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By every measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable phenomenon. It took place during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional source of buzz in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill 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 performance was the main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable situation for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can find numerous causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly drawing in a far bigger and broader crowd than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which seemed to align them more to the expanding acid house scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a world of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way entirely unlike 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 old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were doing behind it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that graced the decks at the era’s indie discos. You in some way got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds quite distinct from the standard alternative group influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great Motown-inspired and funk”.

The fluidity of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s him who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his jumping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the rhythm”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks often coincide with the instances 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 performance on Tightrope is completely contrary to the lethargy of everything else that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-rock – not a style anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a catastrophic top-billed performance 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 tepid response to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, weightier and more fuzzy, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – especially on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his bass work to the front. His percussive, hypnotic low-end pattern is certainly the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, clubbable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was always punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently grinning guitarist Dave Hill. Said reformation failed to translate into anything more than a lengthy series of hugely profitable concerts – two fresh singles released by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on fly-fishing, which additionally offered “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of manners. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their confident attitude, while Britpop as a whole was informed by a aim to break the standard market limitations of indie rock and attract a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious immediate effect was a sort of groove-based shift: following their early success, you suddenly encountered many indie bands who wanted to make their fans move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”