No Doubt: Time To Party

End of 2001

Your band hasn't performed onstage for more than a year, you've got material you've never played before, and you're about to open for arguably the world's biggest band in the world's most famous arena. A pretty daunting assignment, but No Doubt could hardly have been in a better, more relaxed mood than when we caught up with them 24 hours before they were to take the stage at Madison Square Garden in support of U2.

It's a relaxed mode which permeates Rock Steady, their latest album and possibly their most upbeat record to date. Maybe that's all a reflection of the relative ease with which the album came together. After demoing early in the year at guitarist Tom Dumont's home in L.A., the band did some globetrotting. First stop was Jamaica, where the mood enhancement began with Red Stripes for breakfast — the better to cultivate the album's dancehall vibes with legendary production teams Sly & Robbie and Steely & Clevie. Then to London for songwriting with Eurythmics' Dave Stewart and production work with William Orbit (Madonna) and Nellee Hooper (Soul II Soul, Björk). Throw in collaborations with the Cars' Ric Ocasek and the artist once again known as Prince, and you've got one hell of an enjoyable record. Despite the darkness of our post-September 11 world, No Doubt has had an uncommonly happy year.

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John Norris: Tomorrow night is the first official No Doubt show of 2001. Are you feeling pressure, or are you looking forward to it?

Gwen Stefani: We haven't had time to feel pressure. We've been so busy and having so much fun. We rehearsed until two in the morning and we're freaking out like, "Oh my God, I can't believe we're playing with U2 and we don't know our songs." I'm trying to remember "Just A Girl." I'm like, "God, I can't remember the words."

Tony Kanal: Those guys know how to drink. They told us they don't like to be outdrank, so we're gonna give them a run for their money on this tour.

Norris: You're doing a couple of new songs, right?

Stefani: We're gonna do two new songs. We're gonna do a song called "Hella Good." That was a song that we had experimented with on this record, writing with some other weird freaks. We hooked up with these guys called the Neptunes, who basically everyone knows. They have, like, 4 billion hits out right now. We just wanted to see what would happen — the kind of cultural collision coming from the hip-hop world and a true band. It's the first time [we] had written with other people before, and it was really hard. It's like getting naked and trying to get really intimate with people you don't know. We ended up writing a song called "Hella Good" and we took it to Nellee Hooper.

Norris: It totally feels like you can hear a dance remix of it already.

Stefani: Like it doesn't even really need to be remixed, but the remixes are going to be insane.

Kanal: That was a big go for us on this record, to be able to go to dance clubs and hear our own music being played. We're going there anyway, so you might as well have your stuff spun in with the rest of it.

Stefani: The daytime we'd spend writing as much as we wanted and having fun, and then we'd go out dancing at night. It was kind of like being on tour — we didn't stop the going-out process. It was really inspiring to go out and listen to music and dance and roll in at like two in the afternoon and try to write some songs.

Kanal: We wanted to keep the same vibes we had going from touring last year, 'cause I think for the first time ever, we actually got to enjoy touring. We spaced it out, and we were looking forward to these aftershow parties where we'd play Jamaican dancehall music. We were so inspired by Jamaican dancehall music that we wanted to bring that spirit into the record.

Norris: Was it you, specifically, that was the biggest dancehall fan to begin with?

Kanal: All of us are real big reggae fans. I went to Jamaica last year for vacation and really got into the dancehall scene.

Stefani: You know what? That is so crazy, 'cause Tony's kind of [a] little bit uptight, a little bit hard to relax. Anal. He'll say it right now. Say it.

Kanal: No. It's completely not true.

Stefani: That trip to Jamaica is what totally mellowed you out. When you came back from that, you changed.

Kanal: I think I've found a good balance now.

Stefani: He's the star on the album. He really is. He poured all of his influences and everything musically that he loves, he really shoved it right into the band and really made it work with what we're doing. It's inspired us, and our chemistry on the record, as far as writing goes, was just on fire.

Norris: How did you hook up with Sly & Robbie?

Kanal: We have some friends who live in Jamaica and just made a few calls, asked if they would be interested in working with us. Amazing how it just came together. The whole record was very spontaneous. For this band to start writing a record on January 2 and then put it out December 18 is a huge accomplishment. [The album has since been pushed up to December 11.]

Stefani: It's a miracle. We're hoping that we get some kind of award or something.

Kanal: I think with Return of Saturn ... there was a chip on our shoulders after Tragic Kingdom. We really had to prove ourselves as songwriters, as musicians. It was somewhat labored, the process of making that record. This time it was very free and fun and quick. It just flowed. It was amazing.

Norris: It's a lot of fun to listen to, and it seems like lyrically, too, you were in a happier place.

Stefani: I was in a really good mood. I had a really good year. I think hip-hop kinda — it sounds silly. I always hate admitting it, because it's like this white dame from Orange County ... but the truth is, rock wasn't very exciting in the last few years. I think the tracks that they were doing in hip-hop, the sounds and the beats and everything has just been the most inventive and the most inspiring.

Norris: You guys worked with both Dr. Dre and Timbaland, but those tracks didn't make the record, right?

Adrian Young: We didn't work with Dre, though.

Kanal: We worked on some stuff that Dre sent over, and we went in the studio with Timbaland.

Stefani: You're gonna hear them. They're really good and they're different, and I think that's really fun. I love the idea of different cultures coming together and trying to make something great. I think that's really fresh.

Kanal: There was a song that was held over from the Return of Saturn sessions that we worked on with Prince. It just didn't seem to fit in with the stuff we were doing on Return of Saturn, so that was a song we took out of the vaults this year, finished it up and made it on the record. It's called "Waiting Room."

Norris: Amazing, too. Although it sounds like a Prince track, that sort tribal quality was something that I was totally surprised by. It was awesome.

Stefani: It's so weird how it fits so perfectly. I called him, like, "Yo, dude, you won't believe how it fits into the record!" It's like we made it for this album. It was so ahead of its time.

Norris: Even though you worked with a variety of people, are there any threads throughout the record, musically or thematically?

Stefani: You gotta give that over to Dumont. [Laughs]

Kanal: He gets all the hard questions.

Tom Dumont: There are probably a few different threads — I mean, definitely. The sense of trying to have a great groove and something that if you pump it through big, huge soundsystem speakers, it's gonna rock. That's the point of most of it. There's a lot of weird Star Wars noises. A very naïve approach to keyboards where me and Tony kinda don't know what we're doing. Just twiddling knobs: "That sounds cool." Gwen's vocal is probably the thread that connects all these weird elements together.

Kanal: There are backward messages on pretty much every song on the record. That's another common thread.

Norris: With Rock Steady being an upbeat, happy record, there's an ongoing thing right now, not only in music, but in culture in general, whether people want to be exposed to something that is sort of a diversion, or whether they really want to immerse themselves in stuff that addresses everything that we're going through.

Kanal: We've never been a political band in the sense that we've never addressed that stuff in our lyrics. We've always been a fun band, although some of the lyrics have been kind of heavy at times, 'cause Gwen deals with a lot of personal issues.

Stefani: Like one whole record about you.

Kanal: Exactly. We never really address political situations in our lyrics, and I think that's been a conscious decision. It doesn't mean we're not politically active or aware of what's going on in the world, but I think for us, we choose to be that diversion that people can have and come see us play and get away for a night and just enjoy themselves.

Norris: On September 11, you guys were pretty well into mixing the record, right?

Stefani: We were so excited about the record, and all of a sudden it just deflated us. We just felt like, "What are we doing?" "How can we help?" "It's not gonna be appropriate to put this party record out." [Then we were] getting a little more perspective on the whole thing and looking back at history and seeing how music is such a gift and a healer and so powerful. Now I feel like it's coming out with perfect timing to be a diversion, a little bit of a break and a little bit of fun. Hopefully it will help in that little, small way.

Kanal: It's important for us to continue to do things that we normally do. I don't think that you should let the actions of some very hateful people affect us in our daily lives. I think we should be aware and conscious and careful, but I think we need to continue to do what we normally do.

Stefani: We were gonna fly home from London. We were all really scared about that. [Adrian] wanted to get home to his wife. Tony was really fearful of being Indian. He's like, "I gotta be next to you" the whole time... You're my Tony, my friend, and all of a sudden now you've gotta be worried about going outside, or maybe you should keep your hair blond, thinking about crazy stuff.

Kanal: Stuff that you should not have to think about.

Norris: Is discrimination something you and your family have ever had to deal with?

Kanal: I've dealt with it. Fortunately I haven't had to deal with it in ways that so many other people have had to deal with it. I haven't had to deal with that on a daily basis. But it is weird to have to start thinking about how people are looking at you and how people perceive you. Unfortunately there's a lot of ignorant people in the world, and they don't really realize exactly who did this terrible act. It has nothing to do with 99.9999 percent of the people in this world. You just hope that people's anger and political fervor doesn't get taken out in the wrong way. You just hope that people can understand the truth in that these are innocent people that they're affecting.

Norris: Are you thinking about material for the next album yet?

Kanal: We're not the kind of band that writes while we're on the road.

Norris: You're partying after the shows.

Kanal: Which is all done for inspirational purposes.

Stefani: Look at how much we love each other still.

Young: Good times.

Kanal: We are really lucky.

Stefani: We are so lucky.

By John Norris - MTV.com