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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable thing. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional channels for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The music press had hardly mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling 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 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 identify numerous reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously attracting a far bigger and more diverse 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 expanding acid house scene – their confidently defiant attitude and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way completely different from anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point that the tune of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were playing behind it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the songs that featured on the decks at the era’s indie discos. 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 music rather different to the usual alternative group influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great Motown-inspired and funk”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s him who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into loose-limbed funk, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a strong supporter of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced guitar and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks often occur during the instances when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can sense him figuratively urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is totally at odds with the listlessness of all other elements that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a style anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a catastrophic headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising effect on a band in a slump 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 ability to push his playing to the front. His popping, mesmerising bass line is very much the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, clubbable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything more than a long series of extremely profitable gigs – two fresh tracks released by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that whatever magic had existed in 1989 had turned out impossible to recapture nearly two decades later – and Mani quietly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their confident approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a aim to break the standard market limitations of indie rock and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious immediate influence was a sort of rhythmic shift: following their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for alternative acts who aimed to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”