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

By every measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely overlooked by the established channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The music press had barely covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack 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 main draw 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 hindsight, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously attracting a much larger and broader crowd than usually showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a scene of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way entirely unlike any other act in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument that the tune of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were doing behind it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the songs that featured on the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds quite distinct from the standard indie band set texts, which was completely right: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good northern soul and funk”.

The fluidity of his performance 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 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, relentless bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a strong defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by cutting some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering 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 increasingly sluggish songs, you can hear him figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. 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 audibly trying to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable country-rock – not a style anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a catastrophic headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively energising effect on a band in a slump after the tepid reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – especially on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his bass work to the fore. His popping, mesmerising bass line is certainly the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an affable, clubbable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reformation failed to translate into anything beyond a long series of extremely lucrative gigs – two new singles released by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated that whatever magic had been present in 1989 had proved 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 angling, which additionally provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their confident approach, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a desire to transcend the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a wider general public, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious immediate influence was a kind of groove-based shift: following their initial success, you suddenly encountered many alternative acts who wanted to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”