Mani's Writhing, Unstoppable Bass Guitar Proved to be the Stone Roses' Key Ingredient – It Taught Indie Kids How to Dance

By any metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable thing. It took place during a span of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional source of buzz in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional outlets for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The music press had hardly mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a more modest London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable state of affairs for most indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can identify numerous reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously drawing in a far bigger and more diverse audience than usually showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding dance music scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way completely unlike any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument that the tune of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were doing behind it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that featured on the decks at the era’s indie discos. You somehow got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds quite distinct from the standard alternative group influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great northern soul and funk”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s Mani who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into free-flowing funk, his jumping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a strong defender of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by cutting some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually coincide with the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the lethargy of everything else that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to inject a bit of pep into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a catastrophic headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising impact on a band in a slump after the cool reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly fuzzy, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his bass work to the fore. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is certainly the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an affable, clubbable figure – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. Said reunion did not lead to anything beyond a long series of extremely profitable gigs – two fresh tracks released by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that any spark had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to rediscover nearly two decades later – and Mani discreetly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which furthermore provided “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis certainly took note of their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a desire to transcend the standard market limitations of alternative music and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate effect was a sort of groove-based change: following their initial success, you abruptly encountered many indie bands who aimed to make their fans move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”