Mani's Writhing, Relentless Bass Proved to be the Stone Roses' Key Ingredient – It Taught Indie Kids the Art of Dancing

By any metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary thing. It took place over the course of one year. At the start of 1989, they were just a local source of buzz in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional channels for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a smaller London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their performance was the main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable state of affairs for most alternative groups in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly attracting a much larger and more diverse crowd than usually showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were set apart by their look – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their confidently defiant attitude and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a world of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable 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 old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were playing underneath it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to most of the tracks that featured on the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds quite distinct from the usual alternative group influences, which was absolutely right: Mani was a massive fan 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 secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s Mani who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the singing 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 snaking, relentless bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a strong defender of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but believed its flaws could have been rectified by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often occur during the moments when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can sense him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is totally at odds with the listlessness of everything else that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a some pep into what’s otherwise some nondescript folk-rock – not a style one suspects anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a catastrophic headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising impact on a band in a decline after the tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, heavier and more fuzzy, but the swing that had provided 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 bring his bass work to the front. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is very much the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, clubbable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything more than a long succession of extremely profitable concerts – two fresh tracks put out by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated that whatever magic had existed in 1989 had proved impossible to recapture 18 years later – and Mani discreetly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with angling, which furthermore offered “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of manners. Oasis undoubtedly observed their confident approach, while Britpop as a movement was informed by a aim to break the standard market limitations of indie rock and attract a more general public, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious direct effect was a kind of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their initial success, you abruptly couldn’t move for alternative acts who aimed 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.”