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By every measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a local source of buzz in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a more modest London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable state of affairs for most indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously attracting a much larger and more diverse crowd than usually showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their confidently defiant attitude and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way completely different from any other act 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 really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the songs that featured on the decks 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 music quite distinct from the standard alternative group set texts, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and funk”.

The fluidity of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s Mani who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into free-flowing funk, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bassline. 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 groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a strong defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him figuratively urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is completely contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to inject a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable country-rock – not a genre one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a catastrophic top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising effect 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 more echo-laden, heavier and more distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – particularly on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his bass work to the fore. His popping, hypnotic low-end pattern is certainly the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, sociable presence – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness 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 bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reunion failed to translate into anything more than a long series of extremely lucrative concerts – two new singles put out by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture nearly two decades on – and Mani discreetly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of manners. Oasis certainly observed their swaggering attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a desire to break the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate influence was a sort of rhythmic change: following their initial success, you abruptly couldn’t move for alternative acts 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.”