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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable thing. It unfolded during a span of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were merely a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely ignored by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a smaller London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable situation for most indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously attracting a far bigger and more diverse crowd than usually showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the expanding dance music movement – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way entirely 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 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 indie discos. You somehow felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music rather different to the standard alternative group set texts, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great Motown-inspired and funk”.

The fluidity of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s Mani who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into loose-limbed funk, his octave-leaping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a strong supporter of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by cutting some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “returning to the groove”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks often occur during the instances when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can hear him figuratively willing the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is completely at odds with the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable country-rock – not a style anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a disastrous headlining 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 tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – especially on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his playing to the front. His popping, mesmerising bass line is certainly the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an affable, clubbable figure – 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 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously styled and permanently grinning guitarist Dave Hill. Said reformation failed to translate into anything more than a long succession of extremely lucrative concerts – two fresh tracks put out by the reconstituted quartet served only to prove that any magic had existed in 1989 had proved impossible to recapture nearly two decades later – and Mani quietly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with angling, which additionally offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of manners. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a desire to break the usual market limitations of indie rock and reach a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct effect was a sort of groove-based change: in the wake of their early success, you suddenly encountered many 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 stated. “That’s what they’re for.”