“From a bass-playing point of view, he was the best. Everybody wanted to be him”: Joy Division co-founder Peter Hook on his friendship with Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield – and how groove defined his bass playing

Former bassist and co-founder of Joy Division and New Order, Peter Hook, has reflected on his long-standing friendship with Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield – the Stone Roses and Primal Scream bass player who passed away on November 20, at the age of 63.

The tribute, which Hook wrote for The Guardian, starts by looking back at the first time the two met, precisely when the Stone Roses’ manager asked him to produce the band.

“I had the Roses in my Suite 16 studio doing demos for what was going to be the second album, until they scrapped it. I got to know Mani and his wife, Imelda. We had a wild period,” he writes.

After their various bands stopped playing, Hook and Mounfield started Freebass, which – as the name suggests – was a bass-focused supergroup that also included the Smiths’ Andy Rourke and singer Gary Briggs.

“The band was ill-fated – too many chefs – and eventually we fell out badly after a row over a gig. Mani slagged me off but God bless him, the very next day he phoned me up and apologized.

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“That was Mani,” he continues. “Once we were no longer working together, we became friends and after that every day spent with him was a total pleasure.”

As Hook looks back on the moments he shared with his old friend, he notes that Mani was “a man of the people, very funny and very irreverent. But he also had an intensity and didn't suffer fools gladly.

“From a bass-playing point of view, he was the best,” Hook asserts. “Everybody wanted to be him. Mani joining the Stone Roses made the difference. He was a groove artist and into groovy music.

“I recently watched him playing Fool’s Gold on Instagram and thought: ‘How is he playing that?’ Like Andy Rourke, Mani played very melodically – which I do, but Mani was much subtler. I always tried to compete with the guitar but Mani wove around it.

“That’s a great skill, but I didn’t care what he played. He could have banged the thing on the floor for all I care: he was Mani.”

Since Mani's death, his former Stone Roses bandmate, Ian Brown, Rowetta of the Happy Mondays, The Charlatans frontman Tim Burgess, and Liam Gallagher all paid tribute to the beloved bassist, further highlighting his far-reaching influence on not only the 'Madchester' scene, but also the UK music scene as a whole.