🔗 Share this article

By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary thing. It unfolded during a span of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely overlooked by the established channels for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly mentioned 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 entered the charts at No 8 and their performance was the main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable situation for the majority of indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously attracting a far bigger and more diverse crowd than usually displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their confidently defiant attitude and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums 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 sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were doing underneath it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the songs that featured on the decks at the era’s indie discos. You somehow got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds rather different to the usual indie band set texts, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good Motown-inspired and funk”.

The smoothness of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s Mani who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his jumping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a strong defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by cutting some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him figuratively urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is completely at odds with the listlessness of everything else that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-rock – not a style one suspects anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following 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 remarkably galvanising impact on a band in a decline after the cool reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, weightier and more fuzzy, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his bass work to the fore. His popping, mesmerising bass line is very much the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an affable, clubbable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was invariably 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 grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy succession of extremely profitable concerts – a couple of new tracks released by the reformed four-piece served only to prove that whatever magic had been present in 1989 had proved impossible to recapture nearly two decades later – and Mani discreetly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of manners. Oasis certainly observed their confident approach, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a aim to break the usual commercial constraints of alternative music and reach a more general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate influence was a sort of groove-based shift: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”