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By any metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary thing. It unfolded during a span of one year. At the start of 1989, they were merely a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely ignored by the established channels for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The music press had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a smaller London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their performance 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 retrospect, you can find numerous reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly drawing in a far bigger and broader crowd than typically showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their confidently defiant attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a scene of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact 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 melody of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were doing behind it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that featured on the turntables at the era’s indie discos. You in some way felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music quite distinct from the standard indie band influences, which was completely right: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s him who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into free-flowing funk, his jumping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, relentless bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a strong supporter of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often coincide with the instances when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can sense him figuratively willing the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is completely at odds with the listlessness of all other elements that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to add a some pep into what’s otherwise just some nondescript country-rock – not a style one suspects anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a catastrophic top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively energising impact on a band in a decline after the tepid reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, heavier and more fuzzy, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – particularly on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his playing to the front. His percussive, mesmerising low-end pattern is very much the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was invariably broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously styled and constantly smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reunion did not lead to anything more than a lengthy succession of hugely profitable concerts – two new tracks put out by the reconstituted quartet only demonstrated that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to rediscover nearly two decades on – and Mani discreetly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which additionally offered “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of manners. Oasis certainly took note of their swaggering attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a aim to transcend the usual market limitations of alternative music and reach a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct effect was a kind of groove-based shift: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly encountered many indie bands who wanted to make their fans move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”