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By any metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable thing. It unfolded over the course of one year. At the start of 1989, they were merely a local cause of excitement in Manchester, largely overlooked by the established channels for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The music press had barely mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a smaller 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 attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable situation for the majority of alternative groups in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously drawing in a much larger and more diverse crowd than typically displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a scene of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way entirely unlike any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument that the tune of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were playing behind it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the tracks that featured on the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way 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 usual indie band influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good Motown-inspired and funk”.

The smoothness of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s Mani who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed groove, his jumping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the singing 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 writhing, driving bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element 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 disappointing follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a strong supporter of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights usually coincide with the instances when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can hear him figuratively urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is completely at odds with the lethargy of everything else that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to inject a bit of pep into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable country-rock – not a genre one suspects anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a catastrophic 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 slump after the tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly fuzzy, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – especially on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring 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 standout of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, clubbable presence – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was always punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously styled and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything more than a long series of hugely profitable concerts – a couple of new singles released by the reformed four-piece served only to prove that whatever spark had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani quietly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with angling, which furthermore offered “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was informed by a desire to transcend the usual commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a more general public, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious direct effect was a kind of rhythmic change: in the wake of their early success, you suddenly couldn’t move for alternative acts who aimed to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”