No Doubt's 'Tragic Kingdom': Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret history and little known facts behind your favorite music, movies, TV shows, and more. We are your sky ons of skull related factoids. My name is Jordan run Tug. Nope, I'm not I'm not giving you that one false uh and I'm Alex Hegel, damn it. And today we are talking about No Doubts Tragic Kingdom, or, as I prefer to think of it, the nineties answer to Fleetwood Max Rumors. I make the comparison not only for its glut of ubiquitous radio hits including Just Girl, Spider Webs and of course Don't Speak, but also the drama. Good God, the drama. You have inter band romances, imploding jealousy, teenage tragedy, family squabbles, and ska lots of sky. There's drama and scat, there's scama. Oh no, we are and I got to two massive groans out of you. This is gonna be great. Um. And to top it all off, all of this is going down literally in the shadow of Disney's Magic Kingdom, from which the record takes its name. This is so great. The story behind Tragic Kingdom is truly crazy, and the feelings of loss, longing, and anger are apparent, and so many of the tracks no doubt basis. Tony Canal, who we will talk about quite a bit in this episode, is quoted as saying that Tragic Kingdom was quote the outcome of three years of struggle, and there were casualties, specifically his relationship with Gwen Stefani, one of the most iconic front women of the nineties, inspiring artists like Lady Gaga and Paramour's Hayley Williams. But the band also played a role, although some whould argue a small one, in the brief third wave SKA craze of the nineties. I have to admit I knew none of the dramatic behind the music bait backstory to this album when it came out. In What About You, higl, what was your experience with Tragic Kingdom? Were you cowed by its inescapability or charmed by the energy and charisma of Gwen Stefani. I'm gonna let you in a little secret with me, Jordan. I hate SCAT. I hate it so much. I don't even hate it in a way of like, Oh, it's it's like like like people were like, oh, listen to all kinds of music except country. I hate Scott. I hate people who are into SKA. I hate Scott culture, I hate I hate Scott. I hate it so much. Well, let me let me put it to kill me. One of these days. It's gonna kill me one of these days. I let me let me hate Scott. Let me try putting in sea this way? Do you actually classify No Doubts music on this record as SCA? I mean this is more popping almost, great question? Great question? Um yeah, I mean you know I have a dug into there would because why would I do that? But um, didn't they like have like weren't they like closer to actual SKA like before this? And then this was their record where like some big like Robert Mutt Lang guy got his mits into them and was like, you gotta smooth off some of those edges to make it. Yeah, the guy who's saying nothing's gonna break my stride and the eighties was called into work with them, which we'll touch on them later. So yeah, that's some of it. What do you hate about Scott exactly? You know, it's it's that quote you do, the almost famous thing to start with everything. Um, yeah, no, the you know what, it's the it's marching band kid energy grafted on, yeah, grafted onto the most surface level interest and the exploration of Caribbean culture. Yeah, it's like that thing about that Jimmy Buffett quote, like crafting a vision of the Caribbean that had no people of color in it. Like, and you know, I not trying to short sell Gwen Stefani as like a nineties figurehead, but I the fact that someone I saw a tweet I can't take credit for this that said people are shocked at the thing that she's like dating that that big potato are married to him now. But someone was like, yeah, but they were like, um, starting out as like a nineties punk adjacent female lead singer and winding up married to a conservative guy named Blake is the most Orange County ever. Um, you know, I have to give her credit for you know, they did like, oh you know what song I actually really like is underneath it all? And they do have like a I think they have a Jamaican dance hall artist on that one. Right, Yeah, so all right, whatever they took, they took steps to fix that, even though she did have that whole phase where she was like, look at the Japanese women I have you I am using as an appendage to my career. They will not speak, and I will have them with me at all times. I'll tack the nice thing you said about on to the end of this episode to give it a nice narrative. Art people seem to like that with the Jimmy Buffett thing, there was a change there. Old group drama has a change, so the hero's journey. Also, I saw this behind the music like this was like the behind the music that came on second only to like Poison and bon Jovi growing up. And that's why I like, without any exposure to the yeah yeah, and that's why, just like passively sitting in front of the TV as a kid, I absorbed more about like this damn story. But I don't think I heard it that much growing up. I mean, I like Spiderwebs a lot. It's on good. Yeah, Well, you're about to know the story even more high goal and everyone listening you will as well. I gotta say, this whole story of No Doubt makes Fleetwood Max rumors look like a simple misunderstanding. We'll talk about the breakups, the beefs, and even the Bindy's at the heart of No Doubts breakthrough record. At the end of the day, it's really a story about a female powerhouse coming in there were own as an artist. You'll hear about Gwen Stefani, phone stalker, the mystery of the missing dress from the album cover, the band's weird but deep connection with The Simpsons, and how a stomach bug inspired a standout album cut. Plus we'll do a bit on Walt Disney's cryogenically frozen head. So you don't want to miss that. Is that like the fifth time of this head's appearance on the podcast, but we've never dug into it until this episode. End of the pod Walt Disney's Frozen Head. So, without further ado, here is everything you never knew about Tragic Kingdom By No Doubt. The story of Tragic Kingdom begins in the home of Disney's Magic Kingdom, Anaheim, California. Specifically, it begins in the Stefani household with siblings Eric and Gwen. They were raised by folky parents who worshiped Bob Dylan and Emmy Lou Harris and they even played in a band that gigged at l A's legendary Troubador Club, and these people sound like adorable boomers. Gwen's middle name, Renee, was taken from the four Tops cover of walk Away Renee by The Left Bank. Yeah, and while we're on the topic of Gwen's ancestry, there's a persistent rumor that she's related to Madonna, which is understandable given their vague physical resemblance and their pop diva status, but it's not true. Gwen herself is debunked those claims. According to her, the story took root when her aunt married someone with the last name of Jacone, which is Madonna's seldom used last name. So don't didn't Madonna have a Bundy at one point? To oh, probably at the same time. Yeah, around like beautiful Stranger era. Hey, we'll get into the Bundy's later. That's that's good. That's a second here. Hashtag will get into the Bundy's way, even the unnecessary hashtag lately, So please tweet at us at hashtag. We'll get into the Bundy's later. But enough about Gwen for now. Let's talk about her big other, Eric Stefani, who does not get enough press, despite the fact that he really is the one responsible for the formation of no doubt or to blame in your case. By all accounts, he's an extremely creative, talented guy with a passion not just for music but also drawing, as we'll find out later. Reading about him reminded me of those stories about the Beach Boys early days, when Brian Wilson would basically force his younger brothers around the piano to sing harmonies with him. Eric Stefani more or less do the same thing with his little sister Gwen. Speaking to Interview magazine in Gwen recalled Eric was the really talented and overly hyper older brother who was always pounding on the piano, and I was the lazy girl watching the Brady Bunch. I wasn't doing anything, and he would say, come in here and sing with me. I owe everything to him. I learned how to write songs and how to be in a band because of him. And in one of their earliest musical excursions, Eric wroped his kid's sister into singing an original song he'd written called say It Stick It in the Hole. They were kids. It was obstensively about a pencil sharpener, but Eric knew it was cheeky. Gwen later told Rolling Stone in my brother made me do it, and that was really how it was to be for many years to come. She would say. Growing up, my brother was the one with all the talent and all the focus. I had him, so I didn't have to do anything, you know, So this is when scat takes over. Both Stefani kids were incredibly taken by the sounds of imported Jamaican ska and also the late seventies English sub genre known as twotone, which was basically ska mixed with elements of punk and early new Romantic new wave. Were you ever in the two tone? That seems like something you could maybe get into. Um No, but it is fascinating to me. I mean, it's interesting because it's not the I hate using the term authentic, but there's like an element to British scat that's way more that is way more authentic than American scott because like you're growing up in lily White, asked Anaheim. But like all the British guy's obsession with ska kind of did come from the fact that a lot of them were like council Estate neighbors with a bunch of people from the Caribbean, I mean Paul Simon and from the Clash who sings there probably their most reggae song Guns of Brixton. Um, he talks about like he only listened to like dub and reggae growing up. He was coming at punk from the complete opposite direction of you know, like Joe Strummer being super into like Geen Vincent and stuff. I mean it's interesting because it's actually kind of like the way that urban blues took hold. I mean it was like when um, there was this sort of great migration from West Indies countries to Britain, especially Coventry, which is where the Specials are formed, and that's where you get the they throw the giant sound system parties where they would daisy chain all the speakers together and do all that. And so I mean that's the environment that the Specials come out of. And that's sort of my issue with American skas that it does take this genuinely syncretic cross cultural product and smooth away all the edges into a bunch of white people dancing around in suits and checkered ties. Do you like um? I mean the music do you like Scott. Well, I mean the music that really got Eric and Gwen Stefani excited and you know, wanting to make music was stuff like Matt Madness. Erica brought home the Stiff Records seven inch of baggy trousers and that was like, that was it for him. That's what made him want to just sit at the piano all day and just pound out Madness melodies and stuff. And they loved the specials as you mentioned, English Beat and select Or I think was a big one. Were you ever in any of them? No? I think the only stuff that I actually still listened to from that is like the Plee Scratch Perry, like the dub stuff because it just it's so spacey and like it's almost like drone music, you know. And Lee Scratch Perry is hilarious. Uh, he's one of the best interviewees of all time, just a genuine crazy person. Lee Scratch Perry's talking about burning down his studio because it was possessed. Like that's what's interesting, Like, you give me the really insane people, uh not not a bunch of dorks from Anaheim. Well, getting back to the dors from Anaheim, you know, I mean Eric and Gwen Stefani where these board suburban kids in this seriously boring suburb of l a Anaheim. And there was something about the way these English groups celebrated the mundane things about life, going to school, getting stuck in the rain, taking the bus, with all these raucous up temple horn driven tracks that really appealed to them, gave a sense of I guess, romance and excitement to their own boring, everyday live so you can almost see why it would resonate with kids in the boring suburbs. At Eric's insistence, he and Gwen made their concert debut at a school talent show in the mid eighties when they played on My Radio by the Selectors just pretty cool first concert song. Uh, Gwen, this is adorable. Couldn't remember the words and held the lyric sheet in her hand the whole time, which is a front person no no, but I love it all the same. She was clearly very nervous, and to help with her confidence, her mother made her address and it was a tweed outfit copied from the dress that Julie Andrews wears and the sound of music. When Fraulein Maria leaves the Abbey and sings I have confidence in me. She was hoping that would like give her daughter more confidence on the stage. I mean, Gwen Stefani fans know that she loves the sound of music. It's her favorite movie and she would revisit it on the track wind It Up from her second solo album, The Sweet Escape, which samples the Lonely Goat Herd. This is just the first of many instances of Gwen Stefani being an adorable nerd. She was also a big fan of making her own clothes, and she would later say there were so many disaster stories about me staying up all night trying to make something for a show the next day. Apparently she didn't even have her own stylist into the two thousands, so the height of No Doubts fame, she was choosing all around outfits and you know, putting rhinestones on shirts and stuff, and she was doing all that herself. Uh yeah. Researching this episode really maybe like Gwen Stefani a lot more, seems despite what you said at the top of the episode, very sweet. Yeah, she's she's she's yeah, you know whatever, I don't I bear her no quarrel. I mean, she was married to Gavin Rossdale, so the ladies done her time. So it wasn't long after this school talent show performance that Eric and Gwen Stefani decided to form a proper band, and the siblings joined for uces with Gwen's co worker at a local dairy queen, a young Bad Brains fan by the name of John Spence, and he was an upbeat, effervescent guy who was fond of sprinkling the phrase no doubt in the conversations habit that would yield the band's name. And this John Spence guy would be the frontman extraordinaire center stage doing back flips, while somewhat reticent Gwen would sing back up and kind of keep to herself at the edge of the stage. Eric Stefani would be playing keyboards and serve as the band's chief songwriter, and that was a nucleus of the group. Their sound, especially in this embryonic era, was a funny mixed influences. Writing his profile and Spin, Jonathan Bernstein characterized No Doubt as quote the last American new wave group. Rinky dink keyboards, farting horns, sticato guitars and vibratos, splattered vocal gurgles, quacks and squeals and their two tones Scott influence would help established them as vanguards of the third wave. Scott seen alongside Real Big Fish, Less than Jake, The Mighty Mighty Boss Stones, Sublime and your favorite Rancid and the refracted take on the Specials. You know, it's funny that they covered h not Rancid, but no doubt they covered um, It's My Life the talk talk song. So there is that, like there is that like new wave kind of influence. And also you found someone comparing them to Ngo Bongo. Oh yeah, Oh, I mean the title track, The Tragic Kingdom sounds like a Danny Elfman thing. Yeah, we'll get into that later. It's like psychedelic Carnival from Hell type track. Well, as most bands end up. The position that most bands find themselves in is eating a bassist, and uh we enter Tony Canal, who I don't know, do be do fans hate him more? Yeah? I won't even you can't call him the villain in this love story. But I mean they were children divisive figure well. Tony Canal born in India, raised in England and arrived in the Golden State at the age of eleven. Um Tony joined the band after seeing one show of Theirs at the age of sixteen. He auditioned a week later and after playing two songs with him, he was in the band, and uh, Gwen was smitten. Yeah, she said. She ran home after this first rehearsal and stared at herself in the mirror and said, oh my god, what am I gonna do? Oh? Come on, that's really cute. It is cute. I mean, you know they're children, they're teenagers. Man, Um, she's a year older than him. I think it's got the like Lindsay Stevie thing was how much cocaine was there? Yeah, we're not talking about that. Not much. So it did take a few months. But after a house show, Tony and Gwen walked home together and she made the first move. She said, dude, are you gonna kiss me or what? And Tony admirably thought of the band first. He said, no, what about the band since it was an unspoken rule that no one in the band date Gwen, which was sort of I guess um ambiently in the air because of Eric right as the band brother was the leader of the band. So yeah, it's a pretty big reason not to, and I guess she wormed down, but he assumed it was going to be like a bit of a fling and she fell horde. Uh, to use Gwen's words, she was in love. But they had to what are they sneaking around? How do you do that when you plan in a rehearsal space like the size of wel postage stamp. I guess things came to a head during a Halloween party that they were playing, where Tony showed up in costume dressed as a woman, and before end got there, his bandmates all took him aside and said, if we find out you're going out with Gwen, you're dead. Uh. That brings us to the lovely evocative image of Tony Canal dressed as a woman, sitting outside on a curb, crying his mask are off. Um. Yeah. He said that their relationship was I think his quote was a secret of immense proportions, Like this wasn't like, oh, let's keep this secret because it just adds a little excitement to it, Like no, this was for real. They didn't want anyone to know. Ah. Yeah, And he took her to prom, at which point she was already a college freshman, which must have scored him immeasurable points with his classmates. He bring in the college girl to your high school problem. Do you date anyone in a band or in your band? No? No, well, I mean other than my wife. But we were only in the Halloween cover bands together. Um No, I don't know. It's a bad idea. Yeah, but you know we got all these great stories out of it and some ska um. Anyway, they worked together, they had the same part time job. What a yeah. Tony again kind of went in this with a different set of expectations than Gwen. She was heavily invested, and she said this is a semi alarming quote from a college freshman. All I ever did was look at Tony and pray that God would let me have a baby with him. Uh. This intensity would ultimately drive Tony away and inspire Lion share the track list on Tragic Kingdom. But before we get to that, we come, as we must, to the Bindy. She yeah, man, I mean I don't think a lot of this band would fly in two you know, or the Howard Juku girl's face, But um, I guess she passed it off as a loving tribute to Tony's culture that she got from his mom, who was India. It should be said, yes, yes, yes, so there you go. But back in no doubt, I can't even say they were at a crossroads. They they had barely set out on their journey. They were barely a year old, but they were still making a name for themselves as a party band in the LA area, and in December they were offered a gig at the Roxy Club, which, as we talked about in the Guns and Roses episode, was the hub of the l A music scene on the Sunset Strip at the time, and the band's lead singer, John Spence was so pumped for this he urged everyone to rehearse all through their Christmas vacation because this seemed like their big break. And then something absolutely horrific happened. On December twenty one, just days before the gig, Spence drove to a deserted parking lot and shot himself at the age of eighteen, and he left the two page letter that read, in part, I think I felt too much pain and all I see in my future was more and he signed it I'm sorry by and the bands were beside themselves because he seemed so up and energetic. You know, he's a guy at the front of the stage doing backflips, and he just seemed so chipper all the time. And Eric Stefani, I mean, no one in the band really ever figured it out, but Eric Stefani theorized that maybe it had something to do with this pressure of the upcoming gig. So the surviving members announced that the Roxy gig would be No Doubts final show, and they played it as a tribute to John Spencer, their fall in front man. But ultimately they decided to reunite a month later, believing that John would have wanted them to keep going. And there's an unreleased song called Dear John that pays tribute to their their friend. So to take over the spot as a lead vocalist, they hired a guy by the name of Alan Nead, who was described by Gwen is a quote disco smooth dorc. I don't know what disco smooth means, but it's very evocative. But then he and his girlfriend had an unplanned pregnancy, so he quit the band to get married and become a father, and he left Gwen as No Doubts front woman forevermore. And then the remainder of the classic No Doubt lineup began to coalesce around Gwen, her brother Eric, and bassist Tony Canal. First was Tom Dumont, a guitarist who had received casses. Destroyer album was a Christmas gift and that kicked off a lifetime of metal treading, and we auditioned for the band. He disguised his long hair with a ponytail tucked into his hat because he wanted to try to hide his whole metal thing. And then drummer Adrian Young was a longtime fan of the band, and he was so smitten with Gwen that he once called the number on their d I Y cassettes that they sold at concerts just as an excuse to talk to her. And once I guess he'd heard that maybe she and Tony had broken up, so he went to the department store where she worked to try to ask her out. Um no dice. But when No Doubt we're looking for a new drummer, he went to the audition. Uh he really wanted the job. He lied and said he'd been playing drums for eight years instead of barely a year. But then he became their full time drummer and He was famous within the band for disrobing at the drop of a hat, which, given his apparent heelings for Gwen, reads as slightly exhibitionist and suspect. But I'll choose not to dwell on it. So by no doubt lineup is complete diet flee. This is what I would call that guy. UM. Please read the heading on this first to get the ska, then you get the flop, then you get the power. That's good one. I have to say, Yeah, no doubt plays there. They're getting around l A, playing festivals in the early nineties, and they attract the attention of a gentleman named Tony Ferguson, who is an ex UH Stiff Records E was he a and R there too, and so now he was working for Interscope, newly formed by Jimmy Iovini UH and Tony Ferguson. I just read that he was impressed by seeing a bunch of stage divers at one of their shows, and UH took Ivny to a gig and uh iven he said that girl will be a star in five years. And this was so almost five years to the day. Way to be Jimmy UM. The band released their self titled debut in recording at the classic move of in the middle of the night, the night shift at the studio when the rate was cheaper. I'd love how many things this pops up in bands like bios, because this when I was making recording in studios that was never even offered to me, Like everyone was like, no, we're not recording this overnight. No, I would imagine you have to pay the engineers and producers. Yeah. Um, but you know, the album took a dive, as one would expect in the climate of slotting your friendly, your radio friendly, quirky ska new wave up against Alice and Chains and never Mind and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you want to, you know, if you wanted to illustrative anecdote from the time the band and gave away promo kazoos. Yeah, that seems like an Eric Stefani thing, like he was the one. It was more in the whole Danny Alfman on Goo Boy and goes stuff like that. He brought like elements of like weird scock Abberet to the whole mix. So yeah, that seems like it's something that comes from him. Which again, yeah, Lane Stanley showed up to Ellis and changed countrys with a syringe hanging out of his arm and No doubts like, have us have a kazoo? Oh anyway, the label yanked their tour support this that's rough when you bombed that hardly, The labels like, we're not even sending you on tour anymore, and needless to say, did not ask for a follow up. Tell him they blew their budget on the second album on Kazoos. The kazoos were a bad move. Uh, And uh, you know I just mentioned this earlier. The l A scene at the time is dominated by, you know, sort of the fallout of hair metal because all those hair metal bands were still big at this point in the early nineties, and um, you know, as I also alluded to earlier garbage, white guy funk except for Fishbone who Rule, but No doubt didn't fit into that landscape. As Gwen would later tell Interview Magazine, we were always the dork band from Anaheim. We never were cool enough or tough enough because we grew up in Orange County with all those punk bands. We played with them, but I always felt like Shirley Temple, just this little lollipop out there, and I could never have a really raspy or loud, screaming voice. We just never fit in. Plus all the l A people looked down on us because we were from Orange County. We weren't cool. Uh. And in the Rolling Stone profile they note that her vanity case had stickers that just said dork on it. Have you ever seen video from like late eighties early nineties of she liked rings it, She's po going, She's like push ups on stay remember all that? Yeah? Oh man, they said, yeah. Anyway. At one point, a DJ for massively influential l A radio station k Rock said at the time it would take an act of God for this band to get on the radio. Um. Yeah. And they in behind the music, I remember this. They talked about their tour dates for the tour and behind this record, where there were seven members of the band and four people in the audience at the bar and they were only there because they met him at the hotel and put them on the list, so they didn't even pay. Gwen later said, we had some really good shows when no one was there. I'm telling you which Jordan's you know you and I have played Gutter four bands of four on Wednesday. Yeah, those are some of the best ones and they were still they were still all in college around this time, so you know, at least, you know whatever, at least they at least they had a backup plan and said what were we doing in college? Like we didn't have we weren't signed the Interscope that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well at least I wasn't playing ska uh disgust. I'm sure Scosti has defenders. This is like a red hot chili pepers thing where they're gonna come out after me when I find Yeah, I was gonna say, what are they gonna do, like dance around me and say pick it up a bunch of times hit me with a trombone. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information in just a moment. So h no doubt. We're upset with Interscope at dragging their feet and letting them put out their follow up album. So they recorded a bunch of songs in the garage of their shared house on Beacon Avenue in Anaheim, which had belonged to Gwen and Eric Stefani's grandmother, and when their grandmother died, it went to her parents and they agreed to let them turn it into student a rehearsal place, and it's in the beginning of the Just a Girl video also trapped in a box. Uh, literally around the corner from Disneyland. This uh, you know, rehearsal studio spot looms large, as they say in the band's legend, and it was sold a few years back to someone who had no idea who they were. Um and you know Sunrise Sunset. They banged out an album's worth the material over a weekend, calling it the Beacon Street Collection and uh, it sounds like a mall. Yeah, right, the Claire's Beacon Street Collection. Yeah, I don't know, does it I didn't listen to it. I've never I'll never listened to it. Does it sound like Jordan giving you a capsule review? It's more raw than a lot of the stuff that you would hear in the radio years later from Tragic Kingdom and Returned saturn Um. It definitely is what was lacking on the debut album like that one maybe seemed a little more polished than what their fans were used to, or as this almost felt like a live album, and it also had the track Bradley Noel from Sublime, which is weird. Um, I don't really understand how they were able to get away with just recording an album on their own wall, signed to a major label, and then they just printed it up themselves and sold it at concerts Like I guess that's just speaks to how Little Interscope thought of them. They were like, oh, yeah, we don't care what you're doing, so they sold. They pressed in a thousand copies in a month or two. I just saw this sold a hundred thousand copies. That's wild for something recorded in a house. Um, but uh, you know, rather than being furious, Jimmy areviny so perhaps wisely saw the dollar signs and decided to let him record a proper follow up. Unfortunately, for this new album, they were turning in these like six to eight minute long epics that were just all convoluted and didn't fit on a pop album at all, and only two of them, both by Eric Stefani, actually made it onto the Tragic Kingdom track list. As we know it. There's the psychedelic ish song The Climb, and also the title track, which describes a dystopian Disneyland and Waltz cryogenically frozen tears as dripping icicles, which there you get the Danny Alfin go Bo and go type thing. There. Um, while we're here, why not do a little sidebar on Walt Disney's frozen head. But why not? Let's do it. So, despite the persistent urban legend, Walt Disney is not frozen. I was actually kind of not, kind of very disappointed to learn this. The New York Times reported in two thousand three that his death certificate says he was cremated, and according to a PBS documentary, his ashes were interred at a family malls of Liam at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California, and people close to Disney have also refuted this frozen theory. His own daughter, Diane wrote in our nineteen seventy two biography, there is absolutely no truth that my father, Walt Disney wished to be frozen. I doubt that my father had ever even heard of cryogenics. I questioned this because, well, it was really into technology and futurism, and at the time of his death he was working on EPCOT, you know, the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. That was his last big project. So I wouldn't put it past them. To be aware of it. And the subject of cryogenics was actually pretty big at the time he died in nineteen sixty six, because there have been a book that had been published the Fears earlier by Robert C. W Attinger called The Prospect of Immortality, And that's really what brought the topic of cryogenic freezing to popular consciousness. So it's really unclear with this whole rumor that Disney Rose himself got started. Uh, it's probably due in part to the fact that his funeral was kept really under wraps, and so you factor that in with his reputation as a technological innovator, and there you go. People just kind of when they when there's a lack of information. We know this as digital news journalists. Uh, people start to do to know where it came from. Where I don't know, According to PBS in early nineteen sixty seven, a few weeks after Disney's death in nineteen sixty six, a reporter for a tabloid newspaper called The National Spotlight claimed he had snuck into St. Joseph's Hospital in Burbank, directly across the street from Disney Studios, where what was being treated and the reporter said that he disguised himself as an orderly broke into a storage room and saw Disney suspended in a cryogenic metal cylinder. I did not know that was where it came from. Wow. But uh, you know, the PBS does debunc it says the National Spotlight doesn't appear in most major newspaper archives. But you know that doesn't necessarily prove prove anything, and people can just minigraph whatever they want. And in the sixties, and how deep does the rabbit hole go? The hospital that he was being treated at when he died was right across from the Burbanks studios, and I guess at night the staff at Disney would leave all the lights on on the studio so he could see it and just kind of feel like bolstered, knowing that, you know, work was still going on. Wait, what gets deeper? Does it get deeper? Bob Nelson, former president of the Los Angeles based Cryonics Society of California, gave a nineteen two interviewed to The Los Angeles Times directly claiming that Disney wanted to be frozen. Uh. In l A magazine interviewed Nelson again. Chris Nichols asked him to elaborate, and uh he said. Nelson said, quote, we got a call from Walt Disney Studios asking us how many people had been frozen and what kind of facilities we had and who the medical staff was. This is all from an sf Gate article, by the way, so if you're interested, it's out there. It's from October of last year. So whoa. I am very I wondered what was happening in October of last year? That would ye nothing else in anniversary, nothing, nothing big going on. Do you know the last thing that Walt Disney ever wrote a sur literally like like pen and paper, last thing he ever when he last time he ever put pen to paper, it was that s logo that people draw in middle school. I don't know what, do you want me to just keep pitching stuff? It was Kurt Russell. He wrote the name Kurt oh no before I think you told me that. Oh man, maybe his consciousness lives on in in Kurt Russell. He was like, that's the vessel, that's the vessel into Yeah, because the movie that I think, the next movie that Kurt Russell made was called The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. So maybe, yeah, maybe that's some kind of like hint, Kurt if you say Kurt, if you're trapped blinked twice? Did you see There's this incredible movie that came out in a couple of years ago, I think team called The Further Adventures of Waltz Frozen Head. And the whole plot of this movie is that Walt's head is unfrozen once a year and just brought around the park in a jar to oversee operations. And it's just about a day with this like park Lackey Cartner around Walt's frozen head in the jar and they're like evolving relationship throughout the day. Um. And the really hilarious part is that this was made without the knowledge or permission of the Walt Disney Company or his family, which is hilarious, like that they just weren't sued into oblivion. Yeah, that's true. Anyhow, No doubts. Five and a half minute title track about Waltz Frozen Head was not destined to set the charts on fire, so Interscope called in a Ringer producer Matthew Wilder a k a. The guy who's sank Break My Stride back in the eighties. That's right, they got the break my stride guy to come in and try to polish their sound. Not exactly the coolest dude in the world, but he had a background at idiosyncratic new wave and they thought that he'd be the right guy to reign in Eric Stefani's long Sca Prague epics. I'm really sorry I just said scot Prague. You know there's such a thing. I'm sure there is. Yeah. Catch twenty two I think is the big one. As a really all the Marching Bank all again, all the Marching Band kids I knew in high school. We're like, oh, Catch twenty two, great horn charts now moving right along. Unfortunately, no doubt, we're not happy by having this interloper in their midst despite his new wave credentials. They just felt like they were being intruded on by this eighties has been, and Gwen later characterized it as such an invasion at first. Yeah, and uh, you know, obviously the guy taking it hardest was Eric, who had you know, as Gwen and pretty much everyone else says, had been the creative engine of the band, writing all of this material over the past eight years. That is tough to being in a band for nearly a deck aid and you get a guy coming in being like, we're throwing all their scrapping it. So, yeah, he hated the idea of a stranger coming in and meddling with the process and the song. So he started to distance himself from the band, first from the writing and then the recording, and then he even just stopped rehearsing, which was all the more awkward because all the rehearsals were held at his house. Uh. And finally he quit the band in September of nineteen. He had previously done some animation work on the first two seasons of The Simpsons, and so he just went and took a job there as an animator. And you said he also did some work on Ren and Stimpy, Right, Yeah, I was unable to find exactly what, but I I saw, I think on his IMDb page that he had worked on that too. His favorite Simpsons characters Bart and he said, because he relates to him, and uh, you know, he actually went and subsequently drew his old bandmates into the Homer Puloza episode of the Simpsons. One of my favorite Simpsons lines of all time. Billy Corgan smashing pumpkins, Homer Simpson smiling politely I think that is a cone in line. It had to be, yeah. Uh. He also they made an appearance on King of the Hill where they played Bobby Hills problem the long Shadow of the Fox animation block in the nineties. Uh. One of the last songs Eric wrote for No Doubt was called Bye Bye Birdie, which is a mournful farewell song about a baby bird who needed to fly off into the sky. A little on the nose there Eric uh never recorded, but message received um and Uh there's a big Rolling Stone profile from the band by Chris Heath. He wrote the incredible Spice Girls profile for Rolling Stone too that we talked about Spices greater um. But Yeah, Eric had copped to being a little bit um off track. I guess you want you you put it as he said, I was trying too hard to put my personality or my being on this planet through the music, and I didn't know how to express myself any other way. So when that was compromised, I was lost. But I think I found myself more by losing that and having to act as a human. Art should imitate life, not the other way around. Uh. Consequently, he moved on to forming a ragtime band performing things like Scott Joplin's seminal composition Maple Leaf Rag and the theme to The Little Rascals that is did this may never? Did he ever have sex? You know? I watching him on the Behind the Music episode, which is recorded I think in like two thousand or taped in two thousands, so it wasn't even like that late after he left, like only a couple of years. There's a Again, I don't know this man. I know very little about him. There's a haunted look. He seems unhappy, not necessarily that he left the band, just in general, I get kind of I mean, this whole thing reminds me of Brian Wilson, like the guy who started the band as the creative engine decided to just back away, and then the band would say, well, no way, and then built a studio in Brian's house to try to like make it easy for him, and then he just retreated to his room and was like, no, no, no, I really don't want to deal with this. Like that's the sense that I'm getting here. Um, yeah, I don't know much about what's got to be. It's got to be a real head trip. You know. You lead a band, you lead a band for eight years. Somebody comes in, takes all your personality out of it, and they've become one of the biggest bands in the world. Um. But the band did step up, although it was a blow to them. Um Gwen says in the behind the music, we can't have a band without Eric, no doubt is Eric Stefani. Uh Tony echoed that. He said when Eric left, it was a real pivotal moment for the rest of us because he is such an incredibly creative musical genius. When he left, it created this sort of okay, what are we gonna do now? But that forced Tom, Gwen, Adrian and myself to step up. Ah. You made the comparison to Pink Floyd following Sid Barrin's departure, which is either a compliment or an insult to those two men. Um. Yeah, so they did. The other guys and girl in the band decided to start truck. Yeah, keep on truck and step into the spotlight, filled the void. Whatever belabored music critic cliche, we're gonna land on there. Uh. Tom Dumont, the guitarist shred Head, he studied classical music, composition, classical guitar. Well, he actually I saw that he studied music theory for like five semesters and then left when they made him play classical guitar, which is funny to me because the solo on Don't Speak is like, yeah, and I love to drink guitar. Well, but he used to pick which apparently like the big no no um who the compared Adrian Young to Neil Pert I don't remember for the sake of their Twitter mentions and you I won't um yeah. And Tony Can played in his high school jazz band and uh oh yeah, I remember in them he was obsessed with Prince in Behind the Music? Doesn't he talk about listening to Computer Blue on on repeat endlessly? Oh man, I just dredged that one up from my subconscious. I'm shocked at how much you're able to recall from that. Consider you hate them, I told you I watched it so much. It just goes on all the time, that one. Bon Jovi and Poison I know anyway, But David Cassidy one was a big one for me. That was on all the time. That was sad though. Well, yeah, how low was I on the sidewalk licking the curve? That's how low? I'll never forget. Oh my god, that's rough. Uh. And you know Gwen had you know, she does have She looked like a gardener, right or who am I thinking of? You know what, I can kind of see have a gardener. But she was doing the pin curl thing, right, she kind of had that oh on the cover when she was doing the whole retro Vargas girl thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can see, um have a gardner, Veronica Lake with the hair, That's who I was thinking. Sorry, um, Gwen. Uh. You know, she started writing her own lyrics for the first time, including Spiderwebs and Sunday Morning, and that brought, you know, a newfound authenticity to the group, probably made it a little also less arch and weird to have his kind of diaristic uh you know, lyrics as opposed to prog ska. Yes, so she there, she was singing her own words, and boy did she have a lot to say. It was traumatic enough when her friend took his own life and she was forced into the role as no doubt soule lead singer and front woman. Then her big brother, the guy who's been a role model and sort of her guide her whole life, just leaves and it has to be said that was tough on their relationship. After he left the band, Gwen and Eric went through their to be together at their parents in assistance to patch up their relationship, and Gwen later said, I didn't want to lose my brother, you know, because everything that I am is because of him. So that's all really rough with the band mass family mess. Now we've got a romantic mess too. Gwen gets dumped by bassist Tony Canal in this same time frame. They've been together nearly eight years and he was feeling stifled by their relationship. He wanted space to grow all the usual reasons that people give. I mean, they lived together, work together, played music together. That's bound to be a strain on anyone's relationship, and Gwen later admitted I forced Tony to go out with me. This is her quote. He wasn't even interested. I don't know about that. When we made out that first night, I think he thought it was more of a one night kiss. But then we started going out and after that first year, I was going, when are we going to get married? And yeah, hearing that quote from earlier about how she had just looked into his eyes and pray to God that they would have a baby together. Yeah, maybe she wanted more than he was able to give, which is sad. Uh So, this was an awful time for Gwen, and, as she said in No Doubts Behind the Music special, everyone I loved the most, my two boys were gone. That's awful. And she elaborated on this in an interview with The O C Register during the albums anniversary. She said, quote, I was very naive, I was very sheltered, and it depended so much on Tony, and then when we broke up, I was like, I don't know what to do with my life. I was so dependent on him, and then with my brother leaving, I mean I followed Eric around like a puppy and looked up to him and was doing whatever he told me to do. So to put it in classic rock terms, Gwen was going through a Pink Floyd sid Barrett situation which we touched on earlier, a Fleetwood Mac relationship drama situation, and the Beach Boys Brian Wilson style family crisis, all once all one person. No one else in the group knew what that felt like. All of those things except her. That's a lot. And Gwen used to say that Eric, this talented cartoonist, invented, you know, in quote Gwen Stefani the pop star as a cartoon. But now she was forced to take control, and I think it exposed the stealinus in her that maybe even she didn't realize she had. Uh. Tony, when he broke up with her, offered to quit, no doubt, and she wouldn't let him. And then when an interviewer asked her if she'd offered to leave to she just laughed and said, hell no, which is awesome. Um. Yeah. The whole experience essentially made a songwriter out of Gwen, and she began writing lyrics that tried to make sense of everything that was happening around her, especially this breakup. And Tony Canal, to his credit, encouraged her to write these lyrics even when they were very clearly attacking him, and he later said to me the art was more important. And she would write these songs like happy Now on Sunday Morning, both of which are pretty vicious, and then she would immediately call Tony up and share them and say, dude, I totally wrote the Ratis song. I have to read it to you. Promise you won't get mad. At me and then read these lyrics that are just ripping him apart. Don't Speak is the most famous song Gwen wrote about her breakup, but Happy Now is the most scathing, and it's basically Gwen taunting her ex after he breaks up with her, saying she loves her new found freedom, and the words include you killed the pair. Not only one is breathing, there's no looking back this time. I mean it. Are you happy all by yourself? You've got no one else, You're by yourself, all by yourself, all by yourself. Pretty brutal. Yeah, she would say, it's the perfect revenge song of someone who got hurt and love. It was really meant to be painful. And she's saying this in like some kind of promo video and Tony sitting right there and he says, well it worked, so thank you, and he stands up and walks off camera and she laughs. It's like, seems like it's meant to be a joke, but way harsh. Tie that man has a parlance at the time, that man has a steely resolve at the core of yeah yeah that The videos are interesting to see them interact and hear her talk about the inspiration behind these songs, and uh, a K rock DJ, who claimed that it would take an act of God to get them played on the radio, played Happy Now as the band's popularity was on the ascent and people knew the relationship drama the heart of the lyrics at this point, and as the song ended, the DJ leans into the mic and goes, take that, Tony. So this is all over town. This is your relationship, Dirney Laundry is being beamed out by the most popular radio station in l A. And everyone knows what it's about. So this I mean again, Gwen, Poor Gwen. It's a terrible, terrible situation for everybody. And guitarist Tom Dumont said in the Behind the Music special that sessions were lockward at this point. Understandably, he said, quote, there was so much tension in the room. It was just so thick it was almost unbearable. There were many occasions when Gwen had to just leave the rehearsal room to collect yourself, and she later commented, even though the breakup was difficult, it made her a better songwriter and helped her find her creative power. And the whole genesis of this album is especially interesting to me because it shows that it really does follow in the grand tradition of the extremely intimate, almost confessional singer songwriter stuff. But well, Atlantas Marsette was taken much more seriously. With Jagged Little Pill, which is released four months before Tragic Kingdom, No Doubt and specifically Gwen Stefani were treated as superficial and fluffy. And maybe it's the band's presentation. Maybe it's the blonde thing. I don't know, um, maybe it's the uptempeled tracks. Maybe it's the horns that you hate so much. I don't know, but I think Tragic Kingdom has just as much emotional authenticity as your Jagged Little Pills, your twenty ones, your Fiona Apple's title, your Tapestry easy even um. Might not be equal for a musical of technical standpoint, but I think it has that same degree of emotional authenticity and truth. I mean, it's tough. I wonder if they actually expected to have to tour and promote this thing for They talked about that, well, they they were supposed tour for I think two or three months they went out for, like I think it's twenty eight months ultimately, Yeah, and that kind of drove mother than It's understandably because everyone all around the world, not only they just knocked off balance, but the fact that they're traveling for years at a time, but they're just constantly being asked about all the most heartbreaking things in their lives. So yeah, that's gotta be rough. Yeah, and this is um, this is also kind of when they start, um fore grounding her again. I remember from the behind the music thing and them talking about like, you know, she is such a charismatic person and she is this just like powerhouse on stage, and the rest of them are kind of you know, all due respect to the other three just dudes, and so like, you know, I'm trying to think of magazine covers at the time, but I'm sure Spin Spin was one was Riot Gurly, I think we mentioned that later, but the headline was Riot Gurly No Doubts something or other. Yeah yeah, um, I don't like that headline. I'm sure neither did Bikini that now, so we get to don't speak that which is you know, the archetypal still their biggest hit, do you think or was one of those? Um oh yeah, okay, but it is uh, you know, Gwen's steely Resolve song moment. It's a self a spring moment, she told Spin. When we broke up, I still forced Tony to kiss me. That's weird. I was in denial. I might have lost the title of girlfriend, but in my eyes, we were still together for like a year. He didn't have to come to my house when I demanded it, he didn't have to do anything. But when he felt like it, I was there. It was horrible. Uh yeah, and so that top yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, And that's where this uh, that's where this song comes from. They have been kicking around a rough sketch of it for quite a long time, with a different structure, different words. Eric Stefani had actually written the music for it and gone through a couple of different incarnations before Gwen arrived at the final draft of the lyrics. Um six takes on that guitar solo. Do you think that's a six take guitar solo? In Jordan's that's not even six takes to do it. They're all stitched together to make the one final one. Yeah, Tony said, he told a complex later because it was so real and we were living it, all that stuff came up in that song. That's the real deal. That's our lives and that's what was happening to us at the time. It was a very very intense period of our lives and it was all put out there to share with everybody. Uh And as you mentioned earlier, when the Son became a hit, they were on tour for two plus years and uh, yeah, having to rehash your personal low point in front of a massive audience every night for two plus years. Tony later told The Guardian of the time we were on tour for Tragic Kingdom for twenty eight months. We were going through the breakup and in every interview we were talking about it, so we were opening this wound on an hourly basis. It was so brutal. I don't know how, but we made it through. Yeah. I always feel bad when people have a hit written about something traumatic in their lives. And I remember having to interview the guy from Train about Drops of Jupiter, specifically about the twentieth anniversary of that song, which is about his mother's death. And I got the sense when I was interviewing him that he didn't particularly feel great about having to sit all day and dredge all this up. Despite the fact that I don't know who was making a promote the twenty anniversary of the song, because I don't even know if there was a reissue or anything, but yeah, you know I have I always feel bad for those people, and I always feel bad being the guy at the other end of the phone, at the other end of the microphone or whatever it is, having to ask those questions. Oh man. Anyway, so back to no doubt. Um, you mentioned earlier that the prevailing may head of around this was Tony as villain, which remember, I don't think that's helped by the video, don't they do like a lot of shots of him kind of like, well, we we will touch on this. The video for Don't Speak was basically when everybody in the band were really mad that Gwen was getting all the headlines and getting all the cover shots and everything, and they decided to basically address that head on and do this video that was going to be a big cathartic like they were going to act out their private dramas on the screen. And I hope that that kind of helped, but yeah, we'll get more into that later. But it did not. It did not. They haven't made an album in ten years. But Gwen, to her credit, went out of the way in various interviews to defend him. Um, she said, everybody's like, God, that guy is a jerk, which is not fair because he didn't have his lyrics to talk about me when I smothered him, and he didn't have a life. It must be hard for him to take when people write, how could you leave Gwen? She's so great? But they don't know me. They don't see my faults. They just see me however they want to see me. They think I have abs and I don't. I have fat. Her self deprecation seems really authentic, and it makes me love her, but it also makes me really sad. There's a great part in the Spin piece when she says, quote, I want to have a time when I don't need a boyfriend, but it's just natural wants someone. There's nothing better than that. And then after a brief pause, she leans forward and whispers to the journalists, so what did Tony say about me? Yeah? I mean, what what was she like? Twenty five? Yeah? Boy? And she was still living at home with her dad. There's like a touch on this later, like she was saying, like, yeah, I kind of want to move to l a someday if my dad will let me. Like they were very young chronologically, but also that mentally is not the way I want to phrase that, but you know what I mean, very inexperienced, i'd say, outside of musical stuff, but I really underappreciated. Track on Tragic Kingdom is Sunday Morning, which sort of blends the sarcasm of just a Girl, which we'll talk about in a minute, with the venom of Happy Now and clearly has directed at Tony. Gwen sings sappy, pathetic little me. That was the girl I used to be. You had me on my knees. I trade you places any day, And according to Tony, he wrote the music to the song to serenade Gwen when she was sick in the bathroom. Ah. He told complex, Gwen wasn't feeling well, and I was at my parents house and your Belinda and I had the guitar. She was sitting in the bathroom and I was just sitting outside the bathroom, singing, kind of serenading her. I was just singing like somebody's feeling quite uuh, somebody's feeling quite ill. And that became Sunday Morning. That's how the song started. But obviously it's not about someone feeling ill now Gwen wrote the lyrics. I find the slightly ungallant snapshot of the song's genesis as maybe revenge from these pointed lyrics. Yeah, my girlfriend had diarrhea, was sitting on the toilet, so I sat outside of the guitar and and then she took that piece of music I wrote to make her feel better and put me in lyrics about me in there. Yeah. Oh well, let's go on to happier, happier topics. Now, let's have a little friendly chin wag about the best songs called Sunday Morning, because there are many, run them down. It was one of my favorites by Margot Grayan Sunday Morning from Take a Picture. I think the album is called right like obscure late sixties pop singer. Uh. Sunday Morning by the Velvet Underground of course probably my favorite. Yeah, yeah, Sunday Morning by Madness, I mean, of course he's Madness super fans have a song named you know, the share name of the Madness song. Easy like a Sunday Morning. You count that Commodore's that might be my favorite. On here Sunday Morning by Maroon five, I secretly liked that song no comment, okay one Sunday Morning by Wilco. We'll count that, even though it's not technically Sunday Morning and Matthew sweet of ming t with Austin Powers and uh, Susannah Hoffs and others Sunday Morning too. Yeah you are. This is my gotcha journalism moment, Sunday Morning coming Down, you rube. Chris Christofferson song, Uh, you know what. I had that on there and then I took it off because I thought that it's titled deviated too far from Sunday Morning. It's all right, but no, but that doesn't But then that doesn't give us the that doesn't give us the opportunity to tell people the story behind Sunday Morning Coming Down, with Chris Christofferson being so desperate to get his demos into the hands of Johnny Cash that he commandeered an Army Reserve helicopter fluid onto cash His front lawn and strolled up to the front door to give him the demo tape. Chris christ like walk out with a gun just because he was like, what's going on? I mean probably I mean his waking hours. Yeah, we're being invaded by Christmas toppers. As you meditate on that, We'll be right back with more too much information after these messages. All right. Spider Webbs, Yes, spider Webs maybe my favorite song on this album. Uh. It's the song that at least half a dozen people I knew used as their voicemail greeting back in the day because of the you know, I'm walking into spider webs, so leave a message and I'll call you back refrain at the end. Did you have people who did that? No? Okay? And there in lies the difference between our high school experiences. Uh. This song is basically Destiny's Child's bugaboo before cell phones, where I think it's inspired by a guy who had gotten wind of Gwen's breakup with Tony and launched an ardent phone campaign to convince her to go out with him. Never Good. Gwen talked about this in a video of the group made in two thousand nine about some of their past songs. She said, I always had a boyfriend, so I never had to deal with guys trying to go out with me. But there was this one guy, and he used to call me in the middle of the night and trying to sing me poetry on the phone or play acoustic guitar fifteen minutes at a time. I didn't know how to get off the phone. Giving this guy my number was the biggest regret of my life. So she wrote the song with Tony, who is thrilled to note that it's one of the few songs on the record that isn't about him, and in fact, he and Gwen are the only two people who know who the song's actually about, and they've been very reluctant to share because it's kind of a mean song. She says in the same video, it's such a mean song, to which Tony adds, not as mean as Happy Now, which is about him. It's fair. Uh. Spider Webs also cements her ties to another new wave of pop group fronted by a platinum bombshell Blondie. Debbie Harry sang about a stalker on one way or another, but it was actually another of their songs that inspired Spiderwebs, at least from a musical standpoint. According to Tony Canal, he and Gwen try to do something like Blondie's cover of The Tide Is High, where they use different tempos, going from the intro to the main part of the song. So that's a musical inspiration from Blondie there. Well, now we arrive at the other standout track on Tragic Kingdom, which is just a Girl, the song that really you know, as you mentioned earlier to this and Don't Speak um us when they played on their first TV appearance when they were on Conan and uh, the song that cracked the kingmakers of l a radio Ka Rock which again for the third time this podcast had told them it would take an act of God to get them on the radio. UM. And you know the again the milieu at this time and stuff like bad Religion, Rage against the Machine, Nirvana, Pearl Jams, sound Garden. So what a breath of fresh air to have Gwen Stefani's voice come on over the radio. UM and Kay Rock had actually begun to receive complaints about just how few women they played, and you know, talk about the diametrically opposed ideal to grunge. Is just a girl. Um. But you know, their parents figure very highly into this song. We'll talk about in second how her dad inspired it, but her mom took issue with it, specifically uh, the swears um they were going to they were driving in California when the song became a hit, and her mom said, are you going to say those curse words on stage? Because she had invited some of her relatives to the show. But Gwen told her mom that she wasn't planning on swearing. But the frustration grew inside of her and she drew a line in the sand. She said, no, I'm not going to change my lyrics. My lyrics are my children? Who said that? Isn't that from Spino tap whatever? Uh? And her mom didn't talk to you for a week. Ouch. But the song originally came of her frustration that when she was dating Tony, her dad at one point scolded her for staying out too late and then she drove home alone, which he thought was I guess dangerous in in the main streets of Orange County, and she felt that he was being overprotective because she was, in her words, just a girl. Uh and those uh, you know the lyrics, I'm just a girl, all pretty and petite, so don't let me have any rights Before that tremendous hook, I've had it up to hear. Her vocal performance on that song is really great. She has that she does that kind of a pout thing she leans into. Um, you've compared it to Leslie Gore's you Don't Own Me? Are Dion Warwicks Don't make Me over? Gwen later said I wouldn't trade being female for anything, but guys don't understand what a burden it can be sometimes, you know. And yeah, and it's it is kind of a companion piece to Spider Webs, which is about her literally being harassed by a guy on the phone at all hours of the night. I remember getting reading our school had like the Disney magazine Disney Adventures, and like I remember reading in that about like Gwen was like the female rocker that it was cool to look up to. And they made such a big deal about her doing push ups on stage and having great abs, which was yeah, but I mean, you know she yeah exactly, but she did break her foot at one point on stage. You know, God love her. Uh. Writing in Pitchfork a few years back, Jillian Mapes said of just a Girl, that is not a subtle song, but what it's doing is quietly masterful. The sarcasm subverts the underlying victimhood in a sneering way, but victimhood is also something girls, particularly white or privileged girls quickly understand as a tool forgetting what they want. Still, though, there's always somebody out there who's going to miss the message. And uh, Spin asked her about this, and she said, I hate it when I'm asked what that song is about. The lyrics are so obvious. If you don't think it's sarcastic, you've got to be like an idiot music journalists. But the song actually uh prestages, prestages, prefigures, pre something's uh spice girls girl power, um, at least in the state. It's yeah, that's true, Mike dot Com. Tom Barnes, writing over there has says just a Girl helped amplify the message of the Riot Girl movement, who, according to their manifesto, fought for the psychic and cultural lives of girls and women everywhere, you know. And it's kind of that bit of like putting a little sugar into your message to help it get over into the mainstream. Because Bikini kille Brat Bill Havings to Betsy L seven that was not exactly radio friendly sounds, but no doubt, you know, got the message across by being super super catchy, made it onto MTV, you know, and That's the thing about SKA is it's not threatening. You can parents can be like, this is fun. I'll take my kids to that. Um just a girl, of course, got sinks in Clueless Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, both of which are you know now if not at the time, looked upon his groundbreaking works of feminist cinema, which do Clueless soon yeah probably um yeah, And you know here we are straight white manning our way through a piece on Gwen Stefani. So we'll go back to Jillian Mapes at Pitchfork quote. Following the surge of third wave feminism in the early nineties, the mid nineties became the peak of the angry white female era in rock and pop. It was a time when feminized aggression from Whole and Riot Girl to Liz Fair and Landis Morrisset was suddenly perceived as being on trend, as if women haven't been furious forever. Stefani girly tomboy ultra arguably benefited from this kind of branding, even while she maintained the fun, energetic personality that led Courtney Love to dub her a cheerleader and others to call her the anti Courtney Love. Um, who hasn't Courtney Love offended at this point the rest of her bandmates, all of every single peer from the era. Yeah, she told Anyway. The quote that that this is referencing is Courtney Love told seventeen she quote wasn't interested in being the cheerleader. I'm not interested in being Gwen Stefani. But you know, Gwen got her back a few years later with the massive hit in Hollowback Girl, which has the cheerleader chant and the costume in the video. Yeah, and Gwen, you know, she has a sense of self awareness about this. I mean, she said at the time, maybe I should be more of a tough chick, but I'm not. That's not me. I love makeup, I love getting my hair done, I love pedicures. I'm the furthest thing from a rock chick. She talked about going to not very Farm to see the ice capades. Um. Yeah, like that sounds of music. Yeah. Yeah. According to again that Chris Heath the Story and Rolling Stone, she was so nerve nervous about her about spelling things that she carried a spell check computer in her bag, which which is the least punk thing I've ever heard. Yeah, but you know, girls at this time, being able to see all versions of themselves represented is very important, uh. Atlanta Kaplan, writing in The Guardian back for Misunderstood teenage girls everywhere, Stefani stood out as a central voice for the misfits. She was never quite Atlantis or Spice Girl. She was a tomboy who wasn't afraid to speak up for anyone who is in between. She was the pretty creative arts and girl in high school that wasn't afraid to stick up for herself or you. She was a punk in plaid who served as just one of the guys. Stefani was one of the women that you looked up to for her incredible vocals and I don't give a damned sentiment. She didn't care what you thought of her, but she did care about her feelings and making sure you knew what they were. And her fans called themselves Gwenna Bey's. Did they journalists called their fans that Gwennabe's Guanabe's. There's something about something about that that doesn't land ironic though, coming just in advance of Spice Girls with Wannabe Ye go yeah. Speaking of Nottsbury Farm, no doubts breakthrough record took its name from Nottsbury's rival Disneyland, and it's both an ode to the band's hometown and a nod to how Disneyland subtly creeped its way into the band's writing sessions. The Stefani's were from Annaheim, and as we said earlier, the band house on Beacon Avenue was just down the road from the Magic Kingdom, and guitarist Tom Dumont later said every night we could hear and see the fireworks show from Disneyland. At night you could hear the YETI from inside the Matterhorn ride growl every sixty seconds, which sounds like hell, and Dumont says that he had a teacher in middle school who used to refer to Disneyland as the Tragic Kingdom, and that helped inspire the title track, which even sabled some theme park announcements, which I'm shock that Disney were cool with that. Uh. There seemed to be many rumors and theories about the meaning of the song, including one from Pitchport claiming that the track is about Walt Disney being evil. Whatever the case, they were apparently no hard feelings with Disney, because when Gwen was presented with the key to the city of Annaheim in two thousand two. The ceremony was held at Disneyland, and this brings us to the cover of the album, another tribute to their hometown from Orange County, Orange, yet not exactly subtle. The band minus Gwen stands in an Orange grove. Well, Gwen stands like a nineties Virgus girl in a retro red dress. Eagle Lite fans will notice that there's an extra band member in the background. Gwen apparently insisted that Eric Stefani sit in for the cover shoot, and this was despite the fact that he had not technically been a member of the band for months, maybe been a year or two at this point, but she felt that he played a big enough role on the album with the inclusion of two of his songs, Plus he contributed to own Speak in Different People on Sunday Morning and ended on this so she felt like he deserved to be on the cover, especially if in addition to the eight plus years he'd spent fronting the band before that. But the decision to include Eric made things a little awkward during the shoot. If you look at the sleeve booklet, Eric is always standing at the back or at the side, and he's usually looking away. I guess he felt weird being back. I guess the other band members felt weird that he was back. She would later say, it was very weird. It was horrible. So that's sad, but you know, it's even more horrible. The red dress that she wore on the cover got stolen. It was loaned to the Hard Rock Cafe and later displayed at the Fortune Museum Center in an exhibit called the Orange Groove Orange Counties rock and Roll History. But then in January five, this dress was stolen, This priceless bit of rock and roll memorabilia taken from under their noses. Can you believe it? Someone finally listened to me and put it in a museum where it belonged, and then this happened. I can't believe it. Jesus Christ. Despite the desperate please for its return, the dress, which had been a praise around five thousand dollars at the time, has still not been recovered. Wow. What else did they take? I don't know. I'm almost guessing just that. Yeah, like a targeted theft. Mm hmmm. It is believed the dress was stolen between two thirty and three thirty pm on a Tuesday. What was happening to that museum during that time? I'm just imagining a security guard like they're like smashing the class to get through it anyway. You know what I just read? It is kind of funny on on spiderwebs. You know the steel drums. You know who plays those, Stephen Perkins from Jane's Addiction, who famously plays steel drums on Jane says, So if you needed yet another vision of the Caribbean has filtered through a white guy from California. Hard to it more illustrative than a bunch of ska dorks from Anaheim with a white guy playing steel drums on the track one of their breakthrough record, Little on the Nose, their World So Tragic Kingdom, released on October. I'm just gonna quote you here exploded onto the music scene like rays of Sun after a cold Seattle rainstorm. Yes, that was a grunge similar there, much like southern California's different than Seattle. Okay, Like this was like nine thousand words at this point, Come on, was tired. We've said many times though that this was shot in the arm. Following um the dour stretch of flannel clad missing thropes lurching their way through drop tuned dirges about depression and heroin and I don't know lumber that's yours. But it has been credited with hoping to break ska in the mainstream, opening a lane a lane for bands like Real Big Fish, gold Finger and the Mighty Mighty bo Stones. Some have debated whether the rise of No Doubt as a cause or symptom of the nineties ska boom. There's a tremendous anecdote about this from Tom Dumont. One of his hands was injured when someone asked him for an autograph, and he said, quote, when they realized I wasn't in three eleven, they grabbed the pen back and cut my hand. Yeah. I can't imagine loving anything enough to attack a musician's hand, much less three eleven anyway, Tragic Kingdom sold sixteen million copies, reached number one on the Billboard two hundred over a year afterwards released So Something of a slow burn, Um and uh again. Tom Dumont. For years where they were just struggling, he claimed that he would only get a tattoo if they ever sold millions of records, and then subsequently chickened out. Um. Weirdly enough, only one of the singles, just a Girl, cracked the Hot one hundred, but the rest were not released as proper singles, so it's kind of a technicality there. I don't know if it's just a ploy to get people to buy the rest of the album, but that was the only song that was released as a single, Just the Girl, That's So Wild to Me. Grammy nominations for Best Rock Album, Best New Artist Song of the Year, Best Pop Performance lost all of them. They did, however, get Best Group Video for Don't Speak at the v M A s uh. Their tour. We talked about that tour. Oh sometimes on that incredible tour they opened for Bush Wow. I wonder if Gwen regrets that getting to know Gavin Rossdale better. Didn't he cheat? He cheated on her like seventeen thousand times right that. I don't know. I mean, you think either of us would know that from our COO cool page six background, But I actually yeah, it was his Uh it was he cheated on her with a nanny. Oh hey, that's what a loser. Um. British rock magazine Kerrang was one of the dissenting notes during this world conquering I just read ahead during this world conquering era, writing in a tremendous pan. Mere words cannot describe how abysmally gutless and sugar smothered. It is much like an ant eater with a punctured snout, no doubt, suck badly. One of the best pans. Incredible. Tony Kunaut wanted to make it into a band T shirt. That's primus this thing there, all their their shirts say Primus sucks. Um accurate. Uh, this is cute. After Tragic Kingdom was a smash, Gowen still lobbied that Eric come back and be involved in their follow up, which took five years to make. Returned to Saturn came out in two thousand. Um. She was saying Eric is no doubt, and again to illustrate the point in the Rolling Stone profile, she pointed to some steamed vegetables on a dinner tray, saying these are really good. But if I can put a little butter and salt and pepper on that, it would be great. And that's what Eric is. Sure. Uh he has a co write on one track on Return to Saturn, but other than that does not seem to have been involved, although Jerry Harrison of the Talking Heads was producing the track. New Jerry Harrison probably the third fourth most famous member of Talking Heads, Jerry Harrison folks from the Alright Jordan bring us Home? Tell us about the music videos from Tragic Kingdom. Yes, we can't end this episode without touching on the iconic music videos. As we mentioned, the video for Just the Girl opens in the house that the band shared down the street from Disneyland, before moving on to the split bathroom scenes. The boys are in dingy CBGBs like Squalor, and Gwen is in a palatial ladies room. Just a Girl, get it? I guess I really get there. She purchased the red, white and blue tennis top that she wears at a thrift shop just before filming, and she added the fake diamonds to it herself, which kind of say most for future interest in fashion to science. But anyway, in the background of just a Girl video, you'll notice a very pregnant woman that is Gwen's younger sister, Chill. But there's a little bit of drama, I guess mild on the no doubt scale of drama that stemmed from the Just a Girls shoot. Drummer Adrian Young, he who undresses all the time, apparently saw an extra on the set who sculpted his hair into devil horns very nineties. Adrian liked this look and adopted it for himself. Then he got an irate letter from this horned extra who accused him of being a fraud. I guess you don't if a guy voluntarily walks around with devil horns, you probably don't want to piss this guy off. Yeah, and you really don't want him to have your contact information. So yeah, this is from the Chris Heath Rolling Stone cover story. He said that this letter said, you claim to be part of the dark side when you're just a big fake. You're just a big rock star. If you have any integrity, flaugh, you would write read back counterpoint did he did he claim to be part of the dark side? Oh? I mean this guy is giving me Uni bombers anyway, So uh so, Yeah, Adrian ended up shaving the devil horns off because he didn't want to deal with this guy anymore, accusing of stealing his look. Don't speak, Moving on to don't Speak, Yes, don't speak. The drama there was a little more overt as the band took off, the other guys in the group who weren't Gwen Stefani had to contend with the fact that they had a ridiculously good looking, energetic, charismatic frontwoman, who it must be noted, wrote much of her own lyrics, so she was gonna get the lion's share of the attention. I mean, you see it on the cover of the album. It's the almost famous thing. Look, I'm just one of the out of focus guys in the back, so I don't really know what they're expecting. But it got awkward. There would be magazine photo shoots with the whole band, and then the editor would crop the rest of the group out. Journalists would talk to the whole band and then just print. Mcwen says there was a famous incident with Spin for the band was supposed to be on the cover for their November issue, but ultimately they just went with Gwen under the headline Riot Gurley, no doubt, just want to have fun. And we touched on earlier and there was an incident in London where Gwen lost her voice and management grumbling about how no one was going to be happy if Gwen didn't show up. The do press, and guitarist Tom Dumont screams, hasn't got to the point where we mean nothing, yes or no. If Gwen doesn't speak, do we mean nothing? And when he calmed down, he elaborated to the journalist, I understand intellectually, but I just feel like I'm second class compared to her. I feel I'm just a lesser person. I don't look as good. I'm not as bitching as she is in everyone else's eyes. The reason I wanted to be a rock star when I was a kid, I thought that it would be a way for people to like me. And now that I got here, I'm not getting that payoff that I was always expecting. Very honest, Yeah, well right, well yeah. And Tony Canal, who probably has even more complicated feeling has given us past relationship with Gwen, had more to say about her getting the stars treatment. He said, we want people to know that we're a band. For many years, we talked about what would happen if we ever got offered this sort of stuff. We're gonna stick together, We're not gonna do it. We're gonna say it's the whole band or nothing. But when you're actually putting that situation, and you see that your friend has the opportunity, maybe the once in a lifetime opportunity, to be on the cover of a magazine. Why would you hold someone back from that? So it was rough for them, but rather than let the spite and bile fester, they took the brave approach of confronting all this drama head on in their video for Don't Speak, and they kind of acted out the whole photographer singles out Gwen's psycho dramas the plot line for this video by Sophie Mueller, And though the song was obstensibly about Gwen's split with Tony, the video was kind of about Gwen's split with the band, and the boys all give Gwen dirty looks, as you noted earlier, and they seemed to be kind of upset throughout the whole video, and Tony commented, we didn't want it to be about a normal breakup, so we thought what would be the saddest thing that could happen the band splitting up. So that's what the video is about. And ironically, the night before the video shoot, two members Tom and Gwen came close to walking out of the group. The band claims that they were trying to get Gwen to take some time off after her voice kept giving out, but she responded with an angry variation of I'm going to do whatever I want and if you don't like it, quit. She claims that she was tired of everyone constantly talking about how it was always her face and the cover of magazines and just didn't want to deal with it anymore and kind of issued an ultimatum that you know that this is how it's going to be, and I'm not even gonna speculate on that anyway, but whatever the case of the Don't Speak video recording, Eve fight, they hashed it all out and the video proved to be a Catharsis That allowed them to make another album, two thousand's Adult New Wavy Return of Saturn and let's not forget two thousand ones rock Steady. The following year, it was just Hones by the Neptunes, sly On, Robbie William, Orbit Prince and Rick o'kasik. That's a hell of a lineup and only one year after the previous album Damn. And then came Gwen's duets with Moby and Eve. I Love that Movie song, That movie song, which is a great song, the Hirajuku Street Style, which you mentioned the top of the episode of the solo albums, But this is all another story. No Doubt have released only one album in the last twenty years, two thousand twelves, decidedly lackluster, Push and Shove, and they've been on an indefinite hiatus since a brief front of festival shows, and since then, the non Gwen members of No Doubt have teamed with a f I lead singer Davey Havoc to form the new wave supergroup their words Dream call on them. Then there seems to be a bit of sadness there with the rest of the No Doubt crew who aren't Gwen. In Guitarist Tom Dumont that quote machine of a Man, shared a photo of the Instagram in honor of the album Tragic Kingdom's twenty anniversary, and the caption read in part, I can't believe it's been five years. In some ways, it feels like yesterday. In some ways, it feels like a distant dream. Sometimes great things fall apart, which is a shame. Yet here we are, twenty five years later. It is what it is, and I keep trying to make peace with that. I'm especially grateful to all those who have helped us along the way, and most of all of those of you who enjoyed Tragic Kingdom and came out for the shows over the years. I love to do one more No Doubt tour, but it feels like that ain't gonna happen. It's bittersweet in any case, what great memories. Thanks Aul. That's a bummer, I know, especially with whatever man just her becoming a reality TV star and dating sentient slab of ham. We are in a post music society. We do music just to get the better brand endorsements and reality TV gigs. Katy Perry yeah, Rihanna, Oh that's so grim. Anyway, I never thought i'd end this feeling sorry for No Doubt. Guitarist Tom mom see, I told you there would be an art and arc. Both Gwen and Tony have talked about the heartbreak in Tragic Kingdom, which is simultaneously what made it resonate with so many but also makes it hard for them to revisit. Gwen later said, quote, the whole purpose for the Tragic Kingdom is the breakup, the heartbreak. There's a lot of feelings when you say the words tragic Kingdom. My heart still kind of is broken because those songs were about a really sad time for me. However, I would like to try to end this slightly more upbeat note. There's a song included on Gwen's two four solo album Love Angel Music Baby, and it's one that to me, closes the book on this whole Tragic Kingdom chapter. I'm referring to, of course, the song Cool, which was written as an affectionate tribute to Tony and the friendship they maintained, or at least they maintained as of two thousand four. The words include we used to think it was impossible. Now you call me by my new last name. Remember Harvard Boulevard, the dreaming days where the mess was made. Look how all the kids have grown. We've changed, but we're still the same after all that we've been through. I know we're cool. May we all be so cool with our exes? Well, folks were off into our own tragic kingdom and U. I have not come around on SKA, but I have perhaps come around on on the Saga of No Doubt, at least as a hero's journey. I told you it'll be an interesting one. Yeah. I mean, you know, you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself. Mary Blake Shelton. Ah, there it is, there it is. Thanks for listening. This has been too much information. I'm Alex Heigel and I have Jordan run Talk. We'll catch you next time. I Too Much Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk. The supervising producer is Mike John's. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan run Talk and Alex Heigel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. 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