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

By any measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It took place over the course of one year. At the start of 1989, they were merely a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely overlooked by the established outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely mentioned 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 massive. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable state of affairs for most indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can find numerous causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously drawing in a far bigger and broader audience than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning dance music scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a scene of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way entirely different from any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point that the tune of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were playing behind it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the tracks that graced the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds rather different to the usual alternative group set texts, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good northern soul and funk”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s him who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed groove, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, relentless bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses stumbled 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 stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “returning to the rhythm”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often 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 sense him figuratively willing the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is completely at odds with the lethargy of all other elements that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to inject a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a style one suspects listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a catastrophic headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively energising impact on a band in a slump after the tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly fuzzy, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – especially on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his playing to the front. His popping, hypnotic bass line is very much the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously styled and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reunion did not lead to anything beyond a long succession of extremely lucrative gigs – a couple of fresh tracks released by the reconstituted quartet only demonstrated that any magic had been present in 1989 had turned out impossible to recapture 18 years on – and Mani quietly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which additionally offered “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of manners. Oasis certainly observed their swaggering attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a aim to transcend the standard commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious direct effect was a kind of groove-based change: in the wake of their early success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who aimed to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”