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By every measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary thing. It unfolded during a span of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were merely a local source of buzz in Manchester, largely ignored by the established channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a smaller London club 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 big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable state of affairs for most alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously drawing in a far bigger and broader audience than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding acid house movement – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums 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 early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were doing behind it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the songs that graced the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music rather different to the usual alternative group influences, which was completely correct: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and funk”.

The smoothness of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s him who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his jumping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a strong defender of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “reverting to the groove”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights usually occur during the instances when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can sense him figuratively willing the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is completely contrary to the lethargy of everything else that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre one suspects listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a disastrous top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising impact on a band in a decline after the cool reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, heavier and more fuzzy, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his bass work to the fore. His percussive, hypnotic low-end pattern is very much the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an friendly, clubbable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was invariably broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and constantly smiling axeman Dave Hill. This reunion did not lead to anything beyond a lengthy series of extremely profitable gigs – a couple of fresh tracks put out by the reconstituted quartet served only to prove that whatever magic had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani quietly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis certainly observed their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a aim to break the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a wider general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct influence was a kind of groove-based shift: following their initial success, you abruptly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted 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 stated. “That’s what they’re for.”