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By every metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary thing. It took place 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 established channels for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely 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 massive. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their performance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify numerous causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously attracting a far bigger and broader crowd than typically showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the expanding dance music movement – their confidently defiant attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way completely unlike anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument that the tune of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were playing behind it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to most of the tracks that graced the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist 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 admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great northern soul 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 shifts from Motown stomp into loose-limbed groove, his octave-leaping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce 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 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 first thing that springs to mind is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced guitar and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks often coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can sense him figuratively willing the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is completely contrary to the listlessness of all other elements that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-rock – not a style anyone would guess listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a catastrophic top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising effect 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 dubbier, weightier and increasingly fuzzy, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – particularly on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his playing to the fore. His percussive, mesmerising low-end pattern is very much the highlight on the brilliant 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 made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an affable, clubbable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously styled and constantly smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything beyond a lengthy succession of hugely lucrative gigs – two new tracks released by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that any magic had been present in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture 18 years later – and Mani quietly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which furthermore offered “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of manners. Oasis certainly observed their swaggering attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a desire to break the standard market limitations of alternative music and attract a wider general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious immediate effect was a kind of rhythmic shift: following their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for alternative acts who wanted to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”