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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable thing. It unfolded over the course of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were merely a local cause of excitement in Manchester, largely ignored by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The music press had hardly covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a smaller London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can find numerous reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously attracting 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 appeared to connect them more to the expanding acid house scene – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a world of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way entirely different from any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument 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 move to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that graced the turntables at the era’s indie discos. You somehow got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds quite distinct from the standard alternative group influences, which was completely right: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and funk”.

The smoothness of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s him who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into loose-limbed funk, his octave-leaping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, relentless bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses 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 valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights often occur during the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can hear him figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is completely at odds with the lethargy of everything else that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to add a some energy into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable country-rock – not a style anyone would guess listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a disastrous headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising effect on a band in a decline after the tepid reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, heavier and increasingly 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 ability to push his bass work to the front. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is very much the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an affable, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was always broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently smiling axeman Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything more than a lengthy succession of hugely lucrative concerts – a couple of new singles released by the reconstituted quartet served only to prove that any magic had been present in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture nearly two decades on – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of manners. Oasis certainly observed their confident attitude, while Britpop as a whole was shaped by a aim to transcend the usual market limitations of indie rock and attract a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious direct effect was a sort of groove-based change: following their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for alternative acts who wanted to make their fans 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.”