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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary thing. It took place during a span of one year. At the start of 1989, they were merely a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the established channels for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a more modest 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 big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously drawing in a much larger and broader crowd than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which seemed to align them more to the expanding acid house movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way completely unlike any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument that the melody 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 doing underneath it really didn’t: 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 indie discos. You somehow 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 influences, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro 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 debut album: it’s Mani who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his jumping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point 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 think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the layers of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s handful of highlights usually occur during the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can sense him figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. 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 attempting to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable country-rock – not a genre one suspects anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a catastrophic headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising impact on a band in a slump after the tepid reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly fuzzy, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – especially on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his bass work to the front. His popping, mesmerising low-end pattern is very much the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an affable, sociable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and constantly grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion did not lead to anything more than a long succession of extremely profitable concerts – two new tracks released by the reformed quartet served only to prove that any spark had been present in 1989 had turned out unattainable to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani quietly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with angling, which additionally offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their confident approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a desire to transcend the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate influence was a sort of groove-based change: following their initial success, you suddenly encountered many alternative acts who aimed 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.”