Gary “Mani” Mounfield wasn’t the most talented member of The Stone Roses – that honour lay with virtuosic guitarist John Squire.
But the bassist, who has died aged 63, was an essential component of a band, which, with their 1989 self-titled debut album, did more than perhaps any other act to drag rock music out of the grey, grim 1980s and into the technicolour 1990s.
It’s one of the greatest first records ever, and its opening track, I Wanna Be Adored, begins with Mani’s brilliantly evocative bass – a lustrous piece of indie magic that floats and stings and which is both ominous and powerfully groovy.
But along with his musical abilities, Mani embodied the spirit of the Roses – scrappy outsiders from Manchester whose us-against-the-world sense of belief would clear the way for Oasis and which brought the spirit of the generation-defining acid house scene to rock’n’roll.
RM Block
Mani was also part of the rich history of Manchester-Irish musicians who would forever change music.
Along with Johnny Marr and Morrissey from the Smiths and the Gallagher brothers from Oasis, he had a strong connection to Ireland through his family – and was thrilled when a plaque was installed in Athy, Co Kildare, to celebrate his mother’s roots in the nearby townland of Maganey (from where Marr’s family also hailed).
“That plaque means the world to me. My granny was a Cullen; she died before I was born. There are lots of secrets and things that were never talked about after my family emigrated to England in the 1950s for work reasons.
“My grandfather was in one of the Flying Columns, and then he was a captain in the Irish Free Army. You didn’t really talk about that as a kid in Manchester,” he told Hot Press magazine at the time.
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The Stone Roses were one of the most important bands of the late 1980s and early 1990s, but the mercurial Squire and flighty singer Ian Brown were not cut out for the spotlight.
Mani, by contrast, was born to be a rock star and was an imperious presence on stage.
He knew how to make big gestures: when the Roses played their long-awaited comeback show at the Féile Festival in Cork in 1995, he declared “hats off to Gerry Adams”.
Later, backstage, he had a stand-off with the techno duo Orbital after the Roses overran their set and Orbital were forced to start playing while their crew were still setting up. In the least rock’n’roll band of all time, Mani brought a crucial edge.
The Roses imploded in the wake of their divisive Second Coming album in 1995, and Mani would go on to play with Primal Scream.
But his charisma endured when the Roses reformed and headlined Phoenix Park, Dublin, in 2012.
It was a strange show – the band daunted by the audience’s hunger for nostalgia. But Mani appeared to enjoy the moment – as he conjured that mighty bass intro to I Wanna Be Adored and looked out at the huge crowd, he seemed at peace.
