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By every measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary thing. It took place over the course of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a local source of buzz in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional channels for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a more modest London club 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 barely conceivable situation for most indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can identify numerous reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly attracting a much larger and more diverse crowd than usually showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which seemed to align them more to the expanding acid house scene – their confidently defiant attitude and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a world of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth 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 early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were doing underneath it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that graced the turntables at the era’s indie discos. You in some way got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music quite distinct from the usual indie band influences, which was completely right: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The fluidity of his playing 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 soulful beat into loose-limbed funk, his jumping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bass. When you think of 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 underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a strong supporter of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by cutting some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “reverting to the groove”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually coincide with the instances when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can hear him figuratively willing the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript folk-rock – not a style anyone would guess listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a catastrophic top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively energising impact on a band in a decline after the cool reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, heavier and more distorted, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – especially on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his playing to the fore. His popping, hypnotic low-end pattern is certainly the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an affable, sociable presence – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously styled and permanently grinning guitarist Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything more than a lengthy succession of extremely lucrative gigs – a couple of fresh tracks put out by the reformed quartet served only to prove that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover nearly two decades later – and Mani quietly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with angling, which additionally offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their confident attitude, while Britpop as a whole was informed by a aim to break the usual market limitations of alternative music and attract a wider general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate effect was a sort of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”