Gary “Mani” Mounfield, who has headed off to the great festival in sky just days after his 63rd birthday – timing that even he might have dismissed as a cosmic wind-up – was the bassist whose loping, rubber-limbed lines provided the heartbeat for two of Britain’s most mythologised rock bands, The Stone Roses and Primal Scream. In an era when guitarists preened and singers posed as messiahs, Mani stood at the back, grinning like a man who’d just nicked your pint and knew you couldn’t prove it, supplying the groove that made half of Manchester believe it could dance without spilling its lager.
Born in 1962 into the sort of Irish Catholic Manchester family that regarded rain as a personal blessing, young Gary discovered early that the bass guitar was the perfect instrument for someone who preferred to let others do the shouting while he quietly ran the show. Joining The Stone Roses in 1987, he arrived just in time to turn a promising psychedelic outfit into the Second Coming – or at least the first one that bothered turning up. Tracks like “She Bangs The Drums" and "I Am the Resurrection” owe their immortal swagger to Mani’s habit of playing McCartney lines backwards when bored, a technique that says everything about his work ethic.
When the Roses inevitably imploded in a haze of contractual acrimony and monumental sulks, Mani did what any self-respecting Mancunian would: he wandered across to Primal Scream and promptly made them sound twice as dangerous. For fifteen years he supplied the low-end thunder to Bobby Gillespie’s high-end chaos, proving that a good bassist is like a good referee – you only notice when he’s missing. Offstage, he was the Roses’ designated grown-up, the one least likely to set fire to a hotel room (though more than happy to watch).
A devout Manchester United supporter, keen angler, and recent widower after the cruel loss of his wife Imelda to cancer in 2023, he retained until the end the scallywag charm that made strangers want to buy him a drink and friends want to hide their wallets. He is survived by twin sons and an entire generation who, thanks to those basslines, still believe that one perfect riff can resurrect anything – even, perhaps, the idea that rock stars could once be working-class heroes rather than corporate holograms. Mani has left the building, the floor, mercifully, is still vibrating.