No Doubt, Offspring Latest Chapter in Local Music History
Irvine chip maker Broadcom Corp. has showcased Orange County’s technological prowess to the world. And Disneyland and Anaheim’s sports teams have put the area into the national,even global,mindset. But, in a way, no one has done as much to raise OC’s profile as Gwen Stefani. “I’m just a girl from Orange County,” says the eye-catching Stefani in interview after interview about her top-selling rock band No Doubt, which, like Stefani, hails from Anaheim. In articles from the Idaho Statesman to Hong Kong’s South China Morning News, Stefani and No Doubt seldom are mentioned without Orange County. While Broadcom and Disneyland often get labeled as being in Southern California, Stefani and No Doubt play up their OC tie every chance they get. “It’s an excuse not to grow up, not to get real jobs,” Stefani told The Straits Times of Singapore about No Doubt’s success. “I mean, who from Orange County gets to do that?” No Doubt is the most popular of a group of OC bands that have gone on to national success. Others include The Offspring, which hails from Garden Grove, and Sugar Ray, which calls Newport Beach home. Collectively, the three bands have sold 30 million copies of their most recent releases, a feat worth about $400 million in sales, according to market tracker SoundScan Inc. Next week, Offspring is set to release its sixth album and give away $1 million of its own money in a promotion. Of course, most of the revenue generated by these album sales never makes it back to OC. And many local musicians who hit it big go on to live elsewhere (Stefani now lives in Los Angeles). But the music and the bands themselves provide invaluable exposure for the area. “An LA band hitting it big is not a story,but an OC band is,” said Jim Guerinot, manager for Offspring and head of Laguna Beach-based record label Time Bomb, home to Fullerton punk rock band Social Distortion, among others. Both Offspring and No Doubt hark back to OC’s punk scene, which began in the late 1970s and early 1980s with Fullerton’s Social Distortion, Agent Orange, The Adolescents and TSOL of Huntington Beach.
Long History
OC’s claim to musical fame goes beyond punk and its descendants. Rewind to the 1930s and the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, where big-band leader Stan Kenton got his start. Teen-agers flocked in every Saturday night, and during spring break they rented houses nearby, hung out at the beach all day and drank beer and danced all night. Thirty years later, surf guitar king Dick Dale regularly shredded the Rendezvous with the loud, instrumental rock he developed with the help of guitar maker Leo Fender, an Anaheim native whose factory was in Fullerton. Dale’s music blended the Middle Eastern melodies he heard at home as a kid with the Bohemian, supercharged spirit of surfing he was introduced to when his parents moved to OC in 1954. The Chantays were another local surf group, having formed in Santa Ana. Their contribution: the megahit “Pipeline.” Also during the 1960s, the Righteous Brothers were riding their blue-eyed soul to the top of the charts. Bobby Hatfield hailed from Anaheim, while Bill Medley was a Santa Ana boy. The duo has the distinction of being the singers of the most-played song in the history of American radio: “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling,” with 7 million plays, according to performing-rights organization Broadcast Music Inc. In the 1970s, the laid-back folk rock of Jackson Browne, another Fullerton resident, set the stage for the California singer-songwriter movement. Browne started his career as a folkie, and early on worked with two other acts with Orange County roots: the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Tim Buckley. OC’s location next to Los Angeles has played a big part in making the area a hotbed for musical talent. “Proximity to LA is very important,” said Rob Kling, co-author of “Postsuburban California: The Transformation of Postwar Orange County, California.” “Denver may be comparably affluent and also has a nice quality of life,but less musical innovation,” he said. The emergence of OC’s rock spawning ground reflects the area’s larger transformation, according to Kling and co-authors Spencer Olin and Mark Poster. In their 1991 book, they maintain that OC has experienced the kind of rapid social change in the past 40 years that most nation-states and major cities see over the course of a century. Calling OC one of five postsuburban regions,along with Long Island, Silicon Valley, Northern New Jersey and Fort Lauderdale, Fla.,they contend that the county possesses a cultural vitality much stronger than cities with comparable populations.
‘Extremely Hip’
While OC’s musical legacy runs deep, bands like No Doubt and Offspring have helped tout the place as cutting-edge. “For a long time, Orange County was perceived as a lame community that spawned the Righteous Brothers and nothing else,” says Ken Phebus, booking agent for Anaheim’s Sun Theatre. “It’s funny how in a short span of time it went from being very lame to being extremely hip.” Phebus should know: Before moving to the Sun, the lifelong OC resident spent 13 years booking acts for San Juan Capistrano’s Coach House. Because rock music is all about rebellion, OC is a natural spawning ground, according to Phebus: “If you’re going to be rebellious to conservatism, the best place to come is Orange County.” Another reason so much great music has come from OC is that the county is a cross-section of America and makes a perfect test market, Phebus said. “It’s interesting to see a parallel in the clothing industry,” he said. “All the hip clothing manufacturers and designers we have here are a barometer of the entire country and sell to the entire country,and that’s what’s happening with music here.” n
