HYPEBy Eunice Lew
Image from No Doubt official website
It all started at a Dairy Queen outlet in 1986.
The 3 founding members of No Doubt, John Spence and siblings Eric and Gwen Stefani, met while working at the popular fast-food restaurant.
From then on, the band went through various line-up changes (with Spence’s unexpected suicide and Eric’s exit) before Gwen, bassist Tony Kanal, guitarist Tom Dumont and drummer Adrian Young stumbled across success with their sophomore effort, Tragic Kingdom. The album spawned hits like the fiercely popular “Don’t Speak” that garnered two nominations at the 1998 Grammy Awards.
The band churned out two more albums, Return of Saturn (2000) and Rock Steady (2001). Though the darker-sounding Return of Saturn didn’t manage to repeat the success that Tragic Kingdom had, Rock Steady proved that No Doubt is arguably one of the most successful Ska band the world has ever seen.
Since their hiatus (though the band insists that they have never gone on a break of any sort) in 2004, the band members have gone to solo careers, the most lucrative being lead singer Gwen Stefani’s multi-platinum solo records. During which, rumours were abound that the rest of No Doubt would be continuing on a new album without her, much to the dismay of their fans.
However, these were quickly dismissed, with band members citing her second pregnancy as the only reason she took a break.
Says Gwen in an interview with SPIN magazine, “I always felt like I was cheating on them when I was working with other musicians. In my mind, there was never any question that I was going to come back to No Doubt. Those guys are my best friends forever.”
In 2009, the band officially announced a 52-date North America tour, insisting that they were not in it as a nostalgia act, but to draw inspiration for their upcoming album. The band started touring alongside popular rock band Paramore on May 19.
And from the rave concert reviews that they have received so far, it would seem as though No Doubt has never lost their touch.
The Los Angeles Times reported that they delivered an explosive performance “to a sold-out house at the Mandalay Bay Events Center, [recapturing] the pop magic of its glory days in the late 90’s and early 2000’s.”
And even though the younger generation of music lovers only remember Gwen Stefani as the lady with entourage of Harajuku girls behind her these days, we have no doubt that once their album drops in 2010, that “sh*t’s gonna be bananas”. In a good way of course.