A lot has changed, but 'No Doubt' remains

Posted to: Entertainment Music Spotlight Virginia Beach

More Music & Nightlife

WANT TO GO? No Doubt with Paramore and The Sounds, June 10, Virginia Beach Amphitheater

Paramore: A mix of emotion & flaws

Related Blog: Live Nation: No service fee on all tickets this Wednesday, June 10

By August Brown

Los Angeles Times

There’s a certain serendipity to Paramore’s opening slot on the No Doubt return tour. Fans of the latter might remember the video for “Don’t Speak,” where No Doubt’s three male members look daggers at bejeweled frontwoman Gwen Stefani as they’re cropped out of a magazine shoot.

A similar thing might have happened over the past two years to Paramore, which performs Wednesday in Virginia Beach. The young Tennessee pop-punk quintet vaulted into the charts on the strength of such buoyant singles as “Misery Business,” the “Twilight” soundtrack cut

“Decode” and their platinum-selling 2007 sophomore album “Riot.” But Paramore’s ochre-haired spitfire singer, 20-year-old Hayley Williams, inadvertently gleaned much of the spotlight during that rise. Her striking aesthetics and outspoken personality made her something of a tabloid regular, all while personal troubles brewed among her bandmates.

Paramore canceled part of a European tour in 2008 because of, as Williams said in a blog post, “internal issues that have been going on in this band for quite a while now,” ones that they had to work on “at home and on our own terms.”

“The room just got smaller and smaller as more people were looking on,” Williams said on a couch in the home of producer Rob Cavallo, where the band is wrapping up tracking its as-yet-untitled third album. “You start to resent it, and a lot of that anger and emotion needed to come out, especially for me.”

If there were doubts as to the band’s future then, its forthcoming album should remedy them. The album is both about band members’ grievances with one another and a document proving they’re finally past them

For a group signed to a major label while its members were still teenagers, the band already has the mixed blessing of a few hugely recognizable hits. “Misery Business” was a delicious bit of schoolyard rival-baiting, and the suburban-gothic “Decode” adeptly evoked “Twilight” fans’ longing to date a dashing vampire.

But the new “Exception” is entirely different – a blown-out pastoral ballad.

More mainstream popularity might exacerbate some of the problems that the band, and Williams in particular, had in the leadup to this album. Williams admits feeling “ridiculous that 90 percent of articles about us start with something about my size or my hair,” a reality of Paramore’s place in the public eye that’s surely chafed her bandmates in the past.

But this album should do much to prove the fierce musicianship of the band and Williams’ ambitions as a lyricist. In airing their youthful dirty laundry on record, Paramore might have made its most adult album yet.

By Randy Lewis

Los Angeles Times

ONTARIO, Calif.

Gwen Stefani may be a superstar pop singer, hit songwriter, fashion maven, and role model for millions of girls and young women, but on a brutally hot afternoon last month, on a loading dock outside a largely empty sports arena, she was just a mom, trying to keep her 3-year-old son entertained while she took on an impromptu decorating project.

"I don't have time to do this, but you know me - once I get obsessed with something," Stefani said while splattering globs of sky blue, neon orange and electric pink paint across three large squares of white fabric. She and a couple of friends were creating tapestries to hang in the backstage dressing rooms during the first full-scale concert tour in seven years by No Doubt, the once-scrappy ska-rock group that emerged from Anaheim to become one of the biggest-selling pop music acts of the 1990s and early 2000s.

Inside the new Citizens Business Bank Arena a short time later, Stefani, bassist Tony Kanal, guitarist Tom Dumont and drummer Adrian Young were showing pretty much the same childlike exuberance and energy as they bounced around the gleaming white retro-futuristic stage set they were trying out for the first time before the tour kickoff in Las Vegas. The tour, with Paramore, stops Wednesday in Virginia Beach.

After a group hiatus of five years during which Stefani put out two multimillion-selling solo albums, "Love Angel Music Baby" and "The Sweet Escape," No Doubt is back. Judging by the early box-office response to the nearly 60 shows scheduled across North America, the quartet is poised for one of the biggest tours of 2009.

During the break, many fans wondered whether Stefani's solo career would mean the end of the road for the Orange County band that launched her, but in Stefani's mind there was always No Doubt.

"This is what I told the guys: The plan was, I wanted to do the dance record, go on the tour, come home and get pregnant - since I'm a pro at it now, because I did it before," said Stefani, 39. "I'll write the record while I'm pregnant, then after I have the baby, we'll go on tour and we'll have a new No Doubt record. It'll be amazing."

All but one part of that plan has worked out. Musical inspiration for Stefani, the main songwriter of such No Doubt hits as "Don't Speak," "Ex-Girlfriend," "Just a Girl" and "Underneath It All," just wasn't there after she and rock star hubby Gavin Rossdale became expectant parents for the second time.

"I don't know how other women feel, but I lose connection with myself because my body becomes this other vessel for this other human. Even after a few months, you don't have your body back; you're not yourself. I was feeling not very modern, not very creative."

After a few months of fruitless writing sessions, Stefani, Kanal, Dumont and Young decided the best thing they could do to get the creative juices flowing was to follow the path that had first served them so well: Go out and play.

"We're not calling it a reunion tour, because the band never broke up," manager Jim Guerinot said.

Disbanding "was never discussed," Dumont, 40, said on the first of several days of band rehearsals in Ontario. "In fact, it was specifically discussed as, 'Let's not be one of these bands that breaks up and gets back together.' We don't hate each other; it's just time for a break. Gwen had some real specific things she wanted to do with the time."

The last time No Doubt toured was in 2004, in conjunction with a hits compilation, "The Singles: 1992-2003." It was 2002 when the group last mounted a full-scale concert tour, following the 2001 release of its last studio album, "Rock Steady."

That's when Stefani realized she had some career steps to take outside the parameters of the band she joined as a teen-ager, entering the group as "Just a Girl" singer before taking over the role of chief songwriter after her older brother, Eric, left the band.

After No Doubt's 2004 tour, she intended to put out just one, as she often called it, "stupid dance record" on her own. "Love Angel Music Baby" sold 4 million copies in the United States and yielded hit singles "Hollaback Girl," "What You Waiting For" and "Cool."

What she hadn't figured on was doing a follow-up, which left No Doubt in limbo a couple of years longer than the musicians had anticipated. During that time, Stefani also launched her phenomenally popular L.A.M.B. fashion line.

"All I know how to do is follow my inspiration," Stefani said in a separate interview in her dressing room. "That's why I did those dance records; it's where I wanted to be.... I really didn't plan to do the second one. I felt guilty about it, and it was a real scary conversation to say, 'Listen, guys, I feel like I'm this close to another one, it's really what I want to do right now.' They were really so supportive, and thank God I did it, because that tour was so rewarding, such a great thing for me to do.

"But as soon as I finished that second record - literally, it was during mastering of that record - I was like, 'I know I need to do another No Doubt record now. I'm done with this.' "

While their celebrity bandmate toured and appeared on one magazine cover and TV talk show after another, Kanal, Dumont and Young kept busy. Kanal collaborated with other songwriters. He and Dumont produced recordings for other artists. Young kept his drum chops up playing with a variety of bands on the road and in the studio.

Dumont and Young also started families, something Kanal and his girlfriend of 6-1/2 years hope to do as well.

No Doubt is finding it illuminating to pick up where the group left off five years ago. Earlier last month, the group played a couple of warm-up shows.

During the band's headlining set at the Bamboozle Festival in East Rutherford, N.J., Stefani asked how many in the crowd were seeing the group for the first time.

"I was just in so much shock by the amount of hands that went up," Stefani said. "I'm still sort of like: Did they understand the question? Because it was like the whole audience.... It was kind of exciting."

Manager Guerinot says he hasn't been completely surprised by the enthusiasm he's witnessed.

"They've been away for five years," he said. "Gwen had spectacular success in the interim. People remember this band as a tremendous live attraction, and I think there's an awful lot of pent-up interest in whether we'd see No Doubt again."

COMMENTS ADVISORY: Users are solely responsible for opinions they post here; comments do not reflect the views of The Virginian-Pilot or its websites. Users must follow agreed-upon rules: Be civil, be clean, be on topic; don't attack private individuals, other users or classes of people. Read the full rules here.
- Comments are automatically checked for inappropriate language, but readers might find some comments offensive or inaccurate. If you believe a comment violates our rules, click the report violation link below it.