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By every metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It unfolded during a span of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were merely a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly ignored by the traditional outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly covered 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 main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable state of affairs for most alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly drawing in a much larger and more diverse audience than typically 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 movement – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a world of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way entirely unlike any other act in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument 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 doing behind it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the tracks that graced the decks 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 rather different to the standard indie band influences, which was absolutely right: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s him who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his jumping lines that put a spring in the step 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 guitar work, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, relentless bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but believed its flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the rhythm”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often occur during the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can sense him metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is completely at odds with the lethargy of all other elements that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to inject a some pep into what’s otherwise just some nondescript folk-rock – not a style one suspects listeners 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 launch, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a disastrous headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively 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 sound became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the groove that had provided 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 skill to bring his bass work to the fore. His percussive, mesmerising bass line is very much the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an friendly, clubbable presence – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was always punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously styled and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything more than a long series of extremely lucrative concerts – two fresh tracks released by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that any magic had been present in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture 18 years later – and Mani quietly announced his retirement 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 achieved plenty: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of manners. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering attitude, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a aim to transcend the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct influence was a kind of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their early success, you suddenly encountered many alternative acts who wanted to make their fans move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”