The heartbreaking story of No Doubt's original frontman John Spence, who would later be replaced by Gwen Stefani.
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No Doubt would have a fair deal of success in the 90’s and early 2000’s thanks to albums like Tragic kindgom and Rock Steady.. Prior to Gwen Stefani fronting the group, No Dobut was led by John Spence in the mid to late 80’s. But what happened to Spence and how did Stefani become the group’s frontwomen? That’s what we’re going to explore in today’s video.
In the mid 1980’s John Spence would live in Orange, California and work at a Dairy Queen alongside Gwen Stefani and her older brother Eric. The trio would eventually concoct a plan to start a band in 1986. Calling thsemselves no doubt. The name for the group would be inspired by a phrase Spence used time and time again to respond to others. The earliest incarnation no doubt would be a nine piece group that took inspiration from British ska groups like Madness, The English Beat, and The Specials, along with the stage antics of the punk group Bad Brains. Spence would front the group, while Stefani would do backing vocals and Eric would play keyboards. Eric would tell the LA times in 1992 "Those bands had all broken up. We wanted to give their music to the fans again and just keep it alive," Gwen meanwhile would tell Loudersound 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," Gwen would later tell Interview Magazine. "I wasn’t doing anything, and he would say, “Come in here and sing with me!” By her brothers own admission Stefani was reluctant to sing in the group and was shy at first.
No Doubt soon started becoming a fixture on the Anaheim party circuit with Stefani recalling to Spin “We sucked,“but for some reason there was automatically this built-in following. People loved the fact that it was a girl, that it was 2-Tone, that it was me and John up there.” She would add to the LA Times "He (referring to Spence) couldn't really sing, but he could yell, and he was really amazing on stage,""He did back-flips, and was really energetic. He was the one who was so happy all the time. Despite his onstage antics, offstage to some of those close to him he was quiet and introverted and rarely talked about his troubled homelife.
By mid December of 87 Spence sold his clothes, scooter and a number of his records. In addition to that he had recently crashed his father’s car and had split from his girlfriend. Looking back those close to him noted that the frontman had probably planned what was about to come next.
It was the same year Indian Born and british raised bassist Tony Kanal joined the band and soon enough became the group’s manager and Gwen’s boyfriend.
It was on December 21, 1987 Kanal received a phone call from Eric Stefani: recalling to Spin “He just said, ‘Come over right away.’ I got there and he said, ‘John’s dead.’ The frontman had taken his life, alone in his car at a parking lot of a local anaheim building. All of those who were close to Spence were shocked at the news and didn’t see any warning signs of what was to come.
Several days prior to his death Spence had passed his drivers test with bandmate Alan Meade recalling in the book Gwen Stefani and No Doubt a simple kind of life.” He was so happy.” spencer’s death would come four days prior to Christmas, and he would be just 18 years old. No Doubt had only been together for about nine months at the time of his death.Those close to him would reveal in the same book that after his death more pieces of the puzzle seemed to come together with one of his friends revealing in teh same book, they had learned about a previous time Spence had tried to take his life, nine months prior, but failed.
Given what she knew about his background Stefani was shocked at the news recalling . I knew he had problems with his family, I knew he had problems with depression in high school. But when it happened, things were so normal. It was awful. It was horrible. She would elaborate telling Spin magazine “There were some problems there,” “He was kind of in and out of high school. His mom kept taking him out of school. He wasn’t really in with a bad crowd, but his mom was really paranoid about it. For all the years I knew the guy, I only w