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By every measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly ignored by the traditional outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a smaller London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable situation for most indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously attracting a far bigger and more diverse audience than typically showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning dance music movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a world of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way entirely different from anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point that the tune of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were doing underneath it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that featured on the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music rather different to the usual indie band influences, which was completely correct: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good northern soul and groove music”.

The fluidity of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s him who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing funk, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a strong supporter of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks often occur during the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him figuratively willing the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is totally at odds with the listlessness of everything else that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise some unremarkable country-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a catastrophic headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising impact on a band in a slump after the cool reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, weightier and increasingly fuzzy, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – especially on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his playing to the front. His percussive, mesmerising low-end pattern is certainly the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an affable, clubbable figure – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was always punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything beyond a lengthy succession of extremely lucrative gigs – a couple of new tracks released by the reconstituted quartet served only to prove that whatever magic had existed in 1989 had proved impossible to recapture nearly two decades later – and Mani quietly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of manners. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a whole was shaped by a desire to transcend the usual commercial constraints of alternative music and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct influence was a kind of rhythmic change: following their early success, you suddenly encountered many indie bands who wanted to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”