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By any measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable thing. It unfolded during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely overlooked by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a smaller London venue 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 draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can identify any number of reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly attracting a far bigger and more diverse audience than usually displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the expanding dance music scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill 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’ rhythm section swung in a way completely unlike any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument that the tune of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s early 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 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 music rather different to the standard indie band influences, which was absolutely right: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and funk”.

The smoothness of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s Mani who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing funk, his jumping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. 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 writhing, relentless bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically 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 little bit stiff”. He was a staunch supporter of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “reverting to the groove”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically willing the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is totally at odds with the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript folk-rock – not a genre one suspects listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a disastrous top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising effect on a band in a decline after the tepid response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, heavier and increasingly fuzzy, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – especially on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the front. His popping, mesmerising bass line 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 superb.

Consistently an friendly, sociable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was always broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. Said reformation failed to translate into anything more than a long succession of hugely lucrative concerts – two fresh singles put out by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that any magic had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover nearly two decades on – and Mani quietly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d done enough: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of manners. Oasis certainly took note of their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a whole was shaped by a aim to break the usual market limitations of alternative music and reach a wider general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest direct effect was a sort of rhythmic change: in the wake of their initial success, you abruptly couldn’t move for 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 stated. “That’s what they’re for.”