🔗 Share this article

By every measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary 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 established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a smaller London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. 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 imaginable state of affairs for the majority of alternative groups in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a much larger and broader audience than usually displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding dance music scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way entirely different from anything else 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 old 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 simply couldn’t to the majority of the songs that graced the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds quite distinct from the usual indie band influences, which was completely right: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good northern soul and groove music”.

The smoothness of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s him who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed groove, his jumping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times 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 writhing, driving bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a strong supporter of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights often coincide with the moments when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically willing the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is totally contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to add a some energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript folk-rock – not a style one suspects anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a catastrophic headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively energising effect 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 more echo-laden, weightier and more fuzzy, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – especially on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his bass work to the fore. His popping, mesmerising bass line is very much the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an friendly, sociable presence – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was always broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and constantly grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything more than a lengthy succession of extremely profitable gigs – two new singles put out by the reformed quartet served only to prove that any magic had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani quietly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which furthermore offered “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of manners. Oasis undoubtedly observed their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was informed by a desire to break the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate influence was a kind of groove-based change: in the wake of their initial success, you suddenly encountered many indie bands who aimed to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”