Twist and doubt

Doing interviews sucks balls usually. I have to say, especially in Europe, the questions are just so gossip-oriented, just stupid as fuck, even more than America. I’m not biased about any of that, it’s just the way that it is.”

No Doubt drummer Adrian Young isn’t mincing his words. But to put his comments in context, I’ve just asked him why the record company have placed me under starter’s orders not to ask him any questions about singer Gwen Stefani and her imminent nuptials with the guy from Bush. I know the answer of course. If the tables were turned, I’m not sure how I’d take No Doubt’s drummer grilling me about the ups, downs, ins and outs of Barry Glendenning’s love life. But by the same token, whenever the PR department cautions me on something, I feel obliged to bring it up as a matter of principle.

Adrian knows the score enough to get a laugh out of it.

“Say for example you asked me about that three questions ago,” he smiles, “I would’ve run out the door.”

Strange thing is, No Doubt have never really flinched at addressing the subtexts and tensions at work in the dysfunctional family that is any pop group (“You’re forced to be brothers and sisters but you’re not related,” is how Adrian puts it). When storyboarding the video for the band’s biggest hit ‘Don’t Speak’ they even suggested to director Sophie Muller than she depict the increasing attention being paid to Gwen Stefani, resulting in the other three members getting cropped from photo spreads, or their quotes being omitted from interviews. Did the making of that clip have any kind of therapeutic effect?

“I think it must’ve been a little bit healthy,” avers Adrian, “mainly just a comment on what was and still is. See we’ve been through so much now I don’t think any of us really care too much about, ‘Hey, I’m not in that photo’ or this or that. For me it’s like, just don’t waste my time. If I’m not gonna be in the picture I don’t wanna be at the session. I got better things to do, you know what I mean? As far as being stars or whatever, none of us are eager to raise our profile at all. I’d like to go shopping at the grocery store by myself once in a while.”

Then there’s the question of credibility. In the press room prior to the band’s Witnness set, the very mention of No Doubt seemed to elicit the uniform response of ‘Eccch’. Unfairly I must say, because Rock Steady is a most excellent pop record. To his credit, Adrian creases up when I tell him about the reaction his band provokes amongst the Irish criterati.

“That’s funny,” he says, looking and sounding like Seinfeld with a patchwork haircut. “See, once again in America we don’t have that much of a problem, we get played on all formats there, we get played on alternative radio and pop stations as well, so we can do more like a hard rockin’ festival with Limp Bizkit and Korn. Plus in Europe, we’ve only had one really big hit, which was the ballad, whereas in the states we’ve had like, ten hits and most of ’em are more upbeat and more edgy. Even the new songs compared to our back catalogue are kind of a little bit more on the pop side.”

He’s talking specifically about the singles ‘Hey Baby’, ‘Hella Good’ and ‘Underneath It All’ here, although to tell you the truth, almost any track off Rock Steady could hold its own on daytime radio (and you can take that as a recommendation or an indictment depending on your prejudices).

So, considering the balls out commercialism of the new record, not to mention its spread of A-list producers – William Orbit, Nellee Hooper, Dave Stewart, Ric Ocasek, Sly ‘n’ Robbie, The Neptunes and more – one might think Interscope put the hurt on the band for a poptastic hit factory of an album following the relative under-performance of 2000’s Return Of Saturn.

“What I probably need to mention was that Return Of Saturn was a flop in Europe but it wasn’t a flop in the states,” the drummer says. “We knew there was no way we were going to match Tragic Kingdom, there was just no way. There wasn’t really a cohesive game plan (on Rock Steady), which is why I think we used so many producers. It was just kind of spontaneous, we wanted to use some dancehall rhythms, some reggae rhythms, so we decided, fuck it, let’s go to Jamaica and see what was happening. When we were touring Return Of Saturn, every night we would have dance parties after the show in the dressing room and we would listen to modern dancehall.”

Hence the lovers’ rock of the title tune and the playground skank of ‘Hey Baby’, featuring Jamaican dancehall superstar Bounty Killer.

“He’s huge down there, the people’s man for sure,” says Adrian. “Actually, there’s a point in that video where I’m hanging on these gymnastics rings, nude, like I took a bet. And when Bounty got the video and saw that, his manager said, ‘He has to have girls around him in the entire video because in Jamaica they’ll think he’s playing with gay bands.”

So there’s still a huge homophobic thing at work, the Rastaman’s fear of dem batty boys?

“Huge. Male nudity – that means you’re gay. Which is totally absurd!”

I’d love to see him make a video with the Chili Peppers…

“I don’t think that would work!”