Mani's Writhing, Unstoppable Bass Guitar Proved to be the Stone Roses' Key Ingredient – It Showed Indie Kids the Art of Dancing

By every measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly ignored by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a smaller London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their performance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable state of affairs for most indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly attracting a much larger and broader crowd than typically showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding acid house scene – their confidently defiant attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way entirely unlike anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument that the melody of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were doing behind it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the tracks that graced the decks at the era’s indie discos. You in some way got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music quite distinct from the usual indie band influences, which was absolutely right: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good northern soul and funk”.

The smoothness of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s Mani who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into loose-limbed groove, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, relentless bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but believed its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the layers of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights often occur during the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can sense him figuratively urging the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is completely at odds with the lethargy of all other elements that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to inject a some pep into what’s otherwise some nondescript folk-rock – not a style anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a disastrous top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising impact on a band in a slump after the cool response to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, weightier and increasingly fuzzy, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – particularly on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his bass work to the front. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is very much the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, clubbable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously styled and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything more than a long succession of hugely profitable concerts – two new singles released by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that whatever spark had been present in 1989 had turned out impossible to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on fly-fishing, which furthermore offered “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of ways. Oasis certainly observed their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a desire to transcend the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious immediate effect was a sort of groove-based change: following their initial success, you abruptly encountered many indie bands who aimed to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”