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By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable thing. It unfolded during a span of one year. At the start of 1989, they were just a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely ignored by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a smaller London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their performance was the big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable situation for most indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can find numerous causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously attracting a far bigger and broader audience than typically showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were set apart by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning dance music movement – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way entirely unlike anything else 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 playing behind it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the songs that graced the decks at the era’s indie discos. You somehow felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music rather different to the standard alternative group set texts, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great Motown-inspired and funk”.

The fluidity of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s him who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his octave-leaping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, relentless bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought 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 proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but believed its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights usually occur during the instances 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 totally at odds with the lethargy of all other elements that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to add a some energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript country-rock – not a genre one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a disastrous top-billed performance 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 reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, weightier and more distorted, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – especially on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his bass work to the front. His popping, hypnotic low-end pattern 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, easily the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an affable, clubbable presence – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion did not lead to anything beyond a lengthy series of hugely lucrative gigs – two new singles released by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated that any spark had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover nearly two decades on – and Mani discreetly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally offered “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of manners. Oasis certainly took note of their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a desire to break the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious immediate effect was a kind of rhythmic change: following their initial success, you suddenly encountered many alternative acts who wanted 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.”