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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a local source of buzz in Manchester, mostly ignored by the established channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a more modest London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their performance was the big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable state of affairs for most alternative groups in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously attracting a far bigger and broader audience than typically showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which seemed to align them more to the expanding dance music scene – their confidently defiant attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a scene of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way entirely different from anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point that the melody of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were doing underneath 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 set texts, which was completely right: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great northern soul and groove music”.

The fluidity of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s him who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his jumping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the rhythm”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can sense him figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing 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 clearly attempting to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise some unremarkable country-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed 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 decline after the tepid response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, heavier and more distorted, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – especially on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his playing to the front. His percussive, mesmerising bass line is very much the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an affable, clubbable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was invariably broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and constantly grinning axeman Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything more than a lengthy succession of extremely profitable concerts – two fresh singles put out by the reformed four-piece served only to prove that any spark had existed in 1989 had proved impossible to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which furthermore provided “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of manners. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was informed by a desire to break the standard market limitations of alternative music and reach a wider general public, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious immediate effect was a sort of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly encountered many indie bands who wanted to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”