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By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely overlooked by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a smaller London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable state of affairs for the majority of alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find numerous causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a far bigger and broader audience than usually showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their confidently defiant attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way entirely unlike any other act 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 rhythm section were doing underneath it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the tracks that graced the turntables at the era’s indie discos. You somehow felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music quite distinct from the standard alternative group influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great northern soul and funk”.

The smoothness of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s Mani who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing funk, his jumping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, relentless bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a strong defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually occur during the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance 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 trying to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript folk-rock – not a style one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a disastrous top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising effect on a band in a slump after the cool reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, weightier and more fuzzy, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – particularly on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his bass work to the front. His popping, hypnotic bass line is certainly the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, sociable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything more than a long succession of hugely lucrative gigs – two fresh tracks released by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that any spark had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to recapture 18 years later – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which additionally offered “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their confident approach, while Britpop as a whole was shaped by a aim to break the usual market limitations of indie rock and reach a wider general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct influence was a kind of groove-based change: following their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”