixed firmly on the Seattle/grunge sound. The album sank without a trace and No Doubt's record company refused to support any further recordings. When Stefani's brother, Eric, left the band to work as an animator for The Simpsons, it looked like its 15 minutes was up.
"There was never any real reason for us to split; well, at least, that's how we all felt in the band. It mightn't have seemed that way from the outside," she says. "We were all just totally committed to it, totally committed to the music and we just kept plugging away. Then we came up with Tragic Kingdom."
Boosted by the two massive singles, Don't Speak and Just A Girl, the 1995 album went on to sell 10 million copies. Since then the band has been relatively quiet.
"That level of success is difficult to get used to," says Stefani. "And you get all these really strange pressures put on you. We were on tour a lot and all the time we'd just be listening to lots of dancehall music, which for us was getting back to where we belonged, part of the ska revival scene. We wanted, though, to show people that we had a wider range, which is why we worked with so many different people on this album and messed around with the sound a bit."
Now that she is in a high-profile relationship with fellow rocker Gavin Rossdale (from the band Bush) and her hairstyle is being discussed even more than her music, how does she cope with the new "rock chick" tag? "That's something for other people, not me," she says. "I mean, I've always dressed in a real DIY sense, wearing clothes I made myself and stuff like that. All that sort of coverage is really strange."
With gigs all over Europe later in the year, Stefani is itching to hit the road. "It's how we started and it's how we maintain contact with the people who support us," she says.
"With all the success, though, we have found that the No Doubt machine has got bigger and sometimes it's harder to make that connection. We are definitely a live band, it's what propels us along".
While Stefani remains convinced that this is the band's best album, she's still in doubting form. "Sometimes I didn't think we'd ever make this album; every album in some sense seems like something of a present," she says. "We went through some rather tough times and survived as a band and we survived our success. "Sometimes I really think nothing can happen to us any more."
Rock Steady is out now on Interscope Records.