🔗 Share this article

By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable thing. It took place over the course of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a local source of buzz in Manchester, largely overlooked by the established outlets for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a more modest London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable situation for most indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can identify any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously attracting a far bigger and broader audience than typically 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 movement – 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 undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way completely unlike anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point 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 bass and drums were doing behind it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the tracks that featured on the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds rather different to the standard indie band set texts, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The fluidity of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s Mani who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing funk, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the bass line.

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

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually occur during the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can sense him metaphorically willing the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is completely contrary to the listlessness of all other elements that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to add a some pep into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable country-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a catastrophic top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising impact on a band in a slump after the cool reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, heavier and more distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his playing to the fore. His percussive, mesmerising bass line is certainly the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, clubbable figure – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was invariably broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything more than a lengthy series of extremely lucrative concerts – a couple of new singles released by the reformed quartet served only to prove that whatever spark had been present in 1989 had turned out unattainable to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani discreetly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of manners. Oasis certainly took note of their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a aim to break the usual commercial constraints of alternative music and reach a wider general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate effect was a kind of rhythmic shift: following their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who aimed to make their fans move. 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.”