Tony Kanal Talks 'Transcendent' No Doubt Reunion, New Film Composing Career: 'Everything in the Last 37 Years Has Culminated in This Moment'

"If you had asked me three and a half months ago, 'Are you guys ever going to play again?' I would've said, 'I don't know.' And then it came together. And so, over the last three months, life has taken a completely different direction than it has been for many, many years. And that's a beautiful place to be."

So says No Doubt bassist Tony Kanal, effeverscently chatting with Music Times via Zoom from his California desert hotel room. Six days earlier, he and his reunited bandmates Gwen Stefani, Tom Dumont, and Adrian Young spectacularly triumphed at Coachella, playing their first show in nine years — and quite possibly one of the greatest shows in the festival's history. And as No Doubt get ready to do it all over again at Coachella weekend two, their fans are naturally wondering what's next. Kanal plays it coy when asked this elephant-in-the-hotel-room question, saying, "We haven't discussed anything in the future," but enticingly adds: "I will say the energy and vibes and everything have been so positive that I think there's going to be some discussions."

However, whether No Doubt's reunion is the start of a new chapter for the group or just an epic one-off, the clearly invigorated Kanal has plenty going on. He and No Doubt's Dumont and Young will be back onstage together next month at Los Angeles's Cruel World festival with their Davey Havok-fronted new wave supergroup, Dreamcar (with whom he hopes to release more new music, following this month's three-song Dream EP). And he's embarking on a whole new solo career as a film and TV composer. After forming a friendship/mentorship with Emmy-winning The Arrowverse/Greyhound/Riverdale composer Blake Neely, and collaborating with Neely on the title theme of HBO Max's gen:LOCK and the score for Netflix's smash Purple Hearts, Kanal recently scored Hulu's Single Drunk Female on his own, and he's excited about the future.

"The one thing I've realized is I just need to stay creative," Kanal confesses. "I've been doing this for a long time. It's been 37 years since No Doubt started. There's been a lot of peaks and valleys, a lot of really high moments and lots of empty moments too. For me, at 53 years old and about to turn 54 in a few months, I've realized I just need to keep working, no matter what it is, constantly, and push myself to find that next project."

Below, Kanal reflects on his "transcendent" experience performing at Coachella for a multi-generational audience while two generations of his own family watched from the wings; how L.A. tastemaker station KROQ, the second wave of British ska, and Long Beach punk club Fender's Ballroom made him the musician he is today; how some wise words from Gene Simmons put No Doubt's legacy in perspective for him; whether there could ever be a No Doubt biopic; and how "everything in the last 37 years" beautifully "culminated" backstage at Coachella as he looked into his bandmates' eyes.

First of all, I want to congratulate you. No Doubt's reunion was one of the best things I have ever witnessed at Coachella, and it seems many other people who watched it thought so too.

TONY KANAL: Thank you so much. It was so much bigger than we could have imagined. Obviously it's been nine years, and we obviously prepped a lot for it, but wow. It was just, like, transcendent. It felt so much bigger than the four of us. It was just a beautiful experience.

When you say that it was bigger than you'd imagined, I observed your facial expressions a lot during the show because I was standing on your side of the stage, and I could almost see you processing it in real time — like an "Oh, wow, this is going very well!" kind of thing.

Yeah, it was one of those times onstage where everything was just hitting. Even with the vibes leading into it at rehearsals, the energy that we were bringing to rehearsals. It'd been so long since we'd played, so I was going into every rehearsal feeling like, "This is a show that I'm doing right now." Every single rehearsal. By the time it came to the actual show, it was like, "Oh, we've already kind of done this quite a few times over the last couple of weeks." But in real time, it was just a beautiful experience. My kids were there. I have two daughters, a 10-year-old and a 13-year-old, and when No Doubt played last time, they were too young to remember. We have videos of them on the side of the stage of big shows, but for them to actually see it in person, that was really, really big for me. And also, for my parents to be there — my dad just turned 89 two weeks ago, and they've supported me since the beginning, since I was 16 years old. For them to see that again was really important to me.

So, having all those feelings, knowing all that stuff, reuniting with my bandmates, being up there, being able to rock — and then doing it at Coachella? There's that personal connection for us, because [Goldenvoice CEO and Coachella co-founder] Paul Tollett gave us our first shows. We used to play at Fender's Ballroom in Long Beach in 1987. It was like the most punk-rock dive club. .... I mean, there's no better place for us to come back to and perform again after nine years than Coachella, because of the Paul T. connection. Fender's was where some of our earliest shows were, and they were all Goldenvoice shows. We would go into the office, which was just this little room, with Paul and settle up for a hundred dollars, cash, for the band — that's what we got paid back then! Everything kind of comes full-circle to be able to play at Coachella.

The sense of joy was so infectious and evident onstage between you guys at Coachella. Was there any rust when you started rehearsing, or did everything fall into place right away as if no time had passed?

The way we did it is as soon as we realized it was happening, Tom, Adrian, and I got together in Adrian's basement and started doing the woodshedding, like, "OK, let's get through what the potential set could be." And then of course, we were exchanging setlist ideas between the four of us. There was so much so much prep time of getting it together that by the time [multi-instrumentalist] Gabe [McNair] and Steve [Bradley] and Gwen joined us, we had already spent so much time together. And then the energy that Gwen brought to rehearsals, the energy that Gabe and Steve always bring, just built on top of everything. And it just kept going and it never stopped. It didn't ever stop. We had a rehearsal in the desert on site, onstage, a few days before Saturday night, and even that was awesome, just running it with all the production in the evening and being able to see the lights and everything. So, I would say there wasn't any rust. I don't know why. But it was just like, "Boom, here we go. We're doing this."

The audience was super-young and super-familiar with your catalog. Olivia Rodrigo, who guested with you, is a superfan, and she's only 21. Did that surprise you? Veteran artists do not always go over well with young Coachella crowds — which we witnessed Saturday when Blur played right before No Doubt and unfortunately got a lackluster response.

I don't know if it surprised us. I've got to be honest; I don't know if I gave it too much thought. We were so focused on the show and just making it the best it could be, and then the physicality of it and shape and all that stuff. But pleasant is an understatement — it was such an exciting thing to experience, to see that many people enjoying the show. And you're right, it's a very young crowd. There was this moment... you can only see back so far when you're onstage just with the lights and everything, but on "Spiderwebs," when Gwen made everyone put their hands in the air and the audience lights went on, I looked out and I thought, "Oh, crap. There's way more layers to this."

No Doubt has aways been popular and successful, but I don't know if they've been held in the critical regard that they should be, as innovators and trailblazers. It's a bit of a loaded question, but do you think this Coachella triumph might change the critical perception of the band's legacy? You're eligible for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame at this point...

Yeah, possibly. I mean, I try not to think about that stuff too much. You just don't know what tomorrow's going to bring. If you had asked me three and a half months ago, "Are you guys ever going to play again?" I would've said, "I don't know." And then it came together. And so, over the last three months, life has taken a completely different direction than it has been for many, many years. And that's a beautiful place to be. I'm just enjoying the moment right now and enjoying the fact that I'm out here and all our hotel rooms are next to each other. And last Friday, we had so much fun last weekend that now we're like, "We want the same rooms!" And we had a band dinner last Friday night, the night before the show, and it was our first band dinner in many, many years. It was just such a great thing, with the wives and kids. It was just awesome. Maybe I need to put something together for tonight as well, prior to tomorrow's show.

I did not realize that this Coachella reunion came together only three and a half months ago! I figured it was like a year in the works, and you guys were just really good at keeping a secret.

To be clear, it's been many conversations over the many years. Many conversations. But it only became a reality a few days before we announced it, in January.

Was that down to the Paul Tollett connection?

Paul has been an incredible champion of the band, and is a big reason why we are playing these shows, yes.

What's also interesting is you'll be playing another Goldenvoice festival, Cruel World, next month — with Dreamcar, who until recently hadn't played or released any new music since 2017. Dreamcar was actually my No. 1 album of 2017! It's so interesting that these two reunions are happening one on top of the other.

I know! When it rains, it pours — and I'm saying that in the most positive way, because I love rainy weather [laughs]. The Dreamcar thing came about before the No Doubt thing came about. Last year, Tom, Adrian, and I were playing a benefit show for the Musack foundation at [Musack founder] Donick Cary's house in his backyard that he does every year. We played with all the kids who came up through Musack's music program, and it was really great. We asked Davey, "Would you be interested in jumping up for one song?" and he's like, "Yeah, let's do a Ramones song." So, we did that and then ended up doing one Dreamcar song. There was so much vibe and energy that Goldenvoice reached out, and it was a resounding yes from all four of us. I'm looking forward to that because I want to relearn those songs; it's been a while since we played them. That is literally happening on Monday for me, getting back into my studio and just woodshedding for the next week, so I'm ready for the Dreamcar rehearsals coming up.

And that reunion has actual begat new music. I know Dreamcar's new EP only features two new originals plus one Bowie cover, but are we going to get a second full Dreamcar album one day?

Those were songs that were remaining from [the first album sessions]. We went in and finished those and Davey put new vocals on them and things like that, and then we recorded "Moonage Daydream" because we played that live back in the day. So, will there be new Dreamcar music once again? I hope so. That would be so much fun. We have quite a few other songs that we could still finish up as well, so we'll see.

And then on top of all this reunion stuff, you have this whole new career in the film world. What made you want to go down that path?

This was due to my friend Blake Neely, who's a really accomplished film and TV composer, conductor. He was doing some crossover stuff, and he had a full orchestra playing and he wanted live bass and drums. He had just seen me play prior to that [performing Oingo Boingo's "Dead Man's Party" at Danny Elfman's Nightmare Before Christmas Hollywood Bowl show], so I was fresh in his mind — luckily! He asked if I would play bass and if [Jane's Addiction drummer] Stephen Perkins would play drums with the orchestra for this particular project he was doing. This was back in 2019. Stephen and I are friends but had never actually played together, although we knew each other for all these years. But, little-known fact: Stephen plays steel drum on the intro and outro of "Spiderwebs" on our Tragic Kingdom record! So, I've known him from way back, and obviously I'm a huge fan of Jane's. So anyways, Stephen and I did a two-day session with Blake, and then Blake and I just kind of hit it off and became good friends.

And then a little bit after that, the pandemic hit and everything got shut down. I said to Blake, "Is there any chance we could keep on playing? I don't want to lose my chops." He said yeah, so I went to his studio in North Hollywood and we sat in the live room, just the two of us, 20 feet apart. He played piano, I played bass, and we were trying to be safe because nobody knew what was going on back then [with COVID-19]. We'd record stuff maybe once a week or every two weeks over the summer of 2020, and we developed a friendship. Then he invited me to take a room at his studio, and I started immersing myself, learning how to write on Logic by myself. In the past I've always had the luxury, at least in the later years of No Doubt, of having an engineer and people to record for us, so this is a very different experience. I learned how to use Logic and started recording, and then over the next year Blake and I would write some ideas and work on them together. He's very generous with his time and spirit; he always has 12 TV shows or movies going on at any one time. We'd get together and drink some tequila and work on ideas, and through his mentorship, he taught me how to work in this new world.

We were just writing to write at first, so there were no limitations to what we were writing. We built up an hour's worth of music over that year. And then before the end of the year, we were going to send it out to all the music supervisors we know. Dec. 31 comes around... and it was like 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and he calls me and goes, "Dude, we never sent out the reel!" I go, "No worries, we can do that on Monday" — New Year's Eve was on a Friday that year — and he goes, "No, no, we said we're going to do it!" So, I was like, "All right, I'll come over now." We put together our reel and sent it out really quick, and then three days later, that next Monday, we got a call to do this movie Purple Hearts. That was a great experience for me, and after that I was like, "OK, awesome, what are we doing next?" And he's like, "We're not doing anything next. You're going to go get your own thing!" So, I went out there and I got Single Drunk Female Season 2. That took me through most of last year, and then this No Doubt and Dreamcar stuff came about, which is what I've been focused on for the last few months. But it's a really new, exciting world for me, and I can't wait to see where it goes. I've never been trained classically in composing or anything like that, so I think there's something unorthodox that maybe I can hopefully bring to these projects. I think sometimes you can create some magic doing that.

I think it's interesting that the origins of your partnership with Blake Neely go back to a Danny Elfman concert, because Elfman kind of set the gold standard of an unorthodox film composer who started in a scrappy, SoCal alternative band. I imagine that Oingo Boingo was a formative band for you. They were pretty much the house band on KROQ during the '80s.

Oh, yeah, I love Boingo. And I grew up on KROQ. I moved to California in 1981. I remember I had a summer job between 9th and 10th grade where I was filing cards or something like that, and I had my Walkman and I would just listen to KROQ all day. It was the saving grace of this summer job. None of my friends were working, and I was like, "Man, I'm here, but at least I've got this music." It was such a beautiful thing. KROQ was everything. The first time we heard a song of ours on KROQ was so big for us. It was just like, "Oh my God, this is the holy grail of alternative music, and here we are!" The station that first rejected us had now embraced us and supported us so much.

KROQ rejected you? Why?

I think the program director at the time when we were first submitted — maybe it was our first album — was just not feeling it. Maybe the music didn't work at that time. But yeah, eventually it worked. Obviously!

Who are some other film composers that you admire?

Nino Rota, who did the Godfather movies — I've been watching those movies on repeat because I can actually put them on in the background and they can just be comforting, every line. I mean, that soundtrack is spectacular, but I don't do orchestrations and stuff like that. John Murphy, the guy who did 28 Days Later, he's incredible. I think for me it's maybe the less-is-more approach. And whenever I start new ideas, I always start with synthesizers, like '80s-based synthesizers, because it just feels like home and it feels comforting for me. ... I actually haven't been playing bass a lot in that [screen composing] world, and that's the coolest thing, because I'm not a keyboard player! But to play keyboards and take my time and figure out things, that's been so exciting. With the software of all the different instruments and stuff like that, the world's at your fingertips. Everything's available. If you want a sound, you can find it. That's been a really big part of it for me because I'm not a great keyboard player, so approaching it from that point of view has been this new, exciting way of writing music for me.

I can tell how excited you are, just hearing you talk about it!

Yeah, the one thing I've realized is I just need to stay creative. I've been doing this for a long time. It's been 37 years since No Doubt started. There's been a lot of peaks and valleys, a lot of really high moments and lots of empty moments too. For me, at 53 years old and about to turn 54 in a few months, I've realized I just need to keep working, no matter what it is, constantly, and push myself to find that next project. So, I have stuff lined up and I know that's really healthy for me, because I need to keep moving. And that's something I just realized in the last few years. I mean, I kind of knew it, I think I felt it in my gut all these years, but it became very apparent to me over the last few years.

When you say you've had empty moments, what do you mean?

Just not working, not playing music. It's like, you think you're taking a break, but you're not playing music. I got together with Tom and Adrian yesterday and we jammed the [No Doubt Coachella] set again, and halfway through it I was like, "Ohhh, it feels so good just to be playing again!" — even after just a few days of not playing.

We are just doing Coachella right now. We haven't discussed anything in the future, but I will say the energy and vibes and everything have been so positive that I think there's going to be some discussions.

When Gwen jumped on you, piggyback-style, there was a tweet from someone who screenshotted it and was like, "Do the children of America know how big this is?" It was epic, for sure.

Yeah, that's a big moment. Those are big moments. Being onstage with her and Tom and Adrian, I feel like I'm 16 again, like when we started. My body doesn't feel that way [laughs], but I feel that way mentally and emotionally, and I think all of us do. We bring that energy to it, and it's bigger than the sum of its parts. What has happened with our music, we are so fortunate, and we are so grateful.

Oh man, I've got to tell you a story because you'll appreciate this: So, we were at rehearsals at SIR two weeks ago, and we were done with the day and just sitting there and talking, just chilling, and our stage manager says, "Gene Simmons wants to come in and say hi." We're like, "Awesome!" So, he comes in, and he had many words of wisdom, but he goes, "The one thing I want to tell you guys is your music is the soundtrack to people's lives. It's much bigger than what you might think it is." That kind of stuck with me, and it's been very apparent since the show on Saturday that the music has taken on that level. It's a force of its own.

There was a moment during "Don't Speak" when Gwen paused and gazed out into the crowd, and it seemed like she was soaking it all in, processing the enormity of it all. Was there any specific moment for you like that?

There were two moments. One I mentioned before, which was when the crowd lights went up during "Spiderwebs" at the end of the set and I saw the vast amount of humans that were there celebrating with us. That was beautiful. The other was the moment when we came up on the riser at the beginning of the show. It was just the four of us underneath that stage, and nobody knew what was going to happen that night, but there's a moment where you look in each other's eyes and you're like, "Wow, we're doing this. This is about to happen. We're about to come up on this riser and play for 75 minutes." And that was like, "OK, everything in the last 37 years has culminated in this moment, right here where we're looking at each other." Yeah. That was one of those moments.

Since we're talking about comebacks, I feel like it's time for a fourth wave of ska. It was very cool that No Doubt played Coachella same day as your peers, Sublime. And I saw Lynval Golding from the Specials was backstage at your Coachella show...

Yeah, he's good friend. He's an awesome sweetheart of a human.

And No Doubt played Prince Buster's "One Step Beyond," which a lot of KROQ kids probably know as a Madness song. I feel your reunion could help kickstart a ska/pop revival.

Yeah, I don't know; I haven't given that much thought. I mean, we grew up with Madness, the English Beat, the Specials, the Selector, the Bodysnatchers... all of those English bands were so influential on us. To be able to talk about them and make kids aware of how influential they were to us, I do feel that's such a great opportunity. I always try to do that. Lynval flew down for our show, which was so sweet, and to have those beautiful words that he said and be able to share those with people, if it turns the younger generation on to these incredible bands that helped form our band, that's great! We wouldn't be our band without those bands.

OK, one last question. Hear me out: No Doubt biopic! How about we merge your worlds of film and music together and do a band biopic? It can start with No Doubt's high school days, go through to all the interpersonal drama with you and Gwen, and end with the full-circle moment of Gwen riding your back at Coachella...

It almost writes itself, doesn't it? [laughs]

I mean, it really does. And you could write the score for it. And then you could win an Oscar.

Well, I'd love that!

And then you'd have the "O," plus the "G" your already have, in EGOT. And then you can work on No Doubt's jukebox musical and earn the "T."

Hmmm. I do think our songs would lend themselves to a musical. That would be fun.

I guess there's a world of possibilities for what's next. In all seriousness, would you consider this stuff?

Baby steps. One step at a time.

One step beyond?

Yeah [laughs]. One step beyond.

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Tags

No Doubt, Coachella