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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were merely a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able 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 main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable state of affairs for most alternative groups in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously attracting a far bigger and broader audience than usually showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning dance music movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible 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 melody of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were playing underneath it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the tracks that featured on the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music quite distinct from the usual indie band set texts, which was absolutely right: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great northern soul and groove music”.

The smoothness of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s him who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into loose-limbed groove, his octave-leaping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the singing 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, 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 opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a strong defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually occur during the instances when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is totally contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to add a some energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript folk-rock – not a style anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a disastrous headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising 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 more distorted, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his playing to the front. His popping, hypnotic bass line is very much the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an affable, sociable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably broken 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 legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently smiling axeman Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything beyond a long succession of extremely lucrative concerts – two new singles released by the reformed quartet served only to prove that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to recapture nearly two decades later – and Mani discreetly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which additionally offered “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was informed by a aim to transcend the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a wider general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious direct influence was a sort of rhythmic change: in the wake of their initial success, you suddenly encountered many alternative acts who aimed 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 averred. “That’s what they’re for.”