Manny’s relentless, writhing voice was the Stone Roses’ secret sauce – she taught indie kids how to dance | Stone roses

forBy any measure, the Stone Roses’ rise has been surprising and remarkable. This happened over a period of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were merely a local cause of excitement in Manchester, and were largely ignored by traditional alternative rock outlets in Britain. John Peel was not a fan. Their latest single “Elephant Stone” was barely mentioned by the music press. They were barely able to fill a more modest London venue like Dingwalls. But by November their numbers were huge. Their single Fools Gold entered the charts at number eight and their performance was the big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a situation barely imaginable for most indie bands of the late 1980s.

Looking back, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, and it’s clear that they attracted a much larger and broader audience than the usual interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which seemed to fit them best into the burgeoning acid house scene – their aggressive, cocky attitude and the skill of guitarist John Squire, an unashamedly talented virtuoso in a world of distorted thrashing hits.

But there was also the indisputable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way that was completely unlike anything else in British alternative rock at the time. There’s an argument to be made that the melody of Made of Stone bears a clear resemblance to the melody of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums behind it were doing wasn’t really that: you could dance to it in a way you simply couldn’t dance to most of the tracks that adorned the turntables at indie discos of that era. I somehow got the impression that drummer Alan “Rennie” Wren and bassist Gary “Manny” Moonfield had grown up on music somewhat different from the standard indie band’s set texts, which was exactly right: Manny was a big fan of the Byrds’ guitarist Chris Hillman, but his guiding lights were “good northern soul and funk.”

The fluidity of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: It’s him who drives the moment when “I Am Resurrection” transitions from Motown to loose-limbed funk, his octave-jumping lines putting a spring into the waterfall step. Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t actually the vocal melody or Squire’s pedal-heavy strumming, or even the beat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Manny’s relentless, writhing bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to mind is the bass line.

In fact, in Mane’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically, it was because they weren’t funky enough. He suggested that Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was disappointing, because “it could have swung a bit more, it’s a bit too rigid”. He was a strong advocate of their much-dismissed second album, Second Coming, but believed its flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “getting back into the groove.”

And maybe he had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights usually coincides with moments where Moonfield is truly allowed to let loose – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the wonderful Begging You – while on his more obscure songs you can hear him figuratively wanting to pick up the pace for the band. His playing on Tightrope is in stark contrast to the listlessness of everything else happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man, he audibly attempts to inject a little enthusiasm into the indescribable country rock – not the kind that one suspects anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses experience.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of the release of Second Coming, and the Stone Roses completely imploded after their disastrous headline set at 1996’s Reading Festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressive effect on a band in the doldrums after the stellar reception of 1994’s rocker Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His voice became murkier, heavier and more distorted, but the swing that gave the Stone Roses a point of difference was still evident — especially in the low-key funk of Kowalski’s 1997 single — as was his ability to push his playing to the forefront. His hypnotic bass line is very much the star turn of the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; His playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, the best album Primal Scream has produced since Screamadelica – was sublime.

Always an affable presence – writer John Robb once remarked that the Stone Roses’ arrogance towards the media was always violated if Manny “let his guard down” – he took the stage at a 2012 Stone Roses reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a custom bass bearing the legendary “Super-Yob”, the nickname Slade gave to the preposterously hairstyled, always-smiling guitarist Dave Hill. Said reunion failed to translate into anything more than a long string of highly lucrative gigs – two new singles released by the reconstituted quartet only served to prove that it was impossible to recapture any magic that existed in 1989 after 18 years – and Mane quietly announced his retirement in 2021. He had made his money and was now more interested in fly fishing, which moreover provided “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he had done enough: he had certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in many ways. Oasis certainly took notice of their swaggering attitude, while Britpop as a whole was driven by the desire to break the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But the most obvious immediate effect was a kind of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their initial success, you could suddenly no longer turn to indie bands who wanted to make their audiences dance. That was Manny’s musical The reason for thisexisting. “That’s what drums are for, right?” Confirm once. “That’s what they are to“.