🔗 Share this article

By any metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary thing. It took place during a span of one year. At the start of 1989, they were merely a local source of buzz in Manchester, largely overlooked by the traditional channels for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a more modest London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable situation for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can find numerous reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously drawing in a much larger and more diverse audience than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which seemed to align them more to the expanding acid house scene – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a scene of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way completely different from any other act in British alternative music 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 bass and drums were playing behind it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the tracks that graced the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds quite distinct from the standard alternative group influences, which was completely correct: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great northern soul and groove music”.

The smoothness of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s him who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his jumping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a strong supporter of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses might have been fixed by removing some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “reverting to the groove”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can sense him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is completely contrary to the lethargy of all other elements that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to inject a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a catastrophic top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising effect on a band in a decline after the cool reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, heavier and more fuzzy, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his playing to the fore. His popping, hypnotic low-end pattern is very much the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an friendly, sociable presence – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was always punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reunion failed to translate into anything more than a lengthy series of hugely lucrative concerts – two new singles released by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had turned out impossible to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani discreetly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of manners. Oasis certainly took note of their confident approach, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a aim to transcend the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious immediate effect was a kind of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who aimed to make their fans move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”