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By every measure, the ascent 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 regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the established channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack 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 main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable state of affairs for the majority of alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously attracting a much larger and broader crowd than usually displayed an interest in 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 demeanor and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way completely different from anything else 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 bass and drums were playing behind 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 alternative clubs. You somehow got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music quite distinct from the standard indie band set texts, 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 fluidity of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s Mani who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into free-flowing funk, his octave-leaping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a strong defender of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of highlights usually occur during the moments when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can sense him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is totally at odds with the listlessness of everything else that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to add a some energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript country-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a disastrous top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising effect on a band in a decline after the tepid response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, heavier and more distorted, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – particularly on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his playing to the fore. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is very much the star turn 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 made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an affable, clubbable figure – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was invariably broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and constantly grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy succession of extremely lucrative gigs – a couple of fresh tracks put out by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated that whatever spark had been present in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture nearly two decades on – and Mani quietly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which additionally offered “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a movement was informed by a desire to transcend the usual market limitations of alternative music and attract a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious immediate influence was a sort of rhythmic change: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for alternative acts who aimed to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”