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By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable phenomenon. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a local source of buzz in Manchester, mostly ignored by the traditional channels for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had hardly mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a more modest London venue 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 big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable state of affairs for the majority of alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly drawing in a far bigger and more diverse audience than typically showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a world of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way entirely unlike any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point that the melody of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were playing underneath it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the tracks 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 raised on music rather different to the usual alternative group influences, which was completely correct: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great northern soul and funk”.

The smoothness 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 loose-limbed funk, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient was quite obvious. 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, 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 stumbled musically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by removing 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 handful of highlights often coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – 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 totally contrary to the lethargy of everything else that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a some pep into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre 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 in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a catastrophic top-billed set 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 reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, heavier and increasingly fuzzy, but the swing that had given 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 popping, hypnotic low-end pattern is certainly the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an affable, clubbable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and constantly smiling guitarist Dave Hill. Said reformation failed to translate into anything more than a lengthy succession of hugely profitable gigs – a couple of new singles released by the reconstituted quartet served only to prove that any magic had existed in 1989 had turned out impossible to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani quietly 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 done enough: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of manners. Oasis certainly observed their swaggering attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a aim to transcend the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a more general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate influence was a kind of rhythmic shift: following their initial success, you abruptly encountered many alternative acts who aimed to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”