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By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were merely a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly ignored by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The music press had hardly mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling 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 big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable state of affairs for most indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find numerous reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly drawing in a far bigger and broader audience than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding acid house movement – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way entirely different from anything else 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 rhythm section were playing behind it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the songs that featured on the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music rather different to the usual indie band set texts, which was completely right: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good northern soul and groove music”.

The fluidity of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s him who propels the moment 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.

Sometimes the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the singing or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a strong defender of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses 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 valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks often coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can sense him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is completely contrary to the lethargy of all other elements that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to inject a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a disastrous top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising effect on a band in a decline after the tepid response to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, weightier and increasingly fuzzy, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – especially on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his bass work to the fore. His percussive, mesmerising low-end pattern is very much the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an friendly, clubbable presence – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was always punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently smiling axeman Dave Hill. This reunion did not lead to anything more than a long series of extremely profitable gigs – a couple of new singles put out by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had turned out impossible to recapture 18 years on – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which furthermore offered “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of manners. Oasis certainly took note of their confident approach, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was informed by a aim to transcend the usual commercial constraints of alternative music and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their clearest direct effect was a kind of groove-based shift: following their initial success, you abruptly encountered many indie bands who wanted to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”