No Doubt is All Grown Up and BACK On Tour

Group members of No Doubt, have come a long way since they formed the band back in 1986 in Anaheim, CA. No Doubt started as a ska-punk band that went through all sorts of ups and downs, from suicide, (original lead vocalist John Spence), to heartbreak (bass guitarist Tony Kanal broke up with lead singer Gwen Stefani) and managed to stay together and stay sane in a music world where bands break up faster than they can finish a full length album. One of the keys to No Doubt’s success and the reason they have been able to make it through all these years is the fact that they are friends as well as bandmates.

Recently in an interview with CNN they stated:

CNN: You’d hear rumors every once in a while that you guys were breaking up, or had broken up. Were those annoying, or did you kind of roll your eyes and say, “That’s part of the game?”

Adrian Young: I think we expected it. And there might even be some people that will think that we broke up, and that this is a reunion tour — and it’s just not the truth. We went 17 straight years without stopping, and we started having families, and we were burnt and we needed to do our own thing for a while.

Anyone who has read or seen an interview done with the group is sure to know what I’m talking about. They finish each others sentences.  They joke about each others personal lives. They are there for each other through thick and thin, as cliché as that sounds. One of the biggest tests that was put upon the group members was how they would react to Gwen’s solo success. Another big obstacle is the fact that they are no longer single and all have families to think about, except for Tony who is the only non-married group member and the only one without a child.

CNN: What was it like to get all four of you together in a room again?

Tom Dumont: It’s kind of like an old glove. It just fits.

Young: Like an O.J. glove?

Dumont: No, no, no. I know it’s a weird analogy, but in the sense of — you know, it fits.

Tony Kanal: You know when somebody says “glove” now, you immediately think of O.J.

Young: “If it fits, you must acquit.” That’s our band motto now.

Dumont: We’re not going to quit. We’re just great old friends. It’s almost like we’re brothers and sister, and it’s great to be having fun together again.

That said, they are not letting anything get in the way of them having fun on their current tour which kicked off on May 2nd and goes all the way until mid-August. They’ve been on hiatus as a group sine 2004 but were never far from anyone’s radar. They know people will say this is their comeback/reunion tour since they haven’t created any new material together in years.  Drummer Adrian Young would tell those people that, “We went 17 straight years without stopping, and we started having families, and we were burnt and we needed to do our own thing for a while” but that they never broke up.

CNN: Did you guys really go to group therapy?

Kanal: No. … We had some self-imposed therapy sessions where we were trying to write music, and we were sitting in the room together, and a lot of stuff came out, and you know, it was kind of an emotional venting. We got rid of a lot of stuff. It was good.

Stefani: We spent a lot of time together in the last 12 months. Right when I came off tour (from her second solo album, “The Sweet Escape”), we started to write, and I was pregnant (with her second son, Zuma), and we did a lot of eating, a lot of chatting — and then we had this magic 15 minutes from 4:45 to 5 o’clock where music would actually come out for a minute.

I would like to leave you with the video to one of No Doubt’s biggest hits which happens to be one of my all time favorite songs…”Don’t Speak.” The song comes from their 16 times platinum selling album, Tragic Kingdom.