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By every measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable thing. It took place during a span of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely ignored by the established channels for indie music in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a smaller London venue 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 barely conceivable situation for the majority of alternative groups in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously attracting a far bigger and broader audience than usually displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding dance music movement – their cockily belligerent attitude and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way completely unlike anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point that the tune of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s early 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 could not to the majority of the tracks that graced the decks at the era’s indie discos. You in some way felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds rather different to the standard indie band set texts, which was completely right: Mani was a massive 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 secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s Mani who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into free-flowing funk, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece 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 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 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 believed its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced guitar and “reverting to the groove”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually occur during the moments when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is completely contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to add a some pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-rock – not a style anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a disastrous 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 tepid response to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, weightier and increasingly 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 ability to bring his bass work to the front. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is very much the highlight 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 made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an affable, clubbable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was invariably broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. This reunion did not lead to anything more than a long series of extremely profitable concerts – two new tracks put out by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had proved impossible to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a good excuse 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 undoubtedly took note of their swaggering attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a desire to transcend the usual market limitations of alternative music and attract a wider general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest direct effect was a sort of rhythmic change: following their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for alternative acts who wanted 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 stated. “That’s what they’re for.”