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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable thing. It unfolded during a span of one year. At the start of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely overlooked by the established outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The music press had barely mentioned their most recent 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 debuted on the charts at No 8 and their performance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable situation for most indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can identify numerous causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly drawing in a far bigger and broader crowd than usually showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the expanding dance music scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world 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 argument that the tune of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were doing underneath it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you could not to most of the tracks that featured on the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music quite distinct from the standard alternative group influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good northern soul and funk”.

The fluidity of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s Mani who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into free-flowing groove, his jumping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by cutting some of the layers of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the groove”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often occur during the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is totally contrary to the lethargy of all other elements that’s going on 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 folk-rock – not a style one suspects anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a catastrophic headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively energising effect on a band in a decline after the cool reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – especially on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his bass work to the fore. His percussive, mesmerising low-end pattern is very much the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, clubbable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always 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 bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently smiling axeman Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything more than a long series of extremely lucrative concerts – two fresh tracks put out by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that whatever spark had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to recapture nearly two decades later – and Mani quietly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with angling, which additionally offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a desire to break the usual market limitations of alternative music and attract a wider general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate influence was a sort of rhythmic shift: following their early success, you suddenly encountered many alternative acts who wanted to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”