In 2024, I worked with Grammy-winning No Doubt bassist Tony Kanal to create a biography for his composing work:
Over the last 30 years, TONY KANAL has been one of rock’s most acclaimed bassists, soundtracking a generation with his propulsive, chameleonic playing. As a member of No Doubt, he helped launch multi-platinum, iconic hits like “Don’t Speak,” “Just A Girl,” “Spiderwebs,” “Hella Good,” “Ex-Girlfriend,” and “It’s My Life” up the charts, netting multiple Grammy wins, appearances on the covers of Rolling Stone, Alternative Press and Spin, and even a Kennedy Center Honors performance paying tribute to Sir Paul McCartney.
Since then, the Orange County, CA-raised Kanal has spread his wings into songwriting and producing for artists like P!nk, Weezer, Scott Weiland and Gwen Stefani, launching new wave supergroup DREAMCAR (featuring his No Doubt bandmates alongside AFI’s Davey Havok), and, most recently, composing for film and TV.
After performing the Oingo Boingo classic “Dead Man’s Party” with Danny Elfman – himself a rocker-turned-composer – during the annual Nightmare Before Christmas shows at the Hollywood Bowl in 2018, Kanal met composer Blake Neely, an Emmy winner known for his work on Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, King Kong and Riverdale. The two became fast friends, with Kanal guesting on Neely’s soundtrack for the the DC Comics TV series Crisis on Infinite Earths and, during the pandemic, convening at Neely’s North Hollywood studio for collaboration and companionship.
“I’d play bass, Blake would play piano, and we would sit and wear masks and drink tequila and just record everything,” Kanal says. “It was a great way for the two of us to keep playing during this very surreal time.”
Kanal eventually moved into his own space at the studio, and the two continued working together, amassing an hour’s worth of songs they’d soon turn into a demo reel. They sent it out to music supervisors on New Year’s Eve 2021, and three days later had secured their first joint project: the Netflix film Purple Hearts, followed by the title theme to season two of HBO Max’s gen:LOCK, starring Michael B. Jordan, Dakota Fanning and David Tennant.
“After we finished Purple Hearts, I asked Blake, ‘That was awesome. What are we working on next?’” he remembers with a laugh. “He told me, ‘What do you mean we? You’ve got to go do your own thing now!”
Setting out on his own, Kanal soon landed the universally acclaimed second season of Hulu’s Single Drunk Female, his first solo gig and an endeavor that taught him invaluable lessons about playing in someone else’s sandbox: “It all starts with what the scene dictates,” he says. “You almost have to reprogram your brain and push yourself out of your comfort zone, or else you’d just keep doing the same thing over and over again. At the start, I’d be writing songs in a traditional pop/rock format, but I had to retrain myself and say none of these things needed to apply anymore. Once you wrap your head around it being your style, it all makes sense.”
Throughout his career, Kanal’s style has hard to pin down: No Doubt’s fusion of ska, punk, reggae, dancehall, pop and rock was anchored by his far-reaching approach on the bass, seamlessly alternating between complex groove and steady melodicism, while the cinematic romanticism of DREAMCAR elevates his deep-rooted love of driving ‘80s low-end. It all blends into his work as a composer, swirling into a sort of retrofuturism that embodies his entire musical life up to this point.
“I feel super comfortable and start ideas with ’80s synthesizers,” Kanal says, fitting for a musician who learned his first instrument, saxophone, in junior high after hearing Men At Work’s “Who Can It Be Now?” on the radio. “The music you experience during your younger years, when you’re most impressionable, is what sticks with you forever. That’s a place of comfort and familiarity – almost like a home base I can venture out of from there.”
There’s plenty for Kanal to find comfort in over the coming months: No Doubt’s headlining set at Coachella will mark their first live show together since 2015, while a DREAMCAR reunion at the Cruel World festival allows Kanal and his bandmates the opportunity to dust off some of the most underrated pop-rock songs of the last decade. But to him, what’s equally alluring as captivating 125,000 people on a festival mainstage these days is composing songs and scores for an audience of one. He attacks each with the same emotional instinct, guided by a deep-rooted musical curiosity and the sheer unpredictability of the unknown.
“I’m really just getting started in this brand-new world of composing, and that’s really exciting” he says. “When you’re playing music with your friends or writing for a band and get that feeling of, ‘Oh, there’s something cool here,” it’s really rewarding. The same goes for composing to scenes. Does it move you? If you’re feeling that same feeling, you’re doing something right.” XX
Evan Lucy | Storytelling & Biography Writing 