Top 45 Tony Kanal Quotes

There’s no way to escape who we are.

On No Doubt’s second visit to Paisley Park, sometime around 1999, we were working on a song with Prince called Waiting Room,’ which would later be released on our Rock Steady album.

Sometimes in my mind I still think I’m 16 onstage and my body tells me that I’m not 16 anymore.

I don’t see us as being part of that 90s revival. We were always a band, even when we weren’t playing together.

I’m just always impressed with what Gwen pulls off. She’s amazing.

One of the best things about being in a band for so long and having any level of success is the opportunity to go and play in different creative sandboxes.

We were on tour for ‘Tragic Kingdom’ for 28 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.

We played one show in Bangalore in a field where they’d never had a rock show before and when we got there, they were actually cutting the grass with scissors.

There’s a different beauty to big and small audiences, and I don’t think one is better.

I’m not given the opportunity – nor do I want it – to write my own lyrics.

It’s always hard to talk about music and describe a song.

So, I went to see No Doubt play on March 14, 1987 at the show at Fender’s Ballroom in Long Beach, California. A week later I tried out and I joined the band and that was obviously a completely incredible thing for me and a life changing moment.

We’re a vegan family, and my kids were brought up vegan, with a respect for all species, and we don’t, as humans, have the right to exploit those species.

We’ve had lots of breaks, especially over the last 10 years, so to still be getting together and to be able to get on stage and play together is a big deal.

We make hotels keep their gyms open late so we can work out.

If the audience is bringing it, it always goes up 10 notches.

We wrote the early idea for Undone’ but it just wasn’t working. Then Gwen had to go to England for some family stuff and when she was there, she sent me an email saying that she had an idea for what to do with Undone.’ She sent me these demos and she was totally right, there was something there.

As pop songs, the early stuff like Electricity’ and Enola Gay’ were such inspirations to Gwen and I, especially melodically. They inspired us to try and do our own John Hughes prom-scene movie moment kind of songs.

There’s something to be said for perseverance. We’ve been sticking it out a long time.

We would spend every morning drinking rum and Cokes or Red Stripes for breakfast, to get our heads in the right space. It’s a wonder we got stuff done.

We would say, OK, the B section isn’t good enough, let’s rewrite that,’ until we felt the song was great.

For the first time ever we have our own buses. That’s purely out of necessity because Gwen’s got her nannies and the babies on her bus, and Tom has his wife and his nanny and baby, and Adrian his wife, nanny and their son.

Starting out, you’re just doing it because you love it so much; that’s what I remember about us. Looking back now, some of the things that seemed like big obstacles seem so small now – ‘Wow, how will we get through this?’ But we always did.

We’ve had those experiences as a band and you fast forward to just the crazy rock ‘n’ roll nights, where you’d try to outlast each other and see who could drink the most. Fast forward to now and it really is amazing and nice how family-friendly Vegas has become.

The one thing I’ll say about Dreamcar and the music we’ve created is that we never set out to do anything specific.

No Doubt is a very specific thing that’s comprised of Tom and Adrian and myself and Gwen, and it will always be that way.

We’re from Anaheim, that’s our stomping grounds, that’s where we grew up. That’s where we practiced in the garage, that’s where we went to high school.

We would write our songs, then we’d have a programmer come in and add, for lack of a better term, bloops and bleeps on top of everything. Of course, the funny thing is that a lot of the modern-day dance music people are super-influenced by the ’70s and ’80s stuff that we already love. So it was a natural fit for No Doubt.

We got to live though the record industry in its heyday.

We want to sound modern, but we’re still influenced by ska, reggae and Eighties U.K. bands.

Stick out the bad times because there’s always good times coming up. When you come out on the other side, it’s amazing.

Using the computer to record was a cool way to keep all the original ideas intact.

I knew we would eventually get back together, but I don’t think any of us really knew when it was going to happen. It had to be a situation where all four of us felt like it was time. It’s just too personal and too big, with too much history, to do any other way.

It’s the little things that stick with you though. Like the boring airport layovers and the bus breaking down in Prague. Those were the real bonding moments.

The fact that our band has weathered so much and stayed together for so long and we still get on stage and have a good time together, that’s a big deal for us. We don’t take that for granted.

We’ve always found a muse for a record – something that’s a unifying inspiration for the four of us.

If your fans are comfortable, then people are going to be stoked to be there.

We were teens in the Eighties, and that’s the kind of music that we all grew up on. When you’re in those really formative years, from, like, 13 to 19, what you listen to is so influential, and I think that’s just part of our being now.

We came from that whole school of thinking that you give people 150 percent every time.

It’s a different world now. You look out there and you can see so many people filming with their cameras nowadays. I can go on YouTube and see last night’s show if I want to. It’s out there.

We know how fickle the public and the music industry is.

Look, the Jamaican dancehall stuff, the reggae influences and the ska influence, are always going to be part of our DNA.

Gwen is someone that girls can look up to and feel like they know. She is very Everygirl.

I think going through some of the hard times makes you appreciate it even more when things are going well. It makes you realise how fortunate you are and not to take things for granted.

We’re getting older and we can’t party like we used to.