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By any measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable thing. It took place over the course 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 alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The rock journalism had hardly mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a smaller London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their performance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable state of affairs for the majority of alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously attracting a much larger and more diverse audience than usually showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which seemed to align them more to the expanding acid house movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a world of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way completely different from any other act in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument that the melody 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 underneath it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the tracks that featured on the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds rather different to the usual alternative group influences, which was completely right: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great Motown-inspired and funk”.

The fluidity of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s Mani who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into loose-limbed groove, his jumping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch defender of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “reverting 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 increasingly turgid songs, you can hear him figuratively urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is totally contrary to the lethargy of everything else that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to inject a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript country-rock – not a genre one suspects listeners was in a rush 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 completely after a catastrophic headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively 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, weightier and more distorted, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – particularly on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his bass work to the fore. His popping, 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, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an affable, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was always broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything beyond a long succession of hugely lucrative gigs – a couple of fresh tracks put out by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated that any magic had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to rediscover nearly two decades on – and Mani discreetly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on fly-fishing, which additionally offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their confident attitude, while Britpop as a whole was shaped by a aim to break the standard market limitations of indie rock and reach a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious direct influence was a kind of rhythmic change: following their early success, you suddenly encountered many 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 averred. “That’s what they’re for.”