Gary Mounfield's Writhing, Unstoppable Bass Was the Stone Roses' Key Ingredient – It Taught Indie Kids How to Dance

By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable phenomenon. It took place over the course of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional source of buzz in Manchester, mostly ignored by the traditional channels for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a smaller London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their performance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of 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 look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way entirely different from anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument 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 doing behind it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the tracks that featured on the turntables at the era’s indie discos. You in some way felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds quite distinct from the usual indie band set texts, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s Mani who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his jumping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the vocal melody 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 recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its flaws could have been rectified by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks often occur during the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him figuratively urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is completely at odds with the lethargy of all other elements that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to inject a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript country-rock – not a genre one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a catastrophic headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising effect 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, weightier and more fuzzy, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – especially on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the fore. His percussive, mesmerising low-end pattern is very much the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an affable, sociable presence – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously styled and constantly smiling axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy series of hugely profitable gigs – a couple of new tracks released by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that whatever magic had been present in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture 18 years later – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which furthermore offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d done enough: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of manners. Oasis certainly took note of their swaggering attitude, while Britpop as a whole was shaped by a aim to break the usual commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate effect was a kind of rhythmic shift: following their initial success, you abruptly couldn’t move for indie bands who aimed to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”