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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded during a span of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely overlooked by the established channels for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had hardly mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a more modest 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 attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable situation for most indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a much larger and broader audience than typically showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their confidently defiant attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way entirely unlike anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point that the melody of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance 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 simply couldn’t to the majority of the tracks that featured on the turntables at the era’s indie discos. You somehow felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music rather different to the usual indie band influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s Mani who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his octave-leaping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bass. 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 view, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “reverting to the groove”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often coincide with the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the listlessness of all other elements that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to inject a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some nondescript folk-rock – not a style one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a catastrophic 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 reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, weightier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – particularly on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing 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 – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, clubbable figure – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was always broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything more than a lengthy succession of hugely lucrative gigs – two new singles put out by the reconstituted quartet only demonstrated that any spark had been present in 1989 had turned out unattainable to rediscover nearly two decades on – and Mani discreetly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which furthermore provided “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of ways. Oasis certainly took note of their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was informed by a aim to break the usual commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate influence was a sort of rhythmic change: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly encountered many alternative acts 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 averred. “That’s what they’re for.”