Hello! There’s a new interview with Tony on Rolling Stone’s web site! :
“By David Browne
August 22, 2012 9:00 AM ET
Most albums aren’t recorded overnight; just ask Steely Dan or Bruce Springsteen. However, No Doubt‘s upcoming Push and Shove, out September 25th, is one of the longest-gestating pop albums in recent memory. According to bassist Tony Kanal, it’s a triumph that the album – the band’s first since 2001’s Rock Steady – was completed at all.
“We always knew it was going to happen,” Kanal says, “but there was a lack of clarity as to when it would happen. We went through a period when we thought, ‘Wow, will this ever get done?'”
The winding road to Push and Shove began in 2007 while lead singer Gwen Stefani was touring behind her second solo album, The Sweet Escape. In June, during the encore for one of her shows in Irvine, California, the other members of No Doubt joined her onstage for a four-song set that included their hits “Just a Girl” and “Hella Good.” “The response was so amazing that we said, ‘We have to start working,'” explains Kanal.
Not long after the show, the band convened to start writing new material, but Stefani was still exhausted from touring and was expecting her second child. The band was also hit with collective writers’ block. Those songwriting sessions and further ones in 2008 yielded little, and the band decided to give it a rest. “We know when it’s right and when it isn’t,” Kanal says. “We had to get that feeling again.”
Things only began clicking again in November 2009 after the band’s successful summer reunion tour. Kanal says he was skeptical of hitting the road and performing only old material, but the band was so energized afterward that they decided to give the new album another try. One song, “Undercover,” finally emerged, but work still progressed slowly throughout 2010, since Stefani was now the mother of two and only available three evenings a week. “We’d order in food and spend the first hour talking about life and kids,” Kanal says. “Between us, we have nine kids. But it was like, ‘This is fun again.'”
Finally, earlier this year, the band spent five months focusing on new material with producer Spike Stent (whose résumé includes Oasis, Madonna and Coldplay). Even then, the band frantically rewrote and tossed out material. One track, “Back in Love,” was almost scrapped until the band realized the intro could make a terrific chorus, resulting in an entirely different dance song, “Looking Hot.” When the album was almost done, Stefani suggested they needed a ballad, and out came “Undone” – but again, only after it was nearly abandoned. “Gwen went on a family vacation in England and emailed me from there and said, ‘I think there’s something here with this song,’ so we went back to work on it,” says Kanal.
The band’s love for reggae and dancehall still comes through in the lead single, “Settle Down,” and the title track (which featured a verse from Jamaican dancehall singer Busy Signal). “We want to sound modern, but we’re still influenced by ska, reggae and Eighties UK bands,” says Kanal. “There’s no way to escape who we are.” Kanal calls “Heaven” the band’s “homage to OMD, Depeche Mode and the Cure – the stuff we love to reference.”
The one thing Push and Shove doesn’t have are leftovers for future deluxe editions. “In the past, we’d write 20 songs for a record,” Kanal admits. “This time, our time was limited. So, no, no outtakes!” More seriously, Kanal adds, “For everyone, taking that long break was very healthy. Gwen needed to get that out of her system. She couldn’t have made those [solo] albums with No Doubt. And we’ve learned that if you try to force it, it doesn’t work with this band.”
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There’s also a new interview with Gwen on Derek Blasberg’s site! :
“Full disclosure: The first time I ever met Gwen Stefani was in 2001, when I was a freshman in college, at the afterparty for the VH1/Vogue Fashion Awards. (Remember those, anyone?) It was at The Park on 10th Avenue and my brother was with me. She was wearing the wide-gage fishnet stockings, cargo pants, wife beater tank top and pointy toed boots that John Galliano had designed for Dior, and she standing on the patio on the second floor. Feeling a little tipsy, my brother, who is truly a lifelong No Doubt fan and only dated blondes who would entertain his SKA music preference, went up to her and asked for an autograph. We didn’t have paper or anything, so we found a pen and presented her with a pack of Marlboro Lights, which she laughed at (at us?) and signed. I still cringe every time I think of this.
Point of the story: I have been a Gwen fan for more than a decade. Since No Doubt’s 1995 record Tragic Kingdom, to be exact, though in the pre-internet world the record didn’t make it to Missouri till about 1997. (I’ve crossed paths with Gwen a few times since then, and I’ve told her the story of the brother and the nicotine autograph and she just laughs. Thank goodness.) Which is why I was so enthusiastic about seeing her again for Harper’s Bazaar’s September issue cover story. I’ll include that and some of Terry Richardson’s fabulous pictures below, but after the two of us finished dishing on her style choices – few women have done more for platinum blondes and red lipstick since Marilyn Monroe – we started talking about her new album, Push and Shove, which I can’t wait to get my hands on. So I thought anyone who is as a devoted fan of the Gwen songbook as I am would find some of these thoughts interesting. And then, for the rest of us fashion folk, check out the full article below.
On the new record’s sound: “It’s really upbeat, which is surprising, it’s kind of a combination of everything we’ve ever done. It has that reggae thing in it, it has a lot of 80s sounds, it’s very happy and upbeat, but it’s confessional too. My last records and my solo stuff were not to be taken too seriously. They were dance records. They were, like, silly. They’re not about being deep, but [this record] is a little deeper. This is more like a No Doubt record. I think it sounds like us. It sounds so much like us, but fresh. In a new way. I definitely think it’s the best work we’ve ever done. I’m sure everyone says that about a new record and I am always like, my favorite thing is whatever I’m working on. But it’s true: this is my favorite thing.”
On being nervous about releasing a new record: “Yeah, I’m nervous. I haven’t put a record in a long time, and there’s so much passion that you put into it. And then all of a sudden, it’s out. This is the best part because no one has heard it, because you’re so proud of it and you love it, and no one has criticized it. I’m really excited for the people I know who have followed us and are supporting us. They’re going to love it. If I love it, they’re going to love it.”
On getting back into the groove: “I would be with the baby all day, do the baby stuff, and the fashion stuff, and all the stuff that I do, and then at 4pm I would go to the studio and say, ‘Let’s write this record.’ Before, when we would write, we’d stay up all night. But now, it’s like, how do I force myself to write? What do I write about? I mean, I’m married. Know what I mean? So weird. Then, when we wrote the first song, which is called Undercover, it was like, oh my god, we can do it.”
On writers block: “To be honest, by this point in a career, it’s hard to get inspired. You’ve already sort of done it all. [When you’re starting out] you don’t have that house, and you don’t have that car. There’s ambition. Look, we had to fight for it, and all that desperate-we-want-to-do-it-so-bad is what made it so good. It’s really an inspired record.”
On being shocked by No Doubt’s early success: “We weren’t working towards fame. That’s what’s weird. We were working toward playing shows and getting more shows, but not because we ever thought we’d break through. We were in a scene that we thought would never go mainstream. The idea of getting on the radio was beyond all possibility. This is in the middle of grunge, remember. I’m sorry, but why would that happen? It was Nirvana. And then it just got on the radio. And then Tragic Kingdom came out and we went on tour and we never came home.”
On writing lyrics now: “Do I write in a diary? Not now. I used to have journal, of course I did. But now with the kids and stuff, it’s like, when? I don’t have time to go to the bathroom, let alone do a journal entry. This was the first time I wrote with someone else, besides when I did my solo stuff. [Tony Kanal and I] just sat on the couch and we actually wrote lyrics together. Normally, I would write all the lyrics, but I couldn’t do it. I needed someone to go, ‘What about this?’ I needed someone to push me. Piece it all together, torture torture torture, and then we’d have the whole string of the song, and then I’d just have to write the lyrics. Which was a whole other thing: what am I going to write about? But, interestingly, even though I have so many blessings in my life, there’s always something to complain about. That’s life.”
On the last song that made it on the album, Undone: “The last song we we wrote was a song called Undone. I had gone to London and I said I’d go work on it, and they were like, ‘She’s not going to do it, she doesn’t work on anything when she’s not here.” But I got to London and one night when the kids were at the their grandparents’, and I was looking at old videos, watching Garbage videos, and the stuff you do when you have the luxury of that time. And I said, I’m going to pull that song out. I did it. I wrote the words. I got back to LA and they were like, ‘What? You did something?’ That turned out really good. We didn’t struggle over it. Sometimes it just happens.
On the color pink: “You know, I’m feeling pink again. Ten years ago, when I did pink the first time, I was like I never want to see that color again. It represents girls. It’s like I had that line in ‘Just A Girl’: Take this pink ribbon off my eyes.”
On the song, Just a Girl: “When I wrote that, who knew? Who knew! I can remember sitting on the my bed, and my sister was on the phone, I’m at my parents, it’s three in the morning, and I’m writing this song. It’s so weird, right? I didn’t even think anyne would ever hear that song, let alone it become a hit. Recently, we just did some small impromptu acoustic things, and we did that song and I was wondering,’How is this song going to work now? Am I the other girl that I used to be? But it totally still works. Obviously, I’m not that girl anymore, but it still works.”
