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By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a local source of buzz in Manchester, largely ignored by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely 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 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 the majority of alternative groups in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify numerous causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously drawing in a much larger and more diverse crowd than usually showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding acid house scene – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a scene of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section 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 old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were playing behind it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the songs that graced the decks at the era’s indie discos. You in some way got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music rather different to the standard indie band influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good Motown-inspired and funk”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s Mani 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 wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, relentless bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses 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 valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of highlights usually coincide with the instances when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is completely at odds with the lethargy of everything else that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to add a some energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a genre one suspects anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a catastrophic top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising impact on a band in a slump after the cool reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, heavier and more distorted, but the groove that had provided 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 bring his playing to the fore. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is very much the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an affable, clubbable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was always broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed 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 preposterously coiffured and constantly smiling axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion did not lead to anything more than a lengthy series of extremely lucrative concerts – a couple of new tracks released by the reformed quartet served only to prove that whatever 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 earned his fortune and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of manners. Oasis undoubtedly observed their confident attitude, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a desire to transcend the standard market limitations of alternative music and reach a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate influence was a kind of rhythmic change: following their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for alternative acts who aimed to make their fans move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”