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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable phenomenon. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the established channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism 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 massive. 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 imaginable state of affairs for most indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly drawing in a far bigger and broader audience than typically showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning dance music scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent 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 entirely unlike any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument that the tune of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were doing behind it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you could not to most of the tracks that featured on the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music quite distinct from the usual alternative group set texts, which was completely right: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good Motown-inspired and funk”.

The fluidity of his playing 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 soulful beat into loose-limbed funk, his jumping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point 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 view, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a strong defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often occur during 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 urging the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the lethargy of everything else that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to inject a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable folk-rock – not a style one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a disastrous headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising effect 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 dubbier, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his bass work to the front. His percussive, hypnotic 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, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an friendly, clubbable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was invariably broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything more than a long series of hugely profitable concerts – a couple of fresh tracks released by the reformed quartet served only to prove that whatever magic had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to rediscover nearly two decades later – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with angling, which furthermore offered “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. 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 indie rock and attract a more general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate effect was a kind of rhythmic change: in the wake of their initial success, you abruptly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted to make their audiences 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.”