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By every measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable thing. It unfolded during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack 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 main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable situation for most alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly drawing in a far bigger and more diverse audience than usually displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a scene of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way entirely different from any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point 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 bass and drums were playing behind it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the songs that featured on the decks at the era’s indie discos. 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 sounds rather different to the standard indie band set texts, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good Motown-inspired and groove music”.

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

Sometimes the ingredient wasn’t so secret. 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, relentless bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing 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 second album, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights usually coincide with 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 figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is totally at odds with the lethargy of everything else that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript country-rock – not a style one suspects anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, 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 cool reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, 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 bass work to the front. His popping, hypnotic low-end pattern is very much the highlight 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 made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an affable, sociable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything beyond a long succession of extremely lucrative concerts – a couple of new singles released by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that any spark had been present in 1989 had turned out unattainable to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani discreetly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with angling, which furthermore offered “a good 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 range of manners. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a desire to transcend the usual commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate effect was a sort of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly encountered many alternative acts who wanted to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”