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By every measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It unfolded during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a local source of buzz in Manchester, largely ignored by the established outlets for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a smaller London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable state of affairs for most indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

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 crowd than typically 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 scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way entirely unlike any other act in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument 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 playing behind it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the tracks that graced the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds quite distinct from the usual indie band influences, which was absolutely right: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s Mani who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into free-flowing funk, his jumping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the drum sample taken 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 comes to thought is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a strong supporter of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses might have been fixed by removing some of the layers of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “reverting to the groove”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights often coincide with the instances when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is completely contrary to the lethargy of everything else that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise some unremarkable country-rock – not a genre one suspects listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a catastrophic headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising effect on a band in a slump after the tepid response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, weightier and increasingly fuzzy, but the swing that had provided 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 ability to push his playing 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, easily the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an affable, sociable figure – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was invariably broken if Mani “let his guard down” – 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 constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. Said reunion did not lead to anything more than a long succession of extremely lucrative concerts – two new tracks released by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated that whatever magic had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to recapture 18 years later – and Mani discreetly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which furthermore offered “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of manners. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a aim to transcend the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and reach a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their clearest direct influence was a sort of rhythmic change: following their initial success, you suddenly encountered many alternative acts who wanted to make their fans dance. 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.”