By every metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the established outlets for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a smaller 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 conceivable situation for the majority of alternative groups in the late 80s.
In retrospect, you can identify any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously drawing in a much larger and more diverse crowd than usually showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished 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, unashamedly virtuosic in a world of distorted thrashing downstrokes.
But there was also the incontrovertible fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way entirely different from anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point that the melody of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s old 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 could not to most of the tracks 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 bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds quite distinct from the standard indie band set texts, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good Motown-inspired and groove music”.
The smoothness of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s Mani who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into loose-limbed funk, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.
At times the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the drum sample 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 comes to thought is the low-end melody.
Indeed, in Mani’s view, 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 rigid”. He was a staunch defender of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but believed its flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “returning to the rhythm”.
He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can hear him metaphorically willing the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is totally contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to add a some pep into what’s otherwise just some nondescript folk-rock – not a style anyone would guess anyone 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 imploded entirely after a disastrous top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively energising effect 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, weightier and more fuzzy, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – particularly on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the fore. His popping, mesmerising bass line is very much the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.
Always an friendly, clubbable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was always broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently smiling axeman Dave Hill. This reunion did not lead to anything beyond a long series of extremely profitable gigs – two new singles released by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated that any spark had been present in 1989 had turned out impossible to recapture 18 years later – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with angling, which additionally offered “a great reason to go to the pub”.
Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of manners. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a whole was shaped by a aim to break the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a wider general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate influence was a kind of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their initial success, you abruptly encountered many indie bands who aimed to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”
