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By every metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary phenomenon. It took place over the course of one year. At the start of 1989, they were just a local source of buzz in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a smaller 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 appearance 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 retrospect, you can identify numerous causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously attracting a far bigger and broader audience than typically displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a scene of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way completely different from anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point that the melody 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 underneath it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you could not to most of the tracks that graced the turntables at the era’s indie discos. You somehow felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds quite distinct from the usual indie band set texts, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great northern soul and funk”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s him who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into free-flowing funk, his jumping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times 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 guitar work, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were not enough 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 strong defender of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but thought its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks often coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can sense him metaphorically 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 track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript folk-rock – not a genre one suspects listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a catastrophic top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising effect on a band in a decline after the cool reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, weightier and increasingly fuzzy, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the front. His popping, mesmerising low-end pattern is very much the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, clubbable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was always punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything beyond a lengthy succession of hugely profitable gigs – two fresh tracks released by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that any spark had existed in 1989 had proved impossible to recapture nearly two decades later – and Mani quietly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which furthermore offered “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of manners. Oasis certainly observed their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a aim to transcend the standard commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. 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 wanted to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”