Gary Mounfield's Writhing, Unstoppable Bass Proved to be the Stone Roses' Secret Sauce – It Taught Indie Kids the Art of Dancing

By every metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable thing. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The music press had hardly covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a smaller London club 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 barely conceivable situation for most alternative groups in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly attracting a far bigger and broader audience than typically displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their confidently defiant attitude and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way entirely unlike any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument that the melody of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were doing underneath it certainly did not: you could move 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 drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music rather different to the usual indie band influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great northern soul and funk”.

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 transitions from soulful beat into free-flowing groove, his jumping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the breakbeat borrowed 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 comes to thought is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were insufficiently funky. 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 frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights often coincide with the instances 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 lethargy of everything else that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone 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 release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a disastrous top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively energising effect on a band in a slump after the cool response to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, weightier and increasingly fuzzy, but the groove 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 ability to push his playing to the front. His popping, mesmerising bass line is certainly the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an affable, sociable figure – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently smiling axeman Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything beyond a long succession of hugely profitable concerts – a couple of fresh singles released by the reformed quartet served only to prove that whatever magic had been present in 1989 had turned out unattainable to rediscover nearly two decades later – and Mani quietly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which furthermore provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis certainly took note of their confident attitude, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a aim to transcend the standard commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a more general public, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious direct influence was a kind of groove-based change: in the wake of their initial success, you suddenly encountered many indie bands who aimed to make their audiences dance. 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.”