‘I watched him doing Fool’s Gold and thought: how’s he playing that?’ New Order’s Peter Hook on his friend Mani
One Mancunian bassist remembers another: Hook pays tribute to the ‘wonderful soul’ Gary Mounfield, the Stone Roses and Primal Scream musician who has died aged 63I first met Mani when...
By Peter Hook · The Guardian Culture
One Mancunian bassist remembers another: Hook pays tribute to the ‘wonderful soul’ Gary Mounfield, the Stone Roses and Primal Scream musician who has died aged 63 I first met Mani when the Stone Roses’ manager asked me to produce them. We did Elephant Stone and they were lovely. Then as Manchester turned into Madchester I got to know them really well. I went to the great gig they did in Blackpool; I went to Spike Island. It was a fantastic time to be together and the Haçienda was the glue. There was no VIP area in the club, so punters would walk around and think: “There’s Mani!” 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. Then after our various bands stopped playing live we started Freebass , with three bass players: myself, Mani and Andy Rourke, who’d been in the Smiths. 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 apologised . That was Mani. Once we were no longer working together, we became friends and after that every day spent with him was a total pleasure. Continue reading...