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By any metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable thing. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely ignored by the established outlets for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly mentioned their most recent 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 barely conceivable situation for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously drawing in a far bigger and broader crowd than typically displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a scene of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way entirely different from any other act in British alt-rock 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 doing underneath it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to most of the tracks that featured on the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds rather different to the standard 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 “good northern soul and funk”.

The smoothness of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s Mani who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his jumping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, 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 suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually coincide with the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can sense him figuratively urging the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is totally at odds with the lethargy of all other elements that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to inject a some pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a catastrophic top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising impact on a band in a slump after the cool response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, weightier and increasingly fuzzy, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his playing to the fore. His percussive, mesmerising low-end pattern is certainly the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an affable, sociable figure – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media 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 customised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. This reunion did not lead to anything beyond a lengthy succession of extremely profitable gigs – two new singles put out by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that any spark had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture nearly two decades later – and Mani discreetly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which furthermore provided “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis certainly observed their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a aim to transcend the usual market limitations of alternative music and attract a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct effect was a sort of groove-based change: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for alternative acts who wanted to make their fans dance. 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.”