RIP Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield -- bassist of the Stones Roses and Primal Scream

On the subject of Manchester bands, I was really affected last month by the news that Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield of the Stone Roses and Primal Scream died, aged 63.

The Stones Roses were a massive part of my teenage years growing up in Greater Manchester . My friends and I saw them play many times at venues around town when the band was still just a local phenomenon, and before they hit the dizzy heights of fame. Somehow we all knew something big was happening -- the gigs were electric -- and sure enough, the band exploded nationally soon after their eponymous first album was released and the whole ‘Madchester’ craze took off. I remember travelling to an international volunteer camp in the French Alps in the summer of ‘89 and introducing my Dutch friend to the band (as well as the Happy Mondays), lending her my cassettes. By the autumn, she was writing to tell me that both bands were now all the rage in Amsterdam. The Roses’ blaze of glory was short-lived however -- they never quite surpassed the brilliance of that first album, even though for me ‘Second Coming’ still has some stand-out moments.

Mani was the much-revered bassist, inspired by northern soul and funk who drove the band’s grooviest rhythms -- ‘the secret sauce’ as Alexis Petridis of the Guardian described it. The Stone Roses were so ineffably themselves, so unwilling to compromise, to fit into the pop order, so genuinely subversive and, to my mind, ground-breaking that not many things can beat the long psychedelic rave-up and relentless groove that is the last glorious guitar-soaked five minutes of ‘I Am The Resurrection’ -- particularly when you’ve heard it rip live, shaking up a dancefloor, and mixing in the bloodstream of scores of intoxicated adolescents, out to have a banging good night. ‘Children in a frenzy,’ as the late Tony Wilson, owner of Factory Records, described it.

Spike Island

For me, Spike Island in 1990 will always be one of those stand-out moments -- 27,000 people shaking their thing in Widnes, Cheshire. I remember a sea of Scallies, baggy dungarees, flares and bucket hats; the sun dying over the crowds; the opening bassline of ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ starting the set, to the crowd’s roars, and ending with that long brilliant instrumental of ‘I Am The Resurrection’ (the fact I can remember that underlines how memorable it was). I remember fireworks exploding, although whether they were real or only in my head is hard to recall, as we were all high off something that wasn’t just euphoria (although the music definitely helped). I remember Ian Brown swaggering on the stage, shouting to the audience: ‘What you doing? What you doing?’ and everyone cheering Afterwards my friend couldn’t find her car, and we ended the long day by wandering through hundreds of vehicles in a daze, until eventually - miraculously - we found it.

As tributes have poured in, I’ve found myself unexpectedly emotional at the much-loved Mancunian bassist’s passing. There are so many deeply affectionate memories of those days, it’s hard not to feel moved and to be cast backwards in time. One person on X wrote; ‘I was 19 at the time and believe me you should have witnessed those Manchester dance floors in 1989. Euphoria reigned the second you heard a note.’ And another: ‘As soon as the bass hit, that was it... pure joy and carnage.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D2qcbu26gs

Teenagers

Remembering those times has reminded me too of what it was like to be a teenager. And how fleeting and ephemeral those years are. It’s a prod to me to be mindful too that that’s what youth is for. At the age of 16, 17, 18, 19, that’s what you should be doing. Getting lost in a daze, high off euphoria, feeling the pulse of music in your blood, seeping in your pores, and music that’s the heartbeat of your generation. Doing inappropriate things and not caring about the consequences. Living your life because it’s there, and it’s all that you have -- without worrying about the future. As a mother of teenagers, I’m not sure if this younger generation really has this now – that freedom and hedonism. Live music has been decimated by Brexit, tickets are prohibitively expensive, and so much about the state of the world has perhaps turned a young generation old before their time. It’s a nod to me, perhaps, to not be quite so education and career-obsessed, and to let them live in the blaze of a hot moment. Not with one glance over their shoulders, future-guessing.

It’s hard to live in the moment for your kids. You see the full sweep of their futures so much. You see the opportunities you let slip, that they have in their grasp, if only they would grab them. You have the universities you didn’t get into; the jobs you were declined; the relationships that didn’t quite work out. Perhaps we let these lost lives be our guideposts too much -- ‘blindly handing over the world’ to them ‘like so much skid-marked underwear,’ as the author Douglas Coupland wrote in ‘Generation X’.

For me, Mani’s passing is a reminder that that’s what youth is for -- to enjoy the sun on your face at an early summer festival, seeing the band of your dreams, doing something messy - and getting lost in a car park -- not caring what tomorrow will bring.

Anyway, below is something I wrote at the time, after seeing Spike Island in May 1990 (when I really should have been revising for my A-levels). It’s been hiding in a journal all these years (complete with faded newspaper cuttings and tea stains…) but it seems right to share it now

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