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By every measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable thing. It unfolded during a span of one year. At the start of 1989, they were just a local source of buzz in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The music press had barely mentioned 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 huge. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their performance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable situation for the majority of alternative groups in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can find numerous causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously drawing in a far bigger and broader crowd than typically showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their cockily belligerent 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 completely different from any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point that the tune 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 certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the tracks that featured on the decks at the era’s indie discos. You somehow felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds 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 guiding lights were “great northern soul and funk”.

The smoothness of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s Mani who propels the moment 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.

At times the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bassline. 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 went wrong musically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of highlights usually coincide with the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can sense him figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is totally contrary to the lethargy of everything else that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to inject a some pep into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a style one suspects anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a catastrophic top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising effect on a band in a decline after the cool 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 swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – especially on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the fore. His popping, mesmerising bass line is very much the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an affable, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and constantly grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reformation failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy succession of hugely lucrative gigs – two fresh tracks put out by the reformed quartet served only to prove that any magic had been present in 1989 had turned out impossible to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani quietly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which additionally offered “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of manners. Oasis certainly observed their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a whole was informed by a desire to break the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious direct influence was a sort of groove-based shift: following their initial success, you abruptly couldn’t move for alternative acts who aimed to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”