My Friend Tom
On the quiet greatness of Tom Dumont
I do not remember the first time I actually “met” Tom. I want to say it was when I was still in high school and his band came and played in my hometown of Santa Cruz. That is the story I always tell people when they ask how I “know No Doubt.” I just kind of wave my hand around and say, “Yeah, it was when I was a kid, going to shows, booking shows, etc.” and then I move on with the conversation. But that explanation may be a huge lie- I may have actually chatted him up at a drunken night out during college. Me and my roommate used to go see No Doubt at what can generously be called a “venue” in Sacramento. The Cattle Club- yes, that was this establishments name- was more a dark, putrid box, a claustrophobic, unventilated sweat pit where the toilets were always clogged, beer was cheap and clove cigarettes were aplenty. I was obsessed with ska and two-tone music at the time, so I would take any opportunity to see bands like No Doubt, even if it meant hitchhiking to what essentially felt like a collapsing livestock bunker with a stage in it. But I can not be sure that is where I first got to know the band’s guitar player.
When I started working for Interscope Records in my early 20s, part of my job was literally to go to the various parties and shmooze-a-thons that the label threw. Though I am a social person, I often felt wildly out of place in these environments. I came from a dysfunctional working-class family; before getting that job, I had never stayed in a hotel, let alone casually chatted with famous musicians over cocktails in Los Angeles. I constantly felt like the country mouse wandering into somebody else’s glamorous life. Suddenly I was expected to be making small talk with celebrities, rock stars and hanger-ons. I did the best I could and muddled through, always trying to find the common ground of humanity, a task which sounds obvious, but I think is not as subscribed to as one may think.
It was at one of these shindigs where I found myself talking to Tony Kanal, bassist for No Doubt. I was by this time 24, and already freaking out about turning thirty, which I was convinced equited to having one foot in the crypt. No Doubt were in the midst of recording the follow up to their MASSIVE album Tragic Kingdom. I did not think of it as the time, but the pressure must have been skyhigh to come up with something that came close to that album, a feat that must have seemed insurmountable. I just remember feeling so overwhelmed at this particular evening event, and Tony being this nexus of calm in the midst of the surreal setting. We started talking about getting older, being scared of making mistakes, of trying to stay authentic to ourselves. I completely forgot that he was the soul of this hugely successful internationally renowned band that I had loved for years. Instead, it was a personal, human connection where feelings were shared, things that you usually dont talk about with even your friends, let alone a stranger, LET ALONE a famous rock star. But he didn’t SEEM like a famous rock star- he was just a smart, thoughtful individual who listened intently and spoke with considered sincerity- traits which were, and ARE thin on the ground at the best of times, and pretty much UNHEARD OF in the entertainment industry. This was my adult introduction to No Doubt.
Over the following years, I spent time around the band during the Return to Saturn and Rock Steady eras through various work projects, press events, and industry chaos. That is when I really became close to Tom.
I knew Tom was a brilliant songwriter and musician long before I really knew him as a person. But one-on-one, he never felt like a globally renowned musician. He felt like someone I could have grown up with — shy, funny, deeply kind, super cute, quietly thoughtful, and completely without ego. The music he created had already become part of the soundtrack of my life; somehow, the human being behind it turned out to be even more remarkable.
Some of my favorite memories from my twenties involve Tom — late nights at the Chateau Marmont, In-N-Out runs, doing interpretive dance moves to “How Soon Is Now?” at an 80s themed club night, and endless conversations that veered from ridiculous to unexpectedly profound. It was silly, stupid, often drunken fun, the kind that you can have in your 20s when the future seems to stretch impossibly far beyond the horizon and adulthood has yet to seize you fully in the vice like grip of responsibility.
One time, the band was on a long tour of Japan, and Tom came home with a gift for me: a quirky little camera unlike anything we could get in the US. He’d even bought rolls of film to go with it, so I could immediately start documenting the wonderfully ridiculous moments that made up our lives.
I could not believe that, while on the other side of the world, Tom had seen something and thought of me. The camera felt so perfectly chosen. I loved taking pictures, and somehow he knew exactly what would make me happy.
The camera was just an object. What it represented was something far more meaningful: the rare experience of feeling truly seen. Tom had a gift for recognising qualities in people that others either overlooked or never took the time to understand.
What stayed with me most, though, was his generosity. In an industry built on status and usefulness, Tom treated people with genuine care. He never made me feel as though I needed to be anyone other than myself.
Just last year, Tom took the headshots I now use professionally — the first photographs of me that I have ever truly liked. It is perfectly fitting.
However, I didn’t think too much about any of this at the time. I was carrying a great deal of pain following the murder of one of my childhood friends, while also trying to navigate a world that often felt as though I had somehow stumbled into it by mistake. The job itself consumed everything. I was constantly wrestling with where it ended and I began. Did people actually like me, or did they like the concert tickets, backstage passes and access I could provide? I was beginning to understand just how transactional parts of the music industry could be. Through all of that, Tom was one of the few people whose friendship never felt conditional.
One former colleague joked that people probably thought our surname was “From Interscope,” as in “Jennifer From Interscope,” because we worked around the clock. We were constantly reminded how lucky we were, how people would kill for our jobs. I didn’t believe anyone could truly like me for me because I no longer knew who that was. Beneath all the excitement, I often felt isolated, misunderstood and strangely alone. I loved music with every fibre of my being, but I struggled with the reality that something so meaningful could also be treated as a product, a commodity, something disposable.
To be honest, I often couldn’t quite believe that someone like Tom would genuinely want to be friends with someone like me. He was this impossibly cool, talented, gorgeous rock star, surrounded by artists, creatives and personalities who, at the time, felt far more interesting, sophisticated and self-assured than I ever imagined myself to be. Meanwhile, I still carried all the insecurities that come from growing up in a chaotic and difficult home. I thought everyone else had been given some secret map for navigating life that I had somehow missed.
Now that I’m older, I realise I had it all wrong. Back then, I assumed Tom was simply being nice to me. Looking back, I see that he recognised something in me that I couldn’t yet see in myself. While I was measuring my worth by my job, Tom saw the person underneath all of that.
After numerous people had vowed to hire me as an independent consultant, I made the difficult decision to leave Interscope, return to graduate school and start my own business. The moment I handed in my resignation, about 99% of my calls suddenly stopped being returned. Overnight, I had become completely disposable.
My confidence took a mighty nosedive. If the music industry was no longer attached to my identity, what exactly was I worth?
One of the very few people who didn’t seem to care that my surname was no longer “From Interscope” was Tom. He hired me to help with a new project he was developing outside of No Doubt, a hugely talented singer-songwriter named Matt Costa. But Tom could have worked with anyone. I suspect part of it was simply who Tom is: someone who notices when people need a hand and quietly shows up for them. At a moment when I needed it most, he reminded me that I had value beyond the logo on my business card. He saw somebody struggling and threw them a lifeline.
At the time, I was too caught up in my own story to truly see his. It would take me years to understand what an extraordinary indiviual Tom had been all along.
When I moved to the UK, I literally tossed out or sold almost everything. I wanted that old version of myself out of my life forever. One of the few things that survived the cut was various pieces of No Doubt ephemera, which somehow made it all the way across the Atlantic with me.
By then, Tom and I rarely spoke, not because of anything that had happened, but because our lives had drifted in different directions. He got married. I was applying for PhD programmes.
The week before I left for London to start my doctorate, I went to see No Doubt at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in the Bay Area. The show opened with the four band members standing behind a curtain in silhouette. Just seeing the outlines of the people that had been with me from my tween years to the cusp of this new chapter made me well up with tears.
I danced the entire show, screamed every lyric at the top of my lungs, and felt overwhelmingly grateful to have had Tom in my life. Grateful for the music, grateful for the memories. What struck me most was that someone I had admired for years had also become such a steady and meaningful presence through the highs and lows. Afterwards, I went backstage to say goodbye. It felt strangely final — as though I was closing the door on one existence and stepping into another, given the unheard-of opportunity to start over completely.
I thought about No Doubt — Tom — a lot during the years I lived in the UK. Those memories often felt like they belonged to someone else, as they had happened to a different version of me.
When No Doubt reunited for Coachella, I watched clips online from thousands of miles away in England and absolutely bawled my eyes out. Not because of the nostalgia, though there was plenty of that, but because it suddenly hit me how lucky I had been to have Tom as an unwavering north star. The older I get, the more I realise how rare people like him truly are. In truth, I'm not sure I've ever met anyone quite like him.
When we spoke on the phone again for the first time in years, I burst into tears the moment I heard his voice. Before the call, I had found myself wondering whether he would even remember who I was. His life seemed so full, so extraordinary, and so far removed from my own.
Some friendships survive because you constantly maintain them. Others simply pick up where they left off, as though the years in between barely existed. Tom has always been that kind of friend.
Watching him publicly share his Parkinson’s diagnosis only deepened my admiration for him.
In a culture where words like “icon,” “hero” and “legend” are thrown around so casually they’ve almost lost their meaning, Tom genuinely embodies all three. Not because he is famous, or even because he is extraordinarily talented- which he is, its almost obscene, and if I did not love him so much, I would be green with jealousy- but because of the grace, humility, humour and courage with which he moves through the world. The honesty and bravery he has shown have floored me.
And in a couple of weeks, I get to see him play again.
I honestly cannot wait.
More than anything, I can’t wait to celebrate my beautiful, bold, funny, brilliant friend — someone who provided the soundscape to my youth, quietly shaped my life in ways he probably never realised, and continues to inspire me more than he will ever know.
Such a special person. Really beautiful, Jen xx