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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded during a span of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a local source of buzz in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the established outlets for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a smaller London club 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 main attraction 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 retrospect, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously attracting a much larger and broader audience than typically displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which seemed to align them more to the expanding acid house movement – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a world of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way entirely unlike any other act 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 bass and drums were playing behind it certainly did not: you could dance 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 indie discos. You somehow felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds quite distinct from the usual indie band set texts, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The fluidity 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 octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by cutting some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can hear him figuratively willing the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is totally contrary to the lethargy of all other elements that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a disastrous headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively energising effect on a band in a slump after the cool response 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 given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – especially on the low-slung 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 certainly the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an friendly, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything more than a lengthy succession of extremely profitable concerts – two new tracks released by the reformed four-piece served only to prove that any magic had been present in 1989 had proved impossible 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”.

Maybe he thought he’d done enough: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of manners. Oasis undoubtedly observed their confident attitude, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a aim to transcend the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious immediate effect was a kind of groove-based shift: in the wake of their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who aimed 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.”