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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 one year. At the start of 1989, they were just a local source of buzz in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The rock journalism had hardly covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a more modest London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their performance was the big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable state of affairs for most indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a far bigger and more diverse audience 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 dance music scene – their confidently defiant attitude and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way completely different from anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point that the melody 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 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 alternative clubs. You in some way felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music quite distinct from the usual alternative group set texts, which was completely correct: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good northern soul and funk”.

The fluidity of his playing 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 free-flowing funk, his jumping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit 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 overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks often coincide with 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 metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is completely contrary to the lethargy of all other elements that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to add a some energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a catastrophic headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising impact on a band in a decline after the tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, weightier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his playing to the fore. His popping, mesmerising low-end pattern is certainly the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an affable, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was always punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything more than a long series of hugely lucrative gigs – two fresh singles released by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that any magic had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to recapture nearly two decades later – and Mani quietly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which additionally provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering attitude, while Britpop as a whole was shaped by a desire to break the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious direct influence was a sort of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their early success, you suddenly encountered many indie bands who wanted to make their fans move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”