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By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable phenomenon. It took place over the course of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a local source of buzz in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional channels for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a smaller London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their performance was the big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable situation for most indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can find numerous causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously attracting a far bigger and more diverse crowd than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning dance music scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way completely different from anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point that the tune of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were playing behind it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the songs that graced the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds rather different to the standard alternative group set texts, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The fluidity of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s him who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing funk, his octave-leaping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often occur during the instances when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can sense him figuratively urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is completely contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a disastrous headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising effect on a band in a decline after the tepid reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, weightier and increasingly distorted, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – especially on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his bass work to the front. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is certainly the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an affable, clubbable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was always punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and constantly smiling axeman Dave Hill. Said reformation failed to translate into anything more than a lengthy series of extremely profitable concerts – two new singles released by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated that whatever spark had been present in 1989 had proved impossible to recapture 18 years later – and Mani discreetly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which furthermore provided “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of manners. Oasis certainly took note of their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a aim to break the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct effect was a sort of groove-based shift: following their early success, you suddenly encountered many alternative acts who aimed to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”