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By every measure, the ascent 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 ignored by the traditional channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly 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 huge. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable state of affairs for most alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find numerous causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously attracting a far bigger and more diverse crowd than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding dance music scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way entirely unlike anything else 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 old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were doing underneath it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the tracks 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 brought up on sounds quite distinct from the standard indie band influences, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and funk”.

The smoothness of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s Mani who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his jumping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the drum sample borrowed 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 springs to mind is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually occur during the instances when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can sense him figuratively willing the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is completely contrary to the listlessness of all other elements that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to inject a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a disastrous headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising effect on a band in a slump after the cool response to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, weightier and increasingly fuzzy, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – particularly on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his bass work to the front. His percussive, hypnotic low-end pattern is very much the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an affable, clubbable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was always broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously styled and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion failed to translate into anything more than a lengthy series of hugely lucrative gigs – two fresh singles released by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture nearly two decades later – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which furthermore offered “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their swaggering attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was informed by a aim to break the usual market limitations of alternative music and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious direct influence was a sort of rhythmic change: following their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for indie bands who aimed to make their fans move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”