Remembering Mani: Revisit a classic Hot Press interview with The Stone Roses and Primal Scream bassist

Originally published in Hot Press in 1999:

The ace bass in the Stone Roses and Primal Scream, Mani is the living embodiment of the concept of 'largin' it'. In Ireland to DJ and hang out, he sinks a few beers and offers his uniquely colourful thoughts on music, Man U, drugs, Thatcher, Reagan, and Blair. Interview: Eamon Sweeney.

It's hard to picture this manic, grinning Mancunian, who looks like he's been on the piss for ten years, as one of the mythic, demi-god legends of the Stone Roses. While his former band mates are pursuing solo careers to varying degrees of success, Mani is kicking back, swilling Guinness like there is no tomorrow and excitedly enthusing about last night's DJ set in Galway.

"I thought we were largin' it, man. But they were laaargin' it."

The circumstances for a chat with the man who knocked out some of the most awesome bass lines in rock couldn't be better. There is no PR personnel, record company heads or tour mangers. Just Mani, his flatmate Phil Smith (Official Tour DJ for those other bunch of scallies Oasis) and a band of Scottish friends, all of them enjoying the relaxing effects of a few cold beverages. Later in the evening, the gang plan to check out tribute band The Complete Stone Roses, amid rumours that Mani himself may strap on a bass and join them.

It is ten years this April since the debut album The Stone Roses was released. Few albums of the last decade have had such a seismic impact on music, or spawned such awe-struck devotion. Last year, in one of those endless streams of polls to determine what the greatest LP of all time was, only Sgt. Pepper was deemed a superior album. The Roses' debut came ahead of anything by Dylan, the Stones, or Velvets. Clearly for your average contemporary music fan, The Stone Roses has far more relevance than Astral Weeks, Pet Sounds or any universally acknowledged classic you care to mention.

Of course, the Roses story is also one of squandered opportunity and unfulfilled potential. Mani had once commented that the only other three bands in the world he would like to be in were the Beastie Boys, The Jesus and Mary Chain and Primal Scream. In typical rock 'n' roll fairytale style his wish came true when Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie invited him on board. The result was a rejuvenated, bass driven outfit, marking an electrifying return to form on the superb Vanishing Point LP.

Putting all the myths, stories and rock messiah bullshit to one side, Mani is one of the most infectiously funny, charming and easy going people you could have the pleasure of meeting. There isn't a hint of that legendary Mancunian arrogance and aloofness the Roses were said to exude. This man just wants a pint, a chat and a chance to debunk some of the more outrageous Roses myths. And along the way, aim some hilarious potshots at various pillars of society.

This is Mani's fourth visit to Ireland in the last 18 months, previously he was twice here with Primal Scream and to present David Holmes with the Best Album Award at last April's Hot Press Awards in Belfast.

"Any chance I get to go Scotland or Ireland, I grab it with both hands cos I fuckin' love it here," he explains. "I'm a fuckin' Celt myself man. My family is from Maganey, Co. Kildare, which is a little dot on the map with five pubs and three houses. Irish is in my blood and Ireland has always been kind to the Roses, and kind to the Scream as well, so more power to ye. That Hot Press Awards night was wicked. I met Sinead O'Connor there. God, she a beautiful girl. Can I be invited this year?"

I'm sure that won't be a problem. This time your visit is a little unusual. Everyone has been saying that tonight you will actually playing with The Complete Stone Roses.

"I'm not playing bass. I'm just playing tunes. I can't play bass with them. No respect to them and that, but I played bass for the Stone Roses. I'm just keen to watch what they're doing. I know that's what the NME has put in the paper. I hope people don't come and be disappointed cos all that I'm doing is playing tunes with Smithy. I'm told they're brilliant so I'm intrigued to see what they're like."

Have you ever watched a Stone Roses tribute band?

"Never. But when the Scream played the SFX in Dublin, I saw posters up for the Stoned Roses. I had to leave to go Belfast, but I was very tempted to go along and sit up the front eyeing up the bass player all night going 'wrong, wrong'. It's going to be strange but a good grin. Allegedly, they're really fuckin' good."

Why do you think there are so many Roses tributes?

"It's weird, but then again we never put ourselves around that much, and there is a new generation of kids getting into the first LP who never saw us. They might as well go and see someone doing it cos they're probably not going to get a chance to see us again. Or will they?"

Are you suggesting that the Stone Roses will reform?

"I'm fuckin' mad to reform for six months next year. It's whether we can get everyone speaking to each other. That's probably just a real pipe dream but I fuckin' miss them, but then again the Scream's my family but I'm sure they would give me a few months off to get it out of my system. For me it is still unfinished business. I didn't like the way it was left, snide attacks on Ian and John when he left and all that. I think our fans deserved so much fuckin' more. Even if it's just to go and play a bit more since we were a bit slouchy don't you think?"

Is there still much tension or animosity amongst the band?

"There was a lot of animosity directed towards John when he said he was cuttin out. I felt cheated for him and us as well, but it wasn't a great way to finish it, our fans deserved so much more than that. No disrespect to the Seahorses, I like them and I still go and watch John play guitar, but if you're going to leave a band you should be kicking its arse and giving it loads.

"I think it was a thing that Johnny Squire had to do, because everything was so dysfunctional at that point. It was the kindest thing to do in some ways. Sure we did try and slag John a bit. Ian Brown is back at the top of his fuckin' tree with that UNKLE thing, and apparently he brought the house down last week in the Astoria. What the press did to him in England was so fuckin' snide after his face sold many millions of magazines and to round on him like that was not on. It's like knocking the coolest kid on the block. You can't knock Ian. Ian Brown is as cool as fuck and he'll have the last laugh on the lot of us and I hope he does, now he's out of jail!"

What were your thoughts on the Ian Brown / British Airways incident?

"Apparently it was just a real storm in a teacup - they just made an example out of him and it was wrong. Funnily enough when he went to prison, a mate of mine got his arm around him and looked after him. Funny how all the scoundrels in Manchester are from the northside just like Dublin. He was all right and got looked after. Whether it will change him I don't know, Ian Brown has always been very forthright with his views but I think he was railroaded and made an example of and it's not fair.

"To me, it was like when your Mam is baking cakes and saying she'll cut your fingers off, you wouldn't send everyone's Mum to prison now would you? Ian is not a malicious guy, he's a fuckin' lover man and he believes in people. I can see it was just a joke that got out of hand. Anyway he's done his time and he'll be a better man for it. I can't wait to hear what his new tunes are like it'll be real Johnny Cash just out of the nick vibe."

In the absence of a Roses reunion, what plans do you have for Primal Scream?

"We're in a weird situation at the minute contractually with the publishing company because they are trying to screw another LP out of us. We are writing but we have to get the legal shit out of the way. Legal shit seems to follow me around like a bad smell. Everyone in the Scream is looking at me going 'it's you Mani, you're jinxed'. But no, be prepared for another fuckin' astounding Scream LP man. I'm on every track this next one. We've got the outfit we want now. It s beautiful to be in love with music again."

"When the Roses thing all finished, I just thought, 'I couldn't be arsed any more. I'll get a job making hairdryers or something'. We had all that shit for two years going in and out of the courts before we made Second Coming. The hand-brake was put on us. There was an injunction that we couldn't play or record. What were we to do? Sit at home masturbating all day when really we should have been in a room with each other playing tunes. It was an inertia thing and it was hard to generate the momentum again after all that.

"I really thought Second Coming was unfairly criticised. But we always knew that since it was such a change of style from the first, people would get the point six months after they were slagging it. It's hard if you don't have the momentum going all the time. I'm fortunate to have a second chance with the Scream. We don't want to sit down on our fat lazy arses anymore. We want to get things to do. I'm 36 now so there's not long left."

Are there still any unresolved legal matters from the Stone Roses days?

"Allegedly, we have only now just recouped on the first album. But we've never got a penny off it or The Complete Stone Roses either. Ian and John probably have the publishing money but Reni and me have seen fuck all of it. We might get some money off it now, which would make my Mum very happy indeed. I don't want to see some twat in a record company making a fortune from our sweatin'. A bit of fairness wouldn't go amiss.

"We were fortunate to get together and write tunes. But the whole thing about the Roses was that we had the best laugh you can ever imagine. One day I'll write the book and you'll be pissing in your pants at all the shit we got up to. It's all there man. I remember it all. Computer brain they called me. Ian Brown would try and trip me up and say what was I wearing in Fulham, 1987? and I go 'yellow T-shirt'. Attention to detail - if I'd followed nuclear science I'd be a fuckin master man but instead it's just trivial old shite."

Music isn't Mani's only passion, of course. The Manchester United shirt he's wearing while we talk, reflects a devotion to the club others love to hate that goes way beyond the obsessional.

"It's the essence of my very being," he argues. "We were in Barcelona for the 3-3 game. I got off my box on that Absinthe gear mate. I went fuckin potty throwing glasses around this bar shouting caahhhme on lost it. I do go to all the away European games. I was in Dortmund for that semi-final and it was that close - but the Germans showed us how to do it. We play them off the park over there and they go and score a snide goal. They come here and whack us with a quick one. We've still got a hell of a lot to learn but the funny thing was all these Barcelona fans were coming up at the end of the game. They knew that they couldn't qualify so they're saying 'if you draw with Real Madrid kick them right up the arse for us'.

"Everyone I know from the Mondays are mad football fans as well. It's what we all used to do. When you're on the dole and there is fuck all else to do except go to a game and kick some fucker's head in. That's what happened before the E thing started. E arrives and half the guys I know who had been stabbing Scousers, were embracing them in clubs telling them 'I love you'. Ecstasy killed football violence - no Thatcher bullshit. They should give out free E when you go to a game. That would be a proper policy. Free Ecstasy for football fans."

What else would you do if you were Prime Minister?

"I'd start by lining up the Royal family and fuckin killing every last one of them personally, except for maybe the Queen Mum. They've got to go. Then, everyone whose got more than a million pounds I'll get it off em and redistribute it and make everyone millionaires. Give everyone a quality of life they deserve. You work all your life, then they get you to pension age and your benefits are cut and you die penniless. People should be rewarded. People should be able to live instead of just existing. There's another one for my manifesto!"

Have you ever met Tony Blair or got a Number 10 invite like many other Cool Britannia pop stars?

"Tony Blair! I'll fuckin chin him if I ever see him. Having the gall and the audacity to mention the Stone Roses, The Clash, the Happy Mondays and all that just to get the youth vote. My Mam's disabled and he turns around and cuts her disability pension. Bastard. Phil and me met John Prescott in Preston when we were changing trains for Glasgow. I went up to him and said, 'When you see Tony Blair tell him Mani from the Stone Roses is going to knock his block off when he sees him'. And Prescott goes 'fair enough'. I'll fuckin chin the cunt if I see him, not that I'm into violence but I don't trust the guy. He's a Tory.

"I don't like what they've done to socialism, taking the power off the trade unions. It's designer socialism man. Bobby G's (Primal Scream frontman) dad was a big trade unionist Union leader in Glasgow in the early eighties when the miner's strike was on. The fuckin MI5 were bugging his phone and following him about. It's frightening man. It's become too user friendly. Get back to the old days of power cuts. Stop everything. The miners' strike was the government just turning the fuckin screw to the last half turn Thatcher could get on it. I hate that bitch for that and the day she pops there's a party in my house and you are all invited. She has made us a nation of cynical, mistrusting bastards. She was fuckin evil and matched up with that twat Reagan as well. You didn't know if you'd be blown to bits with that lunatic.

"The same is happening now in the States. They should just put the Republicans into a shuttle and send em into space and blow em up now."

Sadly (or perhaps not) Mani is neither Prime Minister nor President. But he is a DJ for the time being. How does your work as a DJ compare to Mani the musician?

"I just went out on a vinyl-buying spree in Manchester," he reveals. "When I started DJing I was playing Barmy Army, GBH, the Exploited. I'm on a more a funky trip this time. I got a ten-vinyl LP set called The Story of Funk and it's all really obscure rare groove. It's going to be an evening of bass lines. That is why I love DJing. I don't want to be fuckin Fatboy Slim. I just want to go out and give myself a hard on by playing the tunes that I like. I couldn't care if the crowd like it or not. Extreme funky bass lines man - you might even hear where I pinched a few bass lines in the past as well. There'll be one dead give away for 'Fool's Gold'. How I got away with that one I'll never know."

Scenes of fevered adoration are to follow later that night in the Mean Fiddler. The Complete Stone Roses prove themselves as a scaringly good replica of the original of the species. Mani is grooving along in the wings in astonishment, exclaiming, "he can play 'Sugar Spun Sister' far better than I ever could man".

When he takes to the decks, fans clamber up to the DJ booth to shake his hand, touch their hero, and tell him that he changed their lives. Backstage is a melee of fans, well wishers and general hangers on. Mani shakes every hand and returns every good wish. Before he disappears off into the night in a mission for more booze, he scribbles 'Mani loves Dublin' on the backstage door.

Mani loves Dublin. Dublin loves Mani. Living proof of the fact that sometimes you should meet your heroes.