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By any metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly ignored by the established channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The rock journalism had hardly covered their latest 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 debuted on the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable situation for the majority of indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can find numerous causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a much larger and broader audience than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way completely unlike anything else 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 early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were playing behind it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the songs that graced the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow felt 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 correct: Mani was a huge 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’ self-titled debut album: it’s him who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into loose-limbed funk, his jumping riffs that put a spring in the step 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 effect-laden playing, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was lackluster, he suggested, 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 flaws 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 standout tracks usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can hear him metaphorically willing the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is completely at odds with the listlessness of everything else that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a style anyone would guess anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a disastrous headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively energising impact on a band in a slump after the cool response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, heavier and more fuzzy, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – especially on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his playing to the fore. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is certainly the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an affable, clubbable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was invariably broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously styled and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. This reunion did not lead to anything more than a long series of extremely profitable gigs – a couple of new singles put out by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that whatever magic had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to recapture 18 years on – and Mani quietly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on fly-fishing, which furthermore offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of manners. Oasis certainly observed their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a desire to transcend the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and reach a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious immediate influence was a sort of rhythmic shift: following their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for alternative acts who aimed to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”