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By every measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary thing. It took place during a span of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly ignored by the established channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack 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 appearance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable state of affairs for most indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly drawing in a far bigger and broader crowd 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 dance music movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way entirely different from 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 early 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 could not to the majority of the songs that featured on the turntables at the era’s indie discos. You in some way got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds rather different to the standard alternative group influences, which was absolutely right: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s Mani who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into free-flowing funk, his jumping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bass. When you think of 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 went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a strong supporter of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the layers of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the rhythm”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks often occur during the instances when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can sense him metaphorically willing the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is completely at odds with the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a some energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a disastrous headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively 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 sound became dubbier, weightier and more fuzzy, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – especially on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his playing to the fore. His percussive, mesmerising bass line is very much the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an affable, clubbable figure – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was invariably broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously styled and constantly grinning axeman Dave Hill. This reunion failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy succession of hugely profitable gigs – two fresh tracks released by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that whatever magic had existed in 1989 had proved impossible to rediscover nearly two decades on – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which additionally offered “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis certainly observed their confident approach, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a desire to transcend the usual market limitations of indie rock and reach a more general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate effect was a sort of groove-based change: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly encountered many 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, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”