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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable phenomenon. It took place over the course of one year. At the start of 1989, they were merely a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the established channels for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The music press had hardly covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack 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 appearance was the main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable situation for the majority of indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously drawing in a far bigger and broader audience than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way completely unlike any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument 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 dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the songs that graced the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music quite distinct from the standard alternative group influences, which was absolutely right: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s him who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing funk, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, relentless bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a strong defender of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses could have been rectified by cutting some of the layers of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s handful of highlights usually occur during the instances when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can sense him figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is totally at odds with the listlessness of all other elements that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to add a some pep into what’s otherwise just some nondescript country-rock – not a style one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a disastrous top-billed set 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 cool reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, heavier and more fuzzy, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – 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 bass line is certainly the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an friendly, clubbable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy succession of hugely profitable concerts – a couple of fresh tracks released by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that any spark had been present in 1989 had turned out impossible to rediscover nearly two decades on – and Mani quietly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their confident approach, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a aim to transcend the usual market limitations of alternative music and attract a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate effect was a kind of groove-based change: in the wake of their initial success, you abruptly couldn’t move for alternative acts who aimed to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”