Kanal: There was a song that was held over from the Return of Saturn sessions that we worked on with Prince. It just didn't seem to fit in with the stuff we were doing on Return of Saturn, so that was a song we took out of the vaults this year, finished it up and made it on the record. It's called "Waiting Room."

Norris: Amazing, too. Although it sounds like a Prince track, that sort tribal quality was something that I was totally surprised by. It was awesome.

Stefani: It's so weird how it fits so perfectly. I called him, like, "Yo, dude, you won't believe how it fits into the record!" It's like we made it for this album. It was so ahead of its time.

Norris: Even though you worked with a variety of people, are there any threads throughout the record, musically or thematically?

Stefani: You gotta give that over to Dumont. [Laughs]

Kanal: He gets all the hard questions.

Tom Dumont: There are probably a few different threads — I mean, definitely. The sense of trying to have a great groove and something that if you pump it through big, huge soundsystem speakers, it's gonna rock. That's the point of most of it. There's a lot of weird Star Wars noises. A very naïve approach to keyboards where me and Tony kinda don't know what we're doing. Just twiddling knobs: "That sounds cool." Gwen's vocal is probably the thread that connects all these weird elements together.

Kanal: There are backward messages on pretty much every song on the record. That's another common thread.

Norris: With Rock Steady being an upbeat, happy record, there's an ongoing thing right now, not only in music, but in culture in general, whether people want to be exposed to something that is sort of a diversion, or whether they really want to immerse themselves in stuff that addresses everything that we're going through.

Kanal: We've never been a political band in the sense that we've never addressed that stuff in our lyrics. We've always been a fun band, although some of the lyrics have been kind of heavy at times, 'cause Gwen deals with a lot of personal issues.

Stefani: Like one whole record about you.

Kanal: Exactly. We never really address political situations in our lyrics, and I think that's been a conscious decision. It doesn't mean we're not politically active or aware of what's going on in the world, but I think for us, we choose to be that diversion that people can have and come see us play and get away for a night and just enjoy themselves. [RealVideo]

Norris: On September 11, you guys were pretty well into mixing the record, right?

Stefani: We were so excited about the record, and all of a sudden it just deflated us. We just felt like, "What are we doing?" "How can we help?" "It's not gonna be appropriate to put this party record out." [Then we were] getting a little more perspective on the whole thing and looking back at history and seeing how music is such a gift and a healer and so powerful. Now I feel like it's coming out with perfect timing to be a diversion, a little bit of a break and a little bit of fun. Hopefully it will help in that little, small way.

Kanal: It's important for us to continue to do things that we normally do. I don't think that you should let the actions of some very hateful people affect us in our daily lives. I think we should be aware and conscious and careful, but I think we need to continue to do what we normally do.

Stefani: We were gonna fly home from London. We were all really scared about that. [Adrian] wanted to get home to his wife. Tony was really fearful of being Indian. He's like, "I gotta be next to you" the whole time... You're my Tony, my friend, and all of a sudden now you've gotta be worried about going outside, or maybe you should keep your hair blond, thinking about crazy stuff.

Kanal: Stuff that you should not have to think about.

Norris: Is discrimination something you and your family have ever had to deal with?

Kanal: I've dealt with it. Fortunately I haven't had to deal with it in ways that so many other people have had to deal with it. I haven't had to deal with that on a daily basis. But it is weird to have to start thinking about how people are looking at you and how people perceive you. Unfortunately there's a lot of ignorant people in the world, and they don't really realize exactly who did this terrible act. It has nothing to do with 99.9999 percent of the people in this world. You just hope that people's anger and political fervor doesn't get taken out in the wrong way. You just hope that people can understand the truth in that these are innocent people that they're affecting.

Norris: Are you thinking about material for the next album yet?

Kanal: We're not the kind of band that writes while we're on the road.

Norris: You're partying after the shows.

Kanal: Which is all done for inspirational purposes.

Stefani: Look at how much we love each other still.

Young: Good times.

Kanal: We are really lucky.

Stefani: We are so lucky.