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By every metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary thing. It unfolded during a span of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly ignored by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely 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 huge. 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 barely conceivable state of affairs for most indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can find numerous reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a far bigger and broader crowd than usually displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way completely unlike any other act in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point that the melody 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 doing behind it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the tracks 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 bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds rather different to the usual alternative group influences, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great northern soul and groove music”.

The fluidity of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s Mani who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into free-flowing funk, his octave-leaping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, relentless bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the bass line.

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 lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a staunch supporter of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but thought its flaws might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often occur during the instances when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically willing the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is completely contrary to the lethargy of all other elements that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, 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 energising impact on a band in a decline after the cool reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, weightier and more distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – particularly on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his bass work to the front. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is very much the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an friendly, sociable presence – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was always broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed 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 preposterously styled and constantly smiling axeman Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything more than a long succession of extremely lucrative gigs – a couple of fresh tracks put out by the reconstituted quartet only demonstrated that any magic had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to recapture 18 years on – and Mani quietly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which furthermore provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their swaggering attitude, while Britpop as a whole was shaped by a aim to break the usual market limitations of alternative music and reach a more general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate influence was a sort of groove-based shift: in the wake of their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who aimed to make their fans move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”