The Pop Corporation

When someone passes away, people opt either for hagiographic think pieces, or share photos of themselves with the dearly departed to put themselves in the narrative arc.

Neither of these things are bad, per se, but through feelings of loss about people we didn’t know – but loved – we wrestle with all kinds of feelings and do our best to make sense of everyone’s mortality or, in the case of the musicians we adore, their immortality.

Often, these things ring hallow even though we understand why they happen. We want to put something nice in the world at a sad time.

However, with Mani, things were different – everyone had a story about him, and every single one of them was true.

See, celebrity is a silly thing, and being one of the pivotal two of arguably the best rhythm section of 1990s rock, Gary Mounfield didn’t buy into being untouchable or aloof – he was the people’s champ – the anchor in one of the most enigmatic groups of a generation.

The Stone Roses were a slippery beast, with John Squire and Reni being somewhat reclusive and brilliant, while Ian Brown was a Manc Mystic in Adidas originals – you didn’t exactly see them ’round the pubs and clubs.

Mani was the opposite – the dose of reality for a group of far out men, who would roll his sleeves up, cig in mouth, and get stuck in. Not to say that he was all meat-and-potatoes, but rather, while his bandmates would have a propensity to spiral kaleidoscopically in all directions, there was Mani holding it all together with basslines as funky and melodic as the soul and funk records he listened to, and as original and melancholic as prime McCartney.

While the chiming guitars and angelic vocals of ‘Waterfall’ are the headline, real heads know that the song might dissolve into the ether without Mani’s psychedelic bassline. Mani’s bass is the anchor throughout ‘I Am The Resurrection’, before giving us the drop for the wig-out section at the end.

He was the breezy, confident yin to the group’s turbulent yang, as interested in his clothes as he was serious about the music. When the Roses hibernated, Mani got himself another job playing with Primal Scream and DJ sets of rare soul. Restless and infectious, one of Mani’s greatest traits was that he knew the importance of meeting someone from a band you loved – which is why on his passing, there was a raft of tributes saying that he’d given them five minutes of his time when they’d bumped into him at a gig, the football, a club, pub, or on the street.

Steve Mason from the Beta Band called him everyone’s cool older brother, which is palpably true. He always had a nice jacket on, and would tip you off about where he got it. He was just as excited about other band’s music as he was his own. He’d been seen nervously watching his bandmates’ solo gigs, hoping it went alright for them.

And yet, while is admirable everyman approach to life is not to be undervalued, while the cosmicness of the Roses was one of the group’s main draws, Mani was the embodiment of something more than simple working class, Northern, good vibes.

Mani was a deeply political figure in the most modern of ways – deeds are louder than words. While many of the socialist musicians of his generation were fine sloganeerists, the story goes that Mani’s first proper meeting with Ian Brown was battering a load of National Front skinheads in north Manchester.

While Brown looked to the philosophy of Rastafarianism, American Civil Rights, and Squire made eyes at the Socialist Workers Party, there’s more than one anecdote about Mani telling xenophobes and dickheads to wind their fucking necks in, face-to-face over some Malboro Reds and bevs.

Never a boorish know-it-all, but someone who walked it like he talked it. When he said “because of Margaret Thatcher, and her policies against the working-class of Great Britain. She fucked us man”, it wasn’t a stance, it was the truth.

It was solidarity that didn’t sound bookish, dorky or lame.

Mani was the real deal. It was nice knowing he was around. The amount of people who have bumped into him and come away with a beaming grin on their face is countless. You can’t say that about everyone. He understood the value of those brief moments, and that’s why everyone has a Mani story.

From The Charlatans recording in Wales and hearing a commotion outside and it was Mani on a stolen tractor arriving unannounced, to him haranguing the NME Awards audience with “it’s like a Leonard Cohen b-side at a snooker tournament in space” comment, to buying pints for fans rather than the other way around – that’s why every story you hear about Mani, you can believe.

Truly, of all the people who deserve the earth from Manchester’s music scene, it’s Mani more than anyone who really does.