31 Years Ago, Gwen Stefani’s Brother Left No Doubt Before They Got Big to Work on ‘The Simpsons’

In 1986, Gwen Stefani founded the legendary ska-punk band No Doubt with her brother, Eric, and vocalist John Spence. If you don’t remember Eric Stefani being part of the lineup, it’s probably because he left No Doubt just prior to the release of their 1995 commercial breakthrough, Tragic Kingdom. Out of context, this might sound like a really poor decision on Eric’s part, but the former No Doubt keyboardist actually went on to be pretty successful in his own right. As a matter of fact, Eric was very instrumental in bringing us The Simpsons as we know it today.

A few years into his stint with No Doubt, Eric’s knack for drawing landed him a gig as an animator for The Simpsons, which was still just a short segment on The Tracey Ullman Show. When The Simpsons became a series in its own right in late 1989, Eric went along with it and split his time between working on the show and serving as the “main creative force” in No Doubt, as guitarist Tom Dumont once put it. 

Gwen Stefani’s Brother Left No Doubt Before ‘Tragic Kingdom,’ but He Helped Shape The ‘Simpsons’

In a 1996 Los Angeles Times interview, former Simpsons director Dominic Polcino described Eric’s animation skills as “pretty thorough, sometimes to the point of neurotic.” For example, in the 1995 episode “The Springfield Connection,” Eric was tasked with animating a sequence in which Marge rolls on the ground and pops up holding a gun. To make sure he got it just right, Eric had one of his friends actually roll around for him until he got the entire shot plotted out on a sketch pad:

Eric also drew No Doubt into the background in a scene from 1996’s “Homerpalooza.” The episode went into production prior to the October 1995 release of Tragic Kingdom, but No Doubt had blown up by the time it made it to air the following May:

Though he stayed with No Doubt until they finished Tragic Kingdom, Eric officially left the band in 1994 to focus on animation full-time. When fans would ask him why he quit, he’d tell them, “I wanted to go back to drawing, and all the musical juices were sucked out of me at that point.” Eric remained an animator on The Simpsons for 9 years, with his last credited work on the show in 1998. Other than a lone 2001 credit as an assistant animator for Rugrats, he doesn’t appear to have done anything in the field since.