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By every measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary phenomenon. It took place during a span of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly ignored by the established channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had hardly 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 huge. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable situation for most indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly drawing in a far bigger and more diverse audience than typically displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved 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 sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were playing behind it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the tracks that graced the turntables at the era’s indie discos. You somehow got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music quite distinct from the usual indie band set texts, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good Motown-inspired and funk”.

The smoothness of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s Mani who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into free-flowing funk, his jumping riffs that put a spring in the step 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 guitar work, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a strong defender of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights often coincide with the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can sense him figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is completely contrary to the lethargy of everything else that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to inject a some pep into what’s otherwise some nondescript folk-rock – not a style one suspects anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a catastrophic headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig 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 tone became more echo-laden, heavier and more distorted, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – especially on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the front. His percussive, mesmerising 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 best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, clubbable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – 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 moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently smiling axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion did not lead to anything more than a lengthy series of hugely profitable gigs – two fresh singles released by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that whatever magic had existed in 1989 had turned out impossible to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani discreetly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on fly-fishing, which furthermore offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a desire to break the usual market limitations of indie rock and attract a more general public, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious direct influence was a sort of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for alternative acts who aimed to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”