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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary thing. It took place during a span of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the established outlets for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The music press had barely covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a smaller London club 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 main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can identify numerous reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a far bigger and more diverse crowd than usually 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 scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a scene of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth 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 early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were playing behind it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that featured on the decks at the era’s indie discos. You somehow got the impression 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 completely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good northern soul and funk”.

The smoothness of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s him who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into free-flowing funk, his octave-leaping lines 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 effect-laden playing, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, relentless bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “returning to the rhythm”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can hear him metaphorically willing the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is totally at odds with the listlessness of all other elements that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to inject a bit of pep into what’s otherwise just some nondescript country-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed 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 decline after the tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, weightier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – especially on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his playing to the front. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is certainly the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an affable, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and constantly grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything more than a long series of hugely lucrative gigs – a couple of fresh tracks put out by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on fly-fishing, which furthermore offered “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis certainly observed their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a aim to transcend the usual market limitations of indie rock and attract a more general public, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious direct effect was a sort of groove-based change: following their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for indie bands who aimed to make their fans move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”