Gary “Manny” Moonfield, bassist for Stone Roses and Primal Scream, dies at 63 | Stone roses

Gary “Manny” Moonfield, best known as the bassist for the Stone Roses and later a member of the band Primal Scream, has died at the age of 63. The cause of death was not announced.

His brother, Greg Moonfield, posted the news on Facebook: “It is with great pain that I announce the sad passing of my brother.” His nephew also shared the news.

“Rest in peace Manny,” Roses bandmate Ian Brown posted on X. Tim Burgess of Charlatans described him as “one of the best people ever – such a lovely friend”. Happy Mondays’ Rowetta was also among those who paid tribute.

“In complete shock and absolutely devastated to hear the news about my hero Manny,” Liam Gallagher wrote on X. Rough Trade Records also described him as “the perfect example of how a guitarist can be the beating heart of a band.”

Mane recently announced a large-scale UK speaking tour, running from September 2026 to June 2027, where he promises to look back on pivotal career moments such as the Stone Roses’ 1990 concert at Spike Island and their 2012 comeback tour.

In 2023, his wife Imelda died of cancer.

Manny was born on November 16, 1962 in Crumpsall. He attended Xaverian College in Rusholme and left school at the age of 16. He later said he became friends with Brown when they went to deal with “some National Front skinheads in north Manchester who were shaking up a lot of my mates,” he told i-D magazine in 1996. “We’ve been friends ever since.”

Manny formed The Fireside Chaps with John Squire and Andy Couzens in Greater Manchester in the early 1980s. After several name and line-up changes, including Brown taking over as frontman, they became the Stone Roses and played their first official concert in October 1984.

Manny was a guitar player until the Fireside Chaps became the band Waterfront. “I found playing guitar to be more beneficial than playing rhythm,” he said in 2000. He became synonymous with Rickenbacker. “I’ve always been a fan of old northern soul and funk grooves and it was like ‘this is it’ He – she“.”

They quickly exploded locally, but national success took longer. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that brands started to notice this; Meanwhile on Earth at home, young men Liam and Noel Gallagher saw them live and were inspired to form bands.

Manny later said that being at The Roses may have saved his life, as he watched a number of friends — 17 of them, he told iD — die from heroin addiction.

Produced by John Leckie, their 1989 self-titled debut steadily became a staple of the Madchester movement, combining indie music with rave culture, its grooves led by Manny and drummer Alan “Rennie” Wren. In 1991, NME critic Mary Ann Hobbs called it “the most fluent crossover album of the last decade”.

In 2009, on the occasion of the record’s 20th anniversary reissue, Mane said: “A classic album that is still relevant to today’s kids finally deserves recognition. Twenty years later, it still feels fresh and stands out amidst the torrent of mediocrity, career-oriented, boring-as-sewage, safe and unimaginative music that dares to challenge our crown.”

“We were light years ahead of our time, and a Stone Roses album will always be light years ahead of the new so-called supergroups. Read it and cry guys, you all know who you are!!! Go back to school with you and try harder. Listen and learn from the masters.”

In 1990, The Roses played a disastrous gig at Spike Island in Widnes in front of 27,000 people. It took four years for them to produce their second album, Second Coming – perhaps the epitome of a so-called difficult second album – which was met with a mixed reception. “Anything other than a cold-blooded classic that sounds like it was beamed from another plane would be a stark throwback,” John Harris wrote in NME.

In 2000, Mani said he felt people were writing off the record prematurely. “I think they wanted something we’d done before but we weren’t about to make another Herman’s Hermits album like the first one and be a loveable doormat,” he said. “We grew hair on our balls and learned to play a little better and we were always going to do something a little different.”

The group disbanded in 1996. Manny then joined Primal Scream as guitarist, reviving the group’s creative fortunes. In 2006, he compared life in the two bands in an interview with Uncut magazine: “The Primals are more of a democracy, whereas with the Stone Roses we were more looking over our shoulder to see if Ian and John… [Squire] They were happy. Because they were writing songs and were described as a Lennon-McCartney-Jagger-Richards type. For me now there is a lot of freedom. Primal Scream is as good at spotting bullshit as Stone Roses ever was.

He remained a member of Primal Scream until Roses reformed from 2011 to 2017. In addition to touring and festival performances, they released two new songs, All for One and Beautiful Thing.

He was also a member of the guitarist supergroup Freebass alongside the Smiths’ Andy Rourke and Peter Hook of New Order, with singer Gary Briggs of Haven.

Mane was a Manchester United supporter, and later in life he adopted a love of fishing – and also going to the pub after that. He is survived by his twin sons, Gene Clark and George Christopher, 12.

In the same short interview, he talked about his unexpected success. Despite the Rose family split, he said: “I could never see it as a failure – damn it, I’m from north Manchester, not the best part of town, and I’ve been around the world two or three times playing music. I’m still comfortable, I’ve got a house. I could have ended up dealing drugs or stealing cars or burgling houses, like a lot of my friends.”