The Certainty of No Doubt : Even as It Makes a Splash in the Home Pond, the Anaheim Band Knows to Take Naught for Granted

The road to recognition was a rough one. Since their first concert--nine years ago this week--the members of No Doubt have been no strangers to frustration and loss, including a singer’s suicide. Even now, when their latest album has made it to the Top 40 and their “Just a Girl” video is all over MTV, critics are divided as to their musical significance.

But this week, No Doubt came home to Anaheim as the opening act on the hottest alternative rock bill of the season, another signal of the quartet’s increasing national appeal.

Joining Bush and the Goo Goo Dolls for a sold-out performance at the Pond on Tuesday, No Doubt became the first band from Orange County ever to play the arena.

Singer Gwen Stefani, whose family has lived in Anaheim for three generations, remembers that whenever she and her bandmates would drive by the Pond, they’d joke that someday they’d play there--albeit as headliners. Now, with album sales topping 200,000 and mounting at a pace of 25,000 a week, major success is a real possibility. But No Doubt’s members are neither giddy with anticipation nor frazzled with fear of a costly misstep.

At ages 25 to 28, they have been through too much together to get giddy or frazzled. “We’re prepared for what’s happening,” Tony Kanal said as he sat on a drab gray carpet outside the band’s dressing room, putting a fresh set of strings on the Yamaha bass he has played since he was in the jazz band at Anaheim High.

“It’s not ‘We’re an awesome band,’ ” he continued, in a voice that was quiet but firm. “The bottom line is, we’re just very fortunate. We know how fickle the music industry is and that you have to focus on the things you can control--writing songs and playing music.”

If No Doubt was prone to frazzling, Tuesday would have been a likely day for it--a day the band’s publicist had dubbed “the longest on Earth,” chocked with interviews, photo sessions, meetings with agents and managers and lots of rock ‘n’ roll diplomacy involving hobnobbing with fans and well-wishers and a group of record company factotums responsible for promoting the band’s album when it comes out overseas.

All of this would keep Stefani, Kanal, guitarist Tom Dumont and drummer Adrian Young shuttling back and forth through the stark, concrete innards of the Pond for more than 12 hours, with just a 35-minute respite for actual performing.

The day started badly. Most of the band rolled into the Pond’s Star Dressing Room D half an hour late for a photo session with teen magazine Sassy. Then Stefani, her flowing blond hair still in curlers and kerchief, realized she had left her makeup bag at home.

By the time she had retrieved it and dressed, she looked wonderfully camera-ready in her bangs, halter top and snug turquoise sequined pants, like a cross between Jessica Lange and a naughty cheerleader. But No Doubt was 90 minutes behind schedule.

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Rushing to the photo shoot, Stefani said her “nervous energy” was running high and reminded herself to put it to good use. Later, during one of her few unscheduled moments, she said she makes a conscious effort to remember that this is a special time for No Doubt, that it’s important to mentally register all that is happening and to embrace it.

“I really try to enjoy every second and be really aware. I don’t take it for granted when somebody says, ‘Can I have your autograph?’ I give it with joy.”

No Doubt knows the value of appreciating the good times because it has seen so many hard ones. The band was founded on its members’ shared enthusiasm for a lively, quick-stepping Jamaican pop style called ska. Originally, Stefani, still a high school senior, shared the spotlight with John Spence, a wild, kinetic screamer who literally did back flips to stir the stage-front mosh pit frenzy.

Just before Christmas 1987, Spence committed suicide. Shocked and disheartened, the band decided to continue. Stefani wasn’t yet confident that she could rouse the crowds on her own, but by 1989 No Doubt had arrived at approximately its present form--Stefani out front alone, beguiling audiences with her theatrics, while new additions Young and Dumont helped expand the band’s sound, which is augmented in concert by two horn players. Jamaican rhythms remain in the mix, but they are part of complex weave that also incorporates funk, punk rock, heavy metal and melodic New Wave pop.

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From the start, No Doubt had a reputation not only for lively shows but for vigorous, focused efforts to promote itself with leaflets, posters and T-shirts with imaginatively drawn logos.

“It’s a good sign to see bands put their egos aside for the bigger goal,” says Moss Jacobs, a veteran Los Angeles concert promoter who has worked often with No Doubt and was one of their pre-concert well-wishers at the Pond. “Some bands would never be caught dead putting out their own fliers.”

By 1991, No Doubt’s hard work and continuing musical development had paid off in a record deal with Interscope, a label on its way to becoming one of the great success stories of the decade.

The only problem was that No Doubt was not part of that success. Its debut album, released in February 1992, received scant promotion. Sales were meager. As work began on a second album, No Doubt’s frustration deepened. The band was busy churning out songs that Interscope was just as busy rejecting.

Worried that its fans would grow tired of waiting, No Doubt took an unusual step: issuing a CD on its own for the local market. “The Beacon Street Collection” came out last spring with tracks Interscope had rejected but that the band felt deserved a shot.

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The wait for an official album with promotional muscle behind it wore especially on Eric Stefani, Gwen’s keyboard-playing older brother, whom the band had regarded as its main creative engine.

He quit in December 1994 to concentrate on his other passion, animation (he now works full time as the layout artist for “The Simpsons”). Eric and Gwen both say his departure--which saddened her deeply--had a positive side, giving her and the other members room to develop as songwriters.

Gwen Stefani turned another important change, her breakup with Kanal after a seven-year romance, into material for lyrics. The two, who always tried to keep their relationship from affecting the band, continue to get on amicably in what Dumont calls “a real social challenge. . . . Ninety percent of the time they’re really good about it.”

By mid-’95, No Doubt, feeling like the Cinderella of Interscope, had found a fairy godmother in Trauma Records, a small Interscope affiliate whose owners loved No Doubt’s material and took over promoting the band. No Doubt began touring more than a month before the release in October of its breakthrough album, “Tragic Kingdom” (the title and cover art, featuring rotted oranges, are the band’s wry commentary on the souring of its home county’s suburban dream).

Radio play spread; MTV kicked in, and now there is no end is in sight to a road that will take the band to Europe in June. No Doubt’s biggest concern now, Kanal said, is to get out of the huge arenas it will play with label-mates Bush through early May--a tour undertaken to give the band national exposure to more than 10,000 people a night--and back to headlining smaller venues where No Doubt is more comfortable.

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Still, at the Pond, No Doubt got a roaring initial reception and good response for the seven songs it had time to play. Stefani, a marvel of aerobic fitness who passes slow days on the road roller-blading around empty arenas, bounded and sauntered tirelessly. She played the hometown card, mimicking Judy Garland as Dorothy (“there’s no place like home”) and cajoling the crowd to sing along so she could impress her watching grandparents.

“It felt pretty good,” Dumont said when it was over, en route to yet another round of meet-and-greet rock diplomacy. “It wasn’t an A-plus, but a strong B.”

As the band members signed posters for fans in a stuffy room backstage, the Kanal, Stefani and Young families watched from the wings, knowing that, for the foreseeable future, there will not be many chances to be in the same room with their rocking kin.

“They have a lot of hard work ahead of them, and success doesn’t come without hard work,” said Gulab Kanal, Tony’s dad. Cousin Naveen Kanal nodded assent.

“If they wanted to have an easy life, they’d get real jobs.”