The Beacon Street Collection

The Beacon Street Collection is the second studio album by American rock band No Doubt, released in March 1995. It was released independently by the band under their own record label, Beacon Street Records. It was produced by No Doubt themselves and recorded in a homemade recording studio in the garage of their house on Beacon Avenue in Anaheim, California, from which the album takes its name. Additional recording and mixing were done at Clear Lake Audio in North Hollywood, California with engineer Colin "Dog" Mitchell.

The album was released during a time in which the band were receiving little attention from their record label, Interscope Records, and were not getting a chance to record a second album. Interscope were disillusioned with the band after the commercial failure of their first album, No Doubt. No Doubt had written large numbers of songs and knew that they would not make it onto any Interscope album, so they built their own studio and recorded the album there. Two singles were released from it: "Squeal" and "Doghouse" on 7-inch vinyl.

The album sold over 100,000 copies in 1995, over three times as many as their first album sold. This success ensured that Interscope financed the band's third album, Tragic Kingdom, which was a massive success, selling 16 million copies worldwide and attracting extensive interest in the band. The Beacon Street Collection was re-released in 1997 as part of the band's back catalog. No Doubt released their self-titled debut album in 1992, a year after being signed to Interscope. The group's blend of upbeat brass-dominated songs and funk-style bass riffs came at a time when most of the United States was in the thrall of grunge music, a genre whose angst-ridden lyrics and dirty sound could not have contrasted more with the atmosphere of most of the songs on No Doubt's pop-oriented album.[1] Not surprisingly, the band lost out to the now-ubiquitous grunge music and the album was a commercial failure, with only 30,000 copies sold.[2][3] In the words of the program director of KROQ, a Los Angeles radio station on which it was one of the band's driving ambitions to be played: "It would take an act of God for this band to get on the radio."[3][4]

The band started to work on its second album in 1993 but Interscope, having lost faith in the band, rejected most of its material and so it was paired with producer Matthew Wilder. Eric Stefani did not like to relinquish creative control to someone outside the band and eventually stopped recording or rehearsing. He left No Doubt in 1994 to pursue an animation career on the cartoon TV series The Simpsons.[5] Kanal then ended his seven-year relationship with Gwen, saying that he needed "space"

Production
No Doubt became frustrated at the lack of progress they were making with Interscope, who were proving unreliable in their support of the band.[8] Instead, they built their own studio in their garage on Beacon Avenue in Anaheim, California[3] Although the band had knowledge that they didn't want any songs to be released in an Interscope-distributed album, they recorded The Beacon Street Collection in their studio and Clear Lake Audio in one long weekend.[8] Their independence shocked their company representative, Tony Ferguson, who had assumed they were recording a third single. On its original release in March 1995, The Beacon Street Collection was only available in local record stores in Orange County, California and at No Doubt's shows. Its rawer sound proved popular with the band's fans and the band's first batch of one thousand copies sold out within only a few months after its release.[3] Interscope realized the band's potential and allowed them to record their third album, Tragic Kingdom in various Los Angelesstudios, "wherever they could get a deal on a studio".[8] During a recording session, the band was introduced to Paul Palmer, who was interested in mixing the new album. He owned his own record label Trauma Records, which was associated with Interscope. Interscope willingly sublicensed the project to Trauma Records in 1995 and Tragic Kingdom got the personal focus that comes from a small company.[16]

By the end of the year, 100,000 copies of The Beacon Street Collection had been sold, over three times as many as their first album, No Doubt.[3] These sales were mostly due to the release of Tragic Kingdom, which was released seven months after The Beacon Street Collection in October 1995. Tragic Kingdom was a massive commercial success, reaching sales of over 10 million in the United States and 16 million worldwide,[17] peaking at number one on several charts and being certified Diamond (10,000,000 units) in the US[18] and Canada[19] and Platinum in the UK[20] and Australia.[21] This success created an extensive interest in the band's back catalog so, in October 1997, The Beacon Street Collection was re-released on Interscope.[3]

In an interview with Axcess Magazine in April 1996, Gwen Stefani described the release of The Beacon Street Collection as "one of the best things [they] ever did because [they] were able to take some songs that would have probably gotten lost and document them"

A large number of songs on The Beacon Street Collection were written by Eric Stefani, who left the group before their third album was recorded. This gave the album a similar sound to their first album, No Doubt, in which Eric Stefani had collaborated in the writing of all the songs. Because the lyrics in Tragic Kingdom were written mainly by Gwen Stefani about her experiences in life, the style of music changed from what No Doubt had previously produced. Tom Dumont explained the change in sound in an interview for Backstage Online: