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By any measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It took place during a span of one year. At the start of 1989, they were just a local source of buzz in Manchester, largely overlooked by the traditional channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The music press had hardly mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a smaller London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their performance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable situation for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly drawing in a far bigger and more diverse crowd than usually showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the expanding acid house scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung 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 old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were playing underneath it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the songs that featured on the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds rather different to the standard alternative group set texts, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great northern soul and groove music”.

The fluidity of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s Mani who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into free-flowing funk, his jumping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the singing or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, relentless bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a strong defender of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by cutting some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually coincide with the instances when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically willing the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is completely at odds with the lethargy of all other elements that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable country-rock – not a genre one suspects anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a disastrous top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising impact on a band in a slump after the tepid reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, weightier and more distorted, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – especially on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his bass work 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 – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, sociable figure – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously styled and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything more than a long series of hugely profitable concerts – a couple of fresh tracks released by the reformed four-piece served only to prove that whatever spark had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to recapture 18 years on – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with 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 range of manners. Oasis undoubtedly observed their confident approach, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was informed by a aim to break the standard market limitations of indie rock and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate influence was a kind of groove-based shift: in the wake of their initial success, you abruptly couldn’t move for indie bands 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 averred. “That’s what they’re for.”