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By every metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable phenomenon. It took place during a span of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were merely a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely overlooked by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The music press had hardly mentioned their latest 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 attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable situation for most indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find numerous reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly drawing in a far bigger and more diverse audience than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning dance music movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly 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 unlike any other act in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point 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 bass and drums were playing underneath it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the songs that featured on the turntables at the era’s indie discos. You somehow felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds rather different to the standard indie band set texts, which was completely right: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s him who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into loose-limbed funk, his octave-leaping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, relentless bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a strong supporter of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks often occur during the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can sense him figuratively willing the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the listlessness of all other elements that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript folk-rock – not a genre one suspects anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a catastrophic top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising effect on a band in a slump after the cool reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his bass work to the front. His popping, hypnotic bass line is very much the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, sociable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was always punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously styled and constantly smiling axeman Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything beyond a long succession of hugely profitable gigs – two new tracks released by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that whatever magic had been present in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture nearly two decades on – and Mani discreetly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with angling, 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 influential in a range of manners. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their confident approach, while Britpop as a movement was informed by a aim to transcend the usual market limitations of indie rock and reach a more mainstream audience, 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 encountered many indie bands who wanted to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”