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By every measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary thing. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely overlooked by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able 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 draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can identify any number of reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly drawing in a far bigger and more diverse audience than typically showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning dance music scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way completely different from anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument that the tune of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were playing behind it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to most of the tracks that featured on the decks at the era’s indie discos. You somehow got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music quite distinct from the standard alternative group set texts, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good Motown-inspired and funk”.

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 shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his octave-leaping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the drum sample 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 initial element that comes to thought is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced guitar 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 increasingly turgid songs, you can sense him metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the lethargy of all other elements that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to inject a bit of energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a catastrophic top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively energising impact on a band in a decline after the tepid response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, weightier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the laid-back 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 star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, clubbable figure – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was invariably broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. Said reunion did not lead to anything more than a lengthy series of extremely profitable gigs – two fresh singles put out by the reconstituted quartet only demonstrated that any magic had been present in 1989 had turned out impossible to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani quietly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on fly-fishing, which furthermore provided “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their confident attitude, while Britpop as a whole was informed by a desire to break the standard market limitations of indie rock and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate effect was a sort of rhythmic shift: following their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for 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 averred. “That’s what they’re for.”