Mani's Writhing, Unstoppable Bass Was the Stone Roses' Secret Sauce – It Taught Alternative Music Fans the Art of Dancing

By every measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable thing. It took place during a span of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional channels for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The music press had hardly mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a smaller London venue 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 situation for the majority of alternative groups in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can identify numerous reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly drawing in a far bigger and more diverse crowd than typically showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way completely 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 certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the tracks that graced the decks at the era’s indie discos. 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 admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good Motown-inspired and funk”.

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

Sometimes the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really 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 writhing, 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 artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “reverting to the groove”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is totally contrary to the lethargy of all other elements that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a genre one suspects anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a catastrophic top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising impact on a band in a decline after the cool response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – especially on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his bass work to the fore. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is certainly the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, clubbable presence – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was invariably broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently grinning guitarist Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything beyond a lengthy series of extremely lucrative concerts – two new singles released by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that any spark had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to recapture 18 years on – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with angling, which additionally provided “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of ways. Oasis certainly took note of their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a aim to transcend the standard commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate effect was a kind of rhythmic change: in the wake of their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”