🔗 Share this article

By any measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly ignored by the established channels for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a smaller London club 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 most alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find numerous causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly attracting a far bigger and more diverse audience than usually showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way entirely unlike any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument that the melody 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 playing behind it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the songs that featured on the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds quite distinct from the usual alternative group set texts, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great northern soul and funk”.

The smoothness of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s him who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his octave-leaping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by removing some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s handful of highlights 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 sense him figuratively willing the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is totally at odds with the listlessness of all other elements that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners 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 launch, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a disastrous top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively energising effect on a band in a decline after the cool response to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, weightier and increasingly fuzzy, but the groove 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 skill to push his playing to the fore. His popping, mesmerising low-end pattern is certainly the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an friendly, clubbable presence – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was invariably broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously styled and constantly smiling axeman Dave Hill. Said reformation failed to translate into anything more than a lengthy series of hugely profitable gigs – a couple of fresh singles put out by the reformed quartet served only to prove that whatever magic had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture 18 years later – and Mani discreetly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which furthermore provided “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt 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 approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a aim to break the standard market limitations 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 shift: following their early 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 rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”