No Doubt: Gwen Pals.

No Doubt play Festival Hall on Friday.

No Doubt have been together for 15 years and spent a great deal of that time touring worldwide, I ask guitarist Tom Dumont how touring for so long takes it's toll on the band?

“That's a good question. The last four months we've been on tour, it's really tiring honestly. I mean it's cool 'cause we love what we do and we feel really blessed and privileged that we can do this for a living but at the same time I think it's a human thing that if you're away from home and you work that hard and that long it really does kind of wear you down. I'll put it this way; I was listening to an interview on the radio with The Red Hot Chilli Peppers and the radio interviewer asked their bassist Flea about touring. Flea said that ‘touring is the most the most awful, inhumane, terrible thing'. I was thinking at the time god he really hates being on tour, how weird. But there's something that he said that's true it does get really hard.”

“The problem with it, as far as playing shows goes, is that after you play 20 or 30 shows in a row we tend to end up burnt out doing it. You want to give your best every night and you want it to be special every night and unique and a really excellent thing and sometimes you feel that you're not trying your hardest and it starts to become routine and a bit of a grind then that's really bad. It's really cool, this Australian tour is great it's short and sweet and we're going to not be burnt out and we're all home for a few weeks before we leave. I think everyone is looking forward to it. In the future we're going to tour more in a way so we don't get burnt out. We're so lucky we get to do music we don't want to spoil it by overdoing it.”

This year Gwen has been a little sick on and off, how does that effect the band as a whole? I hear she takes good care of her voice?

“She's very disciplined about it. She doesn't drink, she doesn't talk to much, she doesn't go out and party like we do, she stays in a lot of nights when we're out.”

I've been told that she doesn't tend to hug fans that much due to some sort of germ factor?

“Yeah. Everyday we do meet and greets and we meet a lot of fans and it just takes one kid to spread a cold to Gwen and she gets sick. Her instrument is her voice; it comes out of her throat and mouth so if she has the cold or the flu it makes it really hard for her to do what she does. On this last tour she got sick and we had to cancel to shows and it was a horrible thing and everybody in Pittsburgh and Cleveland hates us now. Financially it's very taxing on us. When Gwen's sick she still puts on a great show and puts everything into it but she'll be in a bad mood... not bad mood, just run down. It sucks to be sick and have to travel. So we try to keep her well.”

When you recorded Rock Steady you had five albums worth of stuff written; will any of that ever see the light of day?

“Hopefully, little by little. There are four really good songs I know of that will find their way out some how. There's a song called New Friend that is kind of a dance hall thing and that will come out as a b-side some point. There's another song called Everything In Time which was recorded for Return Of Saturn and then we re-recorded it for Rock Steady it'll be on a soundtrack one day, maybe next year.”

Don't you have a master plan to release an album of B-sides one day?

“Yeah we do. I have loads and loads of tapes of old demos and when we're not touring as much I'm gong to get those old reels and transfer them into pro tools and try to get it all mixed and someday I hope to put it all out. All the old demos before Tragic Kingdom, all the demos and B-sides for Return Of Saturn and all that stuff for Rock Steady. It's going to be awesome. I bet ya I'll do it next year, we're going to take the year off next year.”

Rock Steady is seen as the party album, Return Of Saturn was the mature serious album what's next?

“Good Question. We don't know. But that's the fun thing not knowing what we're going to do next just knowing it's not going to be like the last. That's what keeps it exciting for us.”