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By any metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary thing. It took place during a span of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a local source of buzz in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the established channels for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The music press had hardly mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack 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 big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable situation for the majority of alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can identify numerous reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly drawing in a far bigger and more diverse crowd than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the expanding acid house scene – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a scene of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way completely different from any other act in British alt-rock 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 rhythm section were playing behind it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the songs that featured on the turntables at the era’s indie discos. You in some way felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds quite distinct from the standard indie band influences, which was absolutely right: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The fluidity of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s Mani who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing funk, his jumping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bass. 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 went wrong musically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights often occur during the moments when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is completely at odds with the listlessness of everything else that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-rock – not a style one suspects anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a disastrous headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively energising impact on a band in a slump after the tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, weightier and more fuzzy, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his bass work to the front. His percussive, mesmerising bass line is certainly the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an affable, sociable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was invariably broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently smiling axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy series of hugely profitable gigs – a couple of fresh tracks put out by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated that any spark had been present in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture 18 years later – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which additionally offered “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a aim to transcend the standard market limitations of indie rock and attract a wider general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest direct influence was a kind of rhythmic change: in the wake of their early success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted to make their fans move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”