The HUB interview

SIMEON: Okay, let's talk about Total Hate.

OCNEVIK: (Screeches his chair)

SIMEON: Okay, that's really loud on the mic if you do that.

OCNEVIK: Hey, sorry, man.

TOM: So which story, is it the Brad story?

ADRIAN: Yeah.

TOM: So it's actually not about our group. It's about another group.

OCNEVIK: That's a great story.

ADRIAN: Ask about Gwen's sweater.

OCNEVIK: Okay.

TONY: Remember that interview we did in Chicago? You, me, and Gwen were sitting there, and all the questions were about Gwen's sweater.

TOM: I wasn't there. Did they talk about me at all?

TONY: We said you had some family matters to take care of.

(unintelligible banter)

ADRIAN: ...penis.

SIMEON: Wait, could you repeat that?

ADRIAN: I have a large pectoral member.

TONY: Pectoral? That's up here.

OCNEVIK: That's what I was going to say.

ADRIAN: Sorry. I have a large penile member.

SIMEON: You know that's going on the page.

(unintelligible banter)

OCNEVIK: Oh... Merry Christmas.

ADRIAN: Why did you have to do this? Thank you.

OCNEVIK: Because I owe a lot to you guys.

ADRIAN: Really. I thought it was the other way around.

OCNEVIK: Oh, that's right. Yeah, you owe a lot to me.

SIMEON: You owe a lot to me, but I don't see my gift.

OCNEVIK: What? I'm sorry, Simeon. I didn't know what to get you.

SIMEON: I want a Han Solo mug.

OCNEVIK: You want a Han Solo mug?

SIMEON: Yeah.

ADRIAN: Boba Fet power house! That's really nice of you. Thank you.

OCNEVIK: No problem, man.

ADRIAN: Dude, this is rad. I want to get the whole set.

TOM: Yeah.

TONY: Where'd you get this?

OCNEVIK: I got them at Sun Coast Video. It's the only place I could find them.

ADRIAN: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. The week. Where is this place?

OCNEVIK: In the Main Place Mall.

ADRIAN: Sun Coast Video....

TONY: I've seen all those places.

TOM: Where Keyes hangs out the whole time. We go to the mall, and he's there for like three hours.

ADRIAN: I've never gone to the mall with Eric Keyes. Probably should.

TOM: Okay, so Total Hate. Well, the song was written in 1987 by some people who aren't in our band anymore. It's kind of funny because that's our best song. Interesting how that works.

TONY: You're right.

TOM: Should I just be that honest?

TONY: It's the best song we have.

ADRIAN: Say whatever you want.

TOM: It was an old song that we decided to bring back and put on The Beacon Street Collection. So when we went in for the weekend to record four songs to finish out the Beacon Street recordings, we recorded that one in a studio in Burbank. So we invited the Sublime guys over. They were playing that night, and this was right when their song, Date Rape, was number one on KROQ and everything, so it was kind of a big deal. They were playing at the Las Palmas Theatre that night, so they stopped by on the way to the Las Palmas.

TONY: With the dogs.

TOM: With the dogs. And they drank some beers. They drank most of the beer that was left, and they smoked a lot of pot. And Brad was sitting there with Gwen trying to learn the song, and he was listening to it over and over, and she was kind of singing him the parts. And it seemed like he wasn't getting it. Seemed like he just wasn't getting it. And all of a sudden...

TONY: He was blowing chunks.

TOM: He was blowing it. And all of a sudden they turn on the tape machine to record it, and he did that rap... rap... what would you call that rap thing? Kind of a reggae toast?

TONY: It was a dub reggae style rap.

TOM: He did a dub reggae style rap in the middle that just came out perfect. It was just there. And then Gwen said you should throw in some "boh boh" or whatever. Some of those, and that was it. That's the best part of our best song we've ever done. The best thing we've ever done was written by other people and performed by another man.

TONY: Which proves that we have absolutely no talent. But... what we also did is have Gabe McNair, who is our trombone player now, copy the trombone solo that Paul Casely, one of our former trombone players... a solo that he did way back in 1987. We made him copy it note for note. We didn't let him improvise or make up anything himself or be creative in any way. We said, "stick to this because it's tried, true, and tested."

ADRIAN: You are a machine. Be a machine.

TOM: Honestly, it was actually really super-inspiring to have Bradley there. And... this may be... I don't want to put this in. Never mind.

SIMEON: What?

TOM: If he was still alive, and let's say three of us got kicked out of No Doubt, and say he got kicked out of his band, and he quit doing heroin... and we all got dalmations, maybe we could all jam together.

SIMEON: I want to put that in.

ADRIAN: Where's that going?

TOM: You guys want to get dalmations now because of that movie?

SIMEON: No.

TONY: No.

SIMEON: I heard everybody is. I heard they make really bad pets.

TOM: Really.

SIMEON: That's what I heard.

(unintelligible banter)

TOM: Tony, tell the story about World Go 'Round.

TONY: You go.

TOM: I just remember we were in the rehearsal place in Anaheim. This was probably 1989, 1990. And we were going to open for this band in the next week called Mano Negra from France, and they were playing in Hollywood at the Roxy, so we were going to open for them, and we were rehearsing for that show. We were so excited opening for this band that we never heard of that we started improvising this song, and Tony started singing this horn line. He started singing, "Mano Negra." Remember that? And that turned into the horn line in World Go 'Round. Probably the most popular song on our album. You remember that?

TONY: I remember now.

TOM: Go on.

OCNEVIK: See, yet another stolen....

ADRIAN: That wasn't stolen. The melody was...

TONY: No, no, no. We just used the name, Mano Negra, to actually put the ideas into a melody. You know what I mean?

OCNEVIK: Sing it.

TONY: No, I can't sing now, but the interesting thing...

OCNEVIK: C'mon.

SIMEON: C'mon.

ADRIAN: You start going "The Hub, the Hub." You start making up your own melodies. You know? The Hub, the Hub, doo-doo-doo-doo.

TONY: Ke-vin Kniiiiight. You know what I mean?

ADRIAN: You're talking about something, and you're creating your own melody, and you just put your own words to it later on.

SIMEON: Immortalize us by singing our names that become a song.

TONY: I can't sing. But unfortunately, the final outcome of World Go 'Round didn't actually live up to our expectations, unfortunately. I think it kind of fell short of what we expected from that song, so... it's a thorn in our side, so please don't bring it up.

ADRIAN: It's a bunch of white guys playing bad reggae.

TOM: That's how we feel.

OCNEVIK: You don't play it live anymore?

TONY: We don't play it live anymore. You're right. It's a Budweiser commercial.

TOM: I personally really love the chord changes and the melodies. I think they're great. I think just the execution of the recording didn't come out the way we wanted. It's a little too Budweiser—a little too white reggae. Sorry.

TONY: I have an interesting story about Sunday Morning.

OCNEVIK: Go for it. I've always wanted to know what the hell it was about.

TONY: Sunday Morning...

SIMEON: There she is.

TONY: Sunday Morning. One day me and Gwen were at my house playing with the guitar.

TOM: Great story!

TONY: And we were just hanging out playing with the guitar, and she wasn't feeling too good, so she went in the bathroom, locked the door, of course. Because she's a girl, and girls always lock the door when they go to the bathroom. So she's in the bathroom. What I did is, I grabbed the guitar, and I started serenading her from outside the door.

GWEN: And I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth.

TONY: No, she wasn't! She actually had some sort of stomach problems, so she was actually taking care of....

GWEN: I was doing my sit-ups because I had to do my, uh, Abs of Steel.

TONY: No, she was taking care of her stomach problems by trying to get rid of stuff from her body... so the interesting thing is I took the guitar and I sat outside the door, and I just started singing to her, and I started singing "somebody is feeling quite ill."

GWEN: Chakunt chunt en, chakunt chunt.

TONY: Somebody is feeling quite ill. So anyways, and that actually turned into Sunday Morning.

TOM: And how does that actually go, that portion of the song?

TONY: It goes, "somebody is feeling quite ill" cha-chunt.

GWEN: How does it go? What is the first lyrics? Uh... uh... uh....

OCNEVIK: Oh, god.

GWEN: Hi.

SIMEON: Hi.

GWEN: Not the chords.

TONY: I heard the news today, oh boy.

GWEN: I heard the news today. Yeah, that's right. Oh, sappy pathetic little me. Cha-chunt chunt en cha-chunt.

TOM: So what we have is a song where the original inspiration came to Tony. He was inspired. He created words and melody, and then had the words taken from him.

TONY: It's actually quite incredible because many people believe that we can't create anything, but look! We created that. Not anybody else.

TOM: And it was thanks to someone's food poisoning and ill stomach.

ADRIAN: Shit brings people together, you know?

TOM: Yes it does.

TONY: Everyone does it. Everyone loves it.

ADRIAN: Everyone's got an asshole, and everyone's got on opinion.

TOM: We're telling stories about different songs. Do you have any songs you want to tell stories about?

GWEN: Um.

TONY: No Doubt songs.

GWEN: Right. There's a song called Don't Speak. I don't know if everyone's heard this one before, but....

TONY: No, never.

ADRIAN: Boy, that's clever.

GWEN: Geez. My group hates me, but... that song was rewritten about three different times. There was about a hundred different lyrics that went to it. It's not really an interesting story, so I'm not even going to go into it.

OCNEVIK: That's pretty good.

GWEN: Thanks.

TOM: I'll tell a story about Don't Speak. Eric, our ex-keyboard player had one of the most brilliant fender roads lines ever in probably modern recorded music history. It was the best counter melody in the choruses of Don't Speak. It was insane. And that's the story. Matthew Wilder, who I love and is a great producer, just didn't hear it. He didn't get it. And we never put the roads line in, and I think that the song would have gone to number zero if we would have put it in. You know what I'm saying? It was just the most brilliant line, and I loved it. I loved it with every part of me.

TONY: I can't remember that line. Can you please tell me what that line is?

GWEN: Da-da-da... da-da-da... da... da.

TOM: This is with all due respect to the good people who mixed our album. When they mixed it, they wanted to edit out the bridge section of Don't Speak because they thought for radio audiences it would be more palatable, or something. With all due respect, because it worked. They had an edit, and it sounded pretty good. Right? Remember that edit they made?

TONY: Yeah.

OCNEVIK: Without the Spanish guitar sounding....

TOM: The section right before the Spanish guitar. The "It's all ending, stop pretending." But, we ended up leaving it in, and everybody was very pleased with the way it turned out. Remember?

TONY: We stuck to our guns, and we persevered. And it's in there.

(unintelligible banter)

OCNEVIK: Spiderwebs!

GWEN: Basically, I was at Tony's house one night. Sometimes you get a little lazy. You don't really feel like writing songs. Or it's not necessarily like maybe one person feels like writing a song and the other person can't. And in our group we kind of rely on each other, because all of us don't play instruments. I don't play guitar.
(we're interrupted)
I was at Tony's house, and I told Tony, "Let's write a song right now. Let's do it right now." And he goes, "okay, okay, okay." So we started writing it, and he played that bass line. How did it go?

TONY: Doo doo-ga-doon.

GWEN: Doo-ga-doon. Doo-doo-doo-doo. Doo-ga-doon. And that's how we wrote Spiderwebs. It's really weird. It took a really short time. And it's funny because we had done this song called Excuse Me Mr. in the studio that we recorded two different ways. We recorded it how we play live, which is the version that's on the Tragic Kingdom album now. And we recorded it another way that was kind of like our producer said, "Why don't you try it like this, and we'll just see which one turns out better." While we were recording the song they were like "Oops, we recorded over the live version that you guys like. I guess we'll have to use ours." And so we ended up finishing the other version, and we were really upset about it. This was by the end of the whole three-year recording experience of Tragic Kingdom, which is a tragic experience. Basically, what happened was (Spiderwebs was the last song we wrote before the record was finished) we said, "Okay, we'll give you Spiderwebs if you let us re-record Excuse Me Mr." So, it was kind of like a tradeoff. And they were into it because they liked the song, so we ended up re-recording Excuse Me Mr. and Spiderwebs at the same time. And by that time, we had been in the studio so much that I think we had a lot of experience behind us, and it was probably our best recording experience we had, recording those two songs together.

TONY: Tell that Hey You story.

GWEN: Hey You's a funny one. There's another song we were writing that day, too, though. What song was it? There was two songs that me and Tony were writing in his bedroom. And he had the four-track that we never really could figure out how to work. We always tried to make it work, but we never figured it out. Oh, it was Snakes, Tony. It was Snakes, I think. We did a demo of Snakes, and this time we were sitting there, I said, "Tony, I'll play guitar this time, and you sing." Tony cannot sing, and I cannot play guitar.

OCNEVIK: So it worked out really well.

GWEN: Basically, I played the two chords I knew, or three chords. Because the only song I know how to play is The Smiths. Which one is that? Boy With A Thorn In His Side. So I used those chords, and I was playing it, and Tony sang the melodies. And that's how Hey You came about. It's funny because the chorus and the verse have the exact same chords, just different melodies. So that song is basically three or four chords, really simple.

TOM: We're going to put the acoustic version that we did in New Zealand on the web site for people to listen to for free.

GWEN: Right. Because originally the song was acoustic, and it was really kind of a mellow type song. We brought it to the band, and we started working it up. And it became more this sixties kind of thing with the keyboards and everything and background vocals. And then when we were in New Zealand, and we decided to go and do another version of it. Me and Tom sat down. We had never done an acoustic, me and Tom together. It was one take. It was our one take thing, and then we ended up putting it on the European Don't Speak single. Is that what it's called?

TOM: Yeah, B side.

GWEN: It's a B side. And now it's going on the web site, so you can hear that.

OCNEVIK: Should we talk about Just A Girl, or has that been done to death?

TONY: No, not at all.

TOM: Talk about Just A Girl.

GWEN: Just a Squirrel?

OCNEVIK: Yeah. That's the Weird Al Yankovik cover, right?

GWEN: I wish Weird Al Yankovik would do a cover of that.

OCNEVIK: I read somewhere that he was... Don't Freak?

GWEN: Don't Freak! I don't know.

TOM: Don't Reek?

GWEN: Don't Reek.

SIMEON: That's what you could do. Do a whole album that's a parody of your own songs.

OCNEVIK: Oh, yeah, that's right. Here. The final present of the day. This is for you.

GWEN: Oh, thank you.

TONY: Look what we got. We got these.

GWEN: Oh those are so cute.

TONY: It's Han Solo.

GWEN: Oh, my god. That's so rad.

ADRIAN: Boba Fet.

GWEN: Oh, thank you. I needed this.

ADRIAN: Your brother helped me with it, so....

GWEN: The Muppet Movie. The original Muppet Movie.

ADRIAN: No way.

GWEN: But probably one if the best films ever made.

OCNEVIK: Of course.

GWEN: Really good.

OCNEVIK: It's one of the first movies I ever saw.

GWEN: Such a good movie. Whoo! So, thank you very much. So sweet of you.

OCNEVIK: No problem.

SIMEON: Sales of that movie are going to triple after I put that on the page.

GWEN: The Muppet Movie. It is. It's one of the best films. Kermit is amazing in that movie.

OCNEVIK: My favorite scene is the one when they are all riding the bikes. I was just like, I didn't know they were that big!

TONY: (unintelligible) ...Miss Piggy's thing.

SIMEON: Could you repeat that?

TONY: My favorite scene from the Muppet Movie is when Kermit makes love to Miss Piggy because no one believes that frogs can sleep with pigs.

OCNEVIK: You just like ruined the image of the muppets I had.

TONY: No! They're in love. It's telling a story.

TOM: They're not married, are they?

TONY: It tells a story. Oh. Black people and white people can't be together? No! Pigs and frogs can't be together. Of course you can. You can mix anything you want.

SIMEON: You can mate a donkey and a horse. You get a mule. You mate a pig and a frog and you get... I don't know.

OCNEVIK: Something really scary.

ADRIAN: An anteater.

SIMEON: Armadillo.

OCNEVIK: So we were talking about Just A Girl.

GWEN: Yeah, I was thinking about that. I just think about all the lyrics on the record, each song and how they came about. With Just A Girl, I just had the title first. I thought it was just a pathetic kind of funny thing. Just A Girl, like, uh, that's it. Because it could be seen as two different ways. Like just a girl, like that's all you are, and just a girl—don't make me carry your guitar because I'm too weak. Like as an excuse, like a real legitimate excuse. But I had a title first. And when Tom and I sat down to write the song, I think we were reflecting on ten years back, being in high school and the songs that influenced us back then, even though we may not have noticed how much they had an impact it had on us. Like a lot of new wave stuff—that was The Cars and Devo. We wanted to make a song that was really angular and had a real jagged guitar riff and something a little more upbeat because we'd been writing a lot of slower songs. So Tom came up with the junt-junt-chigga junt-junt junt-junt ju-u-unt, and he actually played that riff for about an hour as I fumbled over it with different lyrics and different melodies, and we came up with... basically, how we write songs, me and Tom, is we'll sit there and embarrass ourselves for about an hour, and he plays different chords, and I'll make up words that don't have any meaning or some make-up words that aren't even real words. And then I take the demo, and I listen to if for about, I don't know, a million times. And then I pick out the best parts, and then we come back together and we actually make real parts out of the mess. So that's kind of how Just A Girl was done. And as far as the motivation for the lyrics went, it was basically just things that had happened to me—that I had always been in this band with a bunch of boys, and so I have always been different than everybody, all my friends, being female. I've always had to be more careful going certain places. I don't think a lot of boys have to think about that kind of stuff. "Can you go with me to the bathroom?" Why do you think girls always go to the bathroom together?

OCNEVIK: Why is that? Come on. Unveil the mystery to us. Come on. You guys have much nicer bathrooms, too, by the way.

GWEN: Well, some of them are. Some of them aren't. I don't know. I think that sometimes you don't like to go places by yourself because there's so many different fears. There's the fear of some guy coming and stalking me or whatever. Or maybe just the fear of "Come on, go with me to the bathroom. I don't want that guy to bug me or try to pick up on me." Like at a club or something, girls will probably go together because they can pretend like they're together or something. I don't know. But there's just all these different experiences that I've dealt with. Like I can remember one time, this is a specific thing. We were on tour down in the South, and we were playing at a college, and I had to use the restroom. Another restroom story.

OCNEVIK: You like doing restroom stories.

GWEN: I don't know. And I had to go to the bathroom, so I left the bus, and I was going to go across the street to one of the other buildings that had a bathroom in it. I went by myself. I didn't have any shoes on. I just remember walking over there going "I should really have someone with me." First of all, that's a weird thing to think, right? As I kept going, I kept getting more and more like (wow!) frightened. Because there was no one really around, and I got in the building, and it was dark, and there was no one in there. So I was starting to get really worked up and kind of scared and envisioning some monster coming around the corner and raping me or something. But I got into the bathroom and of course the lights weren't on in there, and it was one of those doors where you walk in and then you have to push another door to go into the bathroom, and that light wasn't on. So I flipped the light on and I ran into the stall. I shut the door, and right on the door there's this sticker that says Rape Prevention Hotline. And I'm just like oooooh! quick! Then I got it done with, and I ran all the way back. And I think that's kind of a basic story that can set the tone for Just A Girl, because I don't think boys have to go through that daily fears of... you know. So that's basically one angle on it.

TOM: Tony, can you make some comments on the song Snakes that appears on The Beacon Street Collection and also appears on the Beavis & Butthead soundtrack, that just recently came out as a hit move, apparently the number one movie of the week.

TONY: Oh, really. Did that have anything to do with the song that we wrote?

TOM: Uh... no.

OCNEVIK: They don't even use it in the move.

ADRIAN: Riiiiiight.

TONY: They don't, huh. It's on the sound track, though, right?

OCNEVIK: It's on the sound track.

ADRIAN: Weak.

TONY: I want to see it in the movie.

OCNEVIK: It's in all the commercials, though.

TONY: It started out as a little riff, just a riff I was playing on the bass. And it kind of developed with help from Eric Stefani actually. It developed into the song it is now. It's a fun song to play. We kind of haven't played it for a while. It's on The Beacon Street Collection.

GWEN: Talk about the lyrics.

TONY: Oh, the lyrics! Those lyrics... I actually wrote those lyrics, and those were written at a time when we were actually very frustrated with the industry, the record industry and some of the problems we were having. So, Snakes I guess refers to some of the people we were dealing with at that time in the record industry.

OCNEVIK: Name some names.

TONY: Uh, Kevin Knight, Simeon Denk, a couple people who were doing our web site. Couldn't get in touch with them, they were just....

OCNEVIK: I know we're assholes.

TONY: No. It kind of refers to some of the problems, some of the people we were dealing with at that time.

TOM: They're interesting lyrics. There are a lot of metaphors.

TONY: You know what actually happened? I started reading some Bad Religion lyrics, and Greg Graffin writes really crazy words, and he uses, um....

TOM: Jurisprudence and....

TONY: Yeah, words like that. So I go, "I gotta do that, too." And I tried it, and that's what happened.

GWEN: And that's a true story.

OCNEVIK: That was your attempt to turn No Doubt into Bad Religion for a minute.

TONY: Exactly.

OCNEVIK: So you can get on Epitaph.

TONY: Exactly!

GWEN: I remember something about that Snakes period of time when we wrote that song. It was like, I can remember, because these days we've been on tour for so long that we don't really have too many rehearsals. But in the old days we had rehearsal twice a week. For our whole lives we practiced Thursdays and Sundays, and we'd go to a studio and everybody had to bring their money, and I remember having to ask my dad for money every time. I remember John Spence having a plastic baggie full of pennies and counting them out every week. Remember we used to pay two dollars for a mic? We'd like, "Do we really have to get two mics? We could share." I remember that. I remember we used to practice Snakes a lot. And there was one show that we did at Glam Slam, which was Prince's club, downtown L.A., and it was at a point where I remember that the end had this really step up and we had a bigger following all of a sudden. It was really cool, and we sold the show out. Tony and I had the idea of having some Indian dancers come on stage for the Snakes song, and we had this extended kind of bridge part. And my sisters and two other Indian girls came out in saris and danced to Snakes. They have it on video, and it's pretty ahead of it's time, I'd have to say, and it's our attempt at doing a kind of Madonna stage show or something like that. What do you think?

OCNEVIK: I actually didn't get to see that show.

TOM: I'm not surprised, Kevin.

TONY: You're always busy, Kevin. Probably shooting up again, or....

OCNEVIK: Exactly!

TONY: Molesting....

TOM: Reel Big Fish concert, huh?

OCNEVIK: Yeah, exactly. That was the show where you guys came out doing Tragic Kingdom, and the power went out.

TONY: Exactly. We actually opened the show with Doctor... not Dr. Dre... it's actually Dr. Dre's samples, samples that riff in Nuthin' But A G Thang.

GWEN: We did. We opened up with that song, and my brother, who was still playing with us, he has a problem with playing anything twice in a row. He can only create things, he can't play them twice. And I remember because it was a cover, so you have to play it how it is, you know what I mean? And he couldn't play that line: de-de-de-de-de-de. Was that the line? de-de-de-de-de-de-de doo-doo-doo-doo. And he messed up. We were really angry at the time, but when I look back on it, it was kind of funny. It was just classic Eric Stefani, you know?

TONY: That was a fun show, though.

GWEN: It was a fun show.

TONY: Gwen, on Sad For Me, got the whole audience of thirteen hundred people to sit down. That normally doesn't happen at a rock show. People like to get physical and move around, hit each other, steal purses. Everybody sat down, and that was pretty awesome to see.

GWEN: It's really fun to reflect on these things now because it has been quite a while. We just did the video for the song, Don't Speak. And in the video, Sophie Muller, it was her idea, but she's like, "I want you to have your hair done in a finger wave." And I was like, "Yeah, okay." I was really excited because I always always love that hair-do, and I can never do it. I remember that show we played at Glam Slam, I spent about, I don't know, four hours trying to put my hair in a finger wave. I have a snap shot of it. We should put it on the web site.

OCNEVIK: Totally.

GWEN: And it's like weave with a finger wave with all the pins in it, and it never dried, like before the show, so it really didn't turn out. It was like a really bummer kind of thing. It didn't work out, and if you see the video, my hair just looked like sickening because it's like all gelled down but kind of in a pony-tail. It's kind of ironic, because if you look at our new video, I have my hair exactly how I wanted it, and that was how many years ago?

OCNEVIK: That was what, three, four years ago?

GWEN: Yeah. It's kind of a stupid story, but for a girl, it's kind of a big deal.

OCNEVIK: It's a foreshadowing.

GWEN: It was like a foreshadowing. Exactly.

SIMEON: Okay, fans are going to kill me if I don't at least get something out of Adrian. Do you have any songs you want to comment on? You look like you just woke up.

OCNEVIK: Adrian actually contributed to one song.

GWEN: Ask him about his shoes.

TONY: Wait, wait, wait. That statement you made is incorrect. Can I correct that? Adrian contributed to every song.

ADRIAN: I just show up and play the drum parts when they call me in.

OCNEVIK: That's what I figured.

TONY: That's not true. That's not true.

OCNEVIK: They just pull you out of the closet and just go, "Play something."

TONY: The songs wouldn't be what they are if Adrian didn't put his drum parts down in it, obviously. Because what happens is, even though somebody else may come up with the original concept or idea, once you bring it into the band, it has to be arranged by everybody, and everyone gets really involved in that. And Adrian, just as much as anyone else, gets involved with the arrangement of the songs.

OCNEVIK: Adrian's actually a writer on Brand New Day.

TONY: Move On.

OCNEVIK: That's right—Move On.

ADRIAN: I didn't write anything. The song was already written. I just came in and changed the verses to reggae. So actually, in the industry standard, that's not really song writing. That was a mistake.

TONY: But according to our standard, it is writing.

GWEN: I think the important thing that Adrian does that really can change a song... I look at songs kind of like infant children. There's a conception where the egg gets fertilized, and then it becomes this small little thing. It grows and grows and grows and becomes a song. And with Just A Girl, I can actually remember, when Adrian put the drum part on the song, it was such a weird drum part. And I remember thinking, "That's really weird." That wasn't what I had in mind. Because you're so close to the song when you're the one that listens to the demo tape a million times, and you had something in your head. When you bring it to the band, it changes so much. And sometimes that's scary. But I remember him putting that drum line on and then the next day coming back and going, "that really kind of made the song." Do you remember when you did that?

ADRIAN: I remember the part, but I don't remember what happened. Yeah, basically I think she's right. I'm like the uncle. They bring their kids over, and then I give them beer. I kind of bastardize these children.

OCNEVIK: You teach them dirty words.

ADRIAN: I kind of edit their lives even though I didn't have a partaking in the sperm or... any of the other stuff.

GWEN: He glues the pieces together, really. I remember just the other day, we were working on a brand new song called... it's called Too Bad. Maybe we'll see it in the future some day if I don't change the title. I remember that song, just the night before, me and Tom were working on it. I had totally in my head what I wanted, but then he started playing this part, and the whole song changes. It's amazing how... it becomes a song. I can't really hear all of it in my head. It's pretty neat how it all comes together as a group, how it evolves. It takes a long time to evolve into a song.

TOM: There's also something interesting that happens, that I've noticed, when we've written songs in the past, like for Tragic Kingdom, is when we get it to the point when we get it to the band, Tony and Adrian spend a lot of time detailing their parts, these little transitional sections and little accents here and there together. And usually while they're doing that, I'm kind of like gelling out in the corner, not paying attention and not contributing anything at all and being a big huge lazy guy. So that's part of the dynamic.

GWEN: I think one thing that if you go back in the history of the group—and New Year's Eve will be ten years—our teacher, I think, in some way was my brother, who was really aware of detailing. And there would be times where a song like that, which is on The Beacon Street Collection, we would spend days going over one transition—one tiny little beat section. Nobody would even realize how much time we put into it. And it was really complex. And then the next day we would come, and Eric had been up all night long rewriting that same part, and had a whole new bridge. And all the work we put into it the day before was almost wasted. I think all of that studying and having to go through all that was a way of us learning how to it. And now Tony and Adrian are really good at that. I think it comes from having to go through the torture of Eric Stefani school and this really obscene detailing and taking a lot of time and then changing it and changing it and changing it.

SIMEON: One of our top requests was nude photos of you.

GWEN: I would never do any nude photos. I think that's just silly. Second of all, nobody would want to see a nude picture of me, believe me. It's not anything you would want to see. That's not what this band is about, really, naked pictures of us. I think Adrian would probably look really good naked. Adrian would love to do a nude photo shoot, I think.

ADRIAN: No.

GWEN: I'm not into it, you know what I mean?

TONY: On the Internet, there's a naked picture of you.

GWEN: A naked picture?

TOM: They put your head on somebody's body.

SIMEON: It's obviously not you. It's a bad job.

GWEN: I have mixed feelings about it. Personally, I find that the nude body, especially female, is extremely beautiful, you know what I mean? It's like a beautiful thing. I don't think it's anything to be ashamed of. Everybody's unique. It's funny because it can be taken to this place of perversion where it's almost degrading and sick. So there's this fine line. I love old art of beautiful women's bodies, and I love to draw. I took tons of life drawing classes, so it's really kind of controversial when it comes to your own body. I don't think you really want to... I'm always constantly trying to find things to cover my body, so I don't think I would be into that.

OCNEVIK: Trapped In A Box.

TOM: Interesting story. We moved into this band house in Anaheim. It used to be Gwen's grandparent's house. Me and Eric and Adrian moved in there. One day I was sitting on the porch enjoying our new home, and I wrote this little poem. I'm not a poet. I'm not a lyricist at all, but I just wrote this little poem, and I showed it to Eric. I think this is how it happened. Eric got really excited because he likes when people create things, no matter what they are or how cheesy they might be. And he made up piano parts to it. Remember that? He made up chords. And it ended up turning into a song, but the interesting thing is—and this is the same with Don't Speak—that whole guitar riff that goes kind of near-near-na-near-near-na-near-na-near-na-near is actually written originally as a piano part, and I kind of adapted it to guitar. And it ended up becoming musically the kind of signature part of that song. Which is kind of the same as Don't Speak. So it's the same as that little intro section that goes near-near-near-near... was an organ part that was kind of indirectly lifted from a Supertramp song. Was that Breakfast In America? What song was that?

ADRIAN: I don't know if that's what he was thinking.

TOM: No, but it was kind of influenced or inspired by. And we ended up recording that as a guitar part. I liked it better as an organ part, but I think Matthew Wilder foresaw that Eric was going to be leaving the band and maybe decided we should use a guitar, since we weren't going to have a keyboard player. So I just switched songs completely there.

OCNEVIK: Back to Trapped In A Box....

TOM: But Trapped In A Box. The whole idea of the poem... I just wrote a few lines, and it was just about how I hated when I watched TV too much because I would get sucked in and ended up watching it all day long, and I was trying to avoid it. From those short couple of lines, I think Gwen and Tony and the rest of the band kind of came up with the rest of the lyrics, and kind of really expanded it and made it into a whole 'nother thing.

GWEN: It was so weird back then because there was nobody that was really a lyricist, that took on the role. I mean, Eric would write lyrics, but we would all contribute. For Trapped In A Box, that was one song where each person... we all sat down at the coffee table and okay, "everybody try to write a verse." It was like an exercise because we were all so inexperienced. We were still learning. It was such an accomplishment when it all came together. We were really very proud of it because it had a message behind it. Definitely, I think, everything in this band over the last ten years... what we've become now is stuff that we taught ourselves and learned how to do. It wasn't something like we just had. Our whole show, we used to practice hours and hours and hours on trying to be energetic inside the studio. It was all stuff that really learned. Especially about lyrics for me. Different People was the first song that I ever wrote whole lyrics to. I wrote the whole song. I remember it was a rainy day, and I went in the car—I was at the band house, and I left—I went in the car by myself, and I was listening to the tape, and I was trying to write words while I was driving around. It's not really a good idea to do that because you can zone out, and nowadays I don't do that anymore, but that's how I did that song. I remember when I actually finished the song, I was so proud of myself because I could actually write a whole song.

OCNEVIK: Big City Train.

GWEN: That was influenced by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I remember when that song was written, that was one of our favorite songs. And now it's like we hate that song so much, we cannot even listen to it. But I remember it being a really big deal. We actually have an animated video that goes along with it that my brother did.

OCNEVIK: Yeah, we're going to put that on the web site.

GWEN: Oh, are you? Yeah. It's really good. Remember that? There was such a heavy influence from the music that was happening during that time period, which was... 1990. Was it?

ADRIAN: That song was in '88.

GWEN: It was '88, I guess. Were you with us? You were there.

ADRIAN: No.

GWEN: Adrian wasn't even there. It doesn't seem that far ago, but it was. It was definitely an experimental song. And it sickens me because now I look back and see it was such a time period. It's so dated.

OCNEVIK: I've seen you guys play that before.

GWEN: I don't think we can play it.

ADRIAN: That's one of the few songs, repertoires that I would rather listen to than play.

OCNEVIK: Yeah, I'm sure.

ADRIAN: I think on that first album it actually came out okay, compared to a lot of the other songs.

OCNEVIK: Move On.

GWEN: Oh, that's another lyrics change, remember?

TONY: Yeah, there was original lyrics written for that song, and for some reason, I was allowed to rewrite the lyrics, and I did. It's pretty much about us being a band together and writing music together and just working together.

GWEN: It was during that same time... because we always went through stages of like when we started we were a full-on ska band, and that following is very protective over the music they listen to in the sense of if you tried to expand, and we tried to play disco, they would have been very offended. So we were always going through these stages of change because, from the very day we started, we were always experimenting just because we didn't know any better. We weren't really professionals. We were just always learning. I think Move On... when Tony wrote those words, it was about moving on in the band and moving on with our style and not worrying so much about what people thought about us. We're going to keep going and change. And that's one song that's really lasted. We still play that every show, and it's still really powerful. I remember you rewrote those words. I can still remember the original lyrics. How...? Benjamin Franklin... What was it? I can't remember.

ADRIAN: Flew the kite...

GWEN: Flew the kite or something. Eric has written them, I think.

TOM: It was a history lesson.

GWEN: Yeah, it was a history lesson. But the new words I think have way more meaning to No Doubt, to the band.

OCNEVIK: It's almost like your anthem. To a point. It's like this is what we're about, right?

GWEN: It is. It is, really. Because don't be afraid, let your feelings show. That whole thing is just basically what we've been all about. We've always always played what we felt like. Not to say that we weren't influenced by things on the way. Definitely, all the different music that was popular during the ten years that we were around was an influence on us. I remember Nirvana. When that was all happening, when our first record came out in '92, we were illegal, you know? No one wanted to hear about No Doubt. But I can remember sitting and listening to those lyrics and being so inspired by such amazing songs and same with everybody here, and the exploding choruses. And I remember a song that was directly directly influenced by Nirvana—which you would never see any kind of connection—was Open The Gate. Don't you think?

TONY: You mean exploding choruses?

GWEN: Yeah. (singing) Open the gate! You know, really trying to... it's funny because sometimes you can be influenced by something, and you won't be able to tell because you can't copy someone. You are you, so....

ADRIAN: Unless you're Rancid....

TOM: There's actually a lot of bands who know how to do that well. But back to Move On. It was just about not conforming to this one style, to sum it up. Anti-conformist song.

GWEN: And also, I think our whole theory and goal of the group has always been to create our own style. I don't think we ever have because we're such a bunch of rip-offs. We steal from every single style of music, and becomes this big salad of—

(end of tape)

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