Gary Mounfield's Writhing, Relentless Bass Proved to be the Stone Roses' Key Ingredient – It Showed Alternative Music Fans the Art of Dancing

By every measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were merely a local source of buzz in Manchester, largely overlooked by the traditional channels for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a more modest London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. 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 state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify numerous reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly attracting a much larger and broader crowd than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic 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 different from anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument 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 bass and drums were doing underneath it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that graced the turntables at the era’s indie discos. You somehow got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music quite distinct from the usual indie band influences, which was absolutely right: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good northern soul and funk”.

The smoothness of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s him who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into loose-limbed funk, his jumping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, relentless bass. 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 musically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch defender of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by cutting some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often coincide with the instances when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can hear him figuratively willing the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is completely contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre one suspects anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed 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 subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising impact on a band in a decline after the tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, weightier and increasingly fuzzy, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – particularly on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his bass work to the fore. His percussive, mesmerising bass line is certainly the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, sociable figure – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was always broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and constantly grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything more than a lengthy succession of extremely profitable concerts – two fresh singles released by the reformed quartet served only to prove that any spark had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover 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 definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their confident approach, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a desire to transcend the standard commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious immediate effect was a kind of rhythmic change: following their early success, you suddenly encountered many indie bands who wanted to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”