🔗 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 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a local source of buzz in Manchester, largely ignored by the established channels for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The music press had barely covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a more modest 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 appearance was the big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable state of affairs for the majority of alternative groups in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously attracting a far bigger and more diverse audience than usually showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning dance music movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a scene of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way entirely unlike anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point 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 rhythm section were playing behind it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you could not to most of the tracks that graced the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music quite distinct from the usual alternative group influences, which was completely right: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great northern soul and groove music”.

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

At times the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the singing 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, relentless bass. When you think of 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 funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, 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 removing some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually occur during the moments when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can sense him figuratively willing the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is totally at odds with the lethargy of everything else that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to add a some pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre one suspects listeners was in a rush 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 collapsed 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 decline after the cool response to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, weightier and increasingly fuzzy, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – especially on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his playing to the front. His popping, mesmerising bass line is certainly the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, sociable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was invariably broken 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 displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything beyond a long succession of extremely profitable concerts – a couple of fresh tracks released by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that any spark had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture 18 years later – and Mani quietly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with angling, which additionally offered “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of manners. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their swaggering attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a aim to break the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a more general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate effect was a sort of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their initial success, you abruptly encountered many alternative acts who wanted to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”