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By every measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the established channels for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a more modest 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 main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable state of affairs for most alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously drawing in a far bigger and more diverse crowd than typically displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding dance music scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way completely unlike 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 early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were doing behind it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the songs that graced the decks at the era’s indie discos. You somehow got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music quite distinct from the usual indie band set texts, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good northern soul and funk”.

The fluidity of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s Mani who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into free-flowing funk, his jumping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the breakbeat borrowed 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.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually coincide with the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can sense him figuratively willing the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is totally at odds with the lethargy of all other elements that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to add a some pep into what’s otherwise just some nondescript folk-rock – not a style anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a disastrous headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising effect on a band in a slump after the cool response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – especially on the laid-back 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 contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an friendly, sociable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. Said reunion did not lead to anything beyond a lengthy succession of extremely profitable concerts – a couple of new tracks put out by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that whatever magic had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover nearly two decades on – and Mani discreetly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on fly-fishing, which furthermore offered “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of manners. Oasis certainly observed their confident approach, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a aim to break the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate effect was a sort of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly encountered many alternative acts who wanted to make their fans move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”