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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary thing. It took place during a span of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a more modest London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their performance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable situation for the majority of indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find numerous causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly attracting a far bigger and broader crowd than usually displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were set apart by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a world of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable 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 argument that the melody of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were doing underneath it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that featured on the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music quite distinct from the usual alternative group set texts, which was absolutely right: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s Mani who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing funk, his jumping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the singing or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a strong supporter of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced guitar and “reverting to the groove”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of highlights usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can sense him metaphorically willing the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is completely contrary to the listlessness of all other elements that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript folk-rock – not a style one suspects anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were unsuccessful: 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 impact on a band in a decline after the cool response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, heavier and more fuzzy, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – particularly on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his bass work to the front. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is certainly the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an affable, clubbable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was invariably punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything more than a lengthy succession of extremely lucrative concerts – two fresh tracks put out by the reconstituted quartet only demonstrated that any magic had been present in 1989 had proved impossible to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani discreetly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering attitude, while Britpop as a movement was informed by a aim to transcend the standard commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious direct influence was a sort of rhythmic change: following their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for alternative acts who wanted to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”