Gary Mounfield's Writhing, Relentless Bass Proved to be the Stone Roses' Secret Sauce – It Showed Alternative Music Fans How to Dance

By every measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The music press had hardly mentioned their most recent 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 debuted on the charts at No 8 and their performance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable state of affairs for most indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can identify numerous causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly attracting a far bigger and broader audience than usually displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding acid house movement – their confidently defiant demeanor 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’ bass and drums grooved in a way entirely unlike any other act in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point that the tune 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 doing behind it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the songs that featured on the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds rather different to the standard alternative group set texts, which was absolutely right: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good northern soul and groove music”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s him who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into loose-limbed groove, his octave-leaping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the singing or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, relentless bassline. 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 stumbled artistically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually occur during the instances when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can hear him figuratively willing the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is completely at odds with the lethargy of all other elements that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to inject a bit of energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript folk-rock – not a style one suspects listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a disastrous headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising impact on a band in a slump after the tepid reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, heavier and more distorted, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – particularly on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the fore. His percussive, mesmerising bass line is very much the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, sociable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed 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 succession of extremely profitable concerts – a couple of new tracks released by the reconstituted quartet only demonstrated that any magic had been present in 1989 had proved impossible to recapture nearly two decades later – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which additionally provided “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis certainly observed their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a aim to break the usual market limitations of indie rock and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct effect was a kind of rhythmic change: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly encountered many indie bands who aimed to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”