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By any measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling 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 performance was the big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable situation for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously attracting a much larger and broader crowd than typically displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way entirely different from anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument 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 doing behind it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the tracks that graced 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 brought up on music rather different to the usual alternative group set texts, which was absolutely right: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good northern soul and funk”.

The fluidity of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s him who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed groove, his jumping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a strong defender of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but believed its flaws could have been rectified by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the rhythm”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights often occur during the instances when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is completely contrary to the listlessness of all other elements that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to inject a some pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-rock – not a style one suspects listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a disastrous top-billed 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 response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had given 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 playing to the fore. His popping, mesmerising low-end pattern is very much the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an affable, sociable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reunion did not lead to anything more than a lengthy series of extremely profitable concerts – two fresh singles released by the reconstituted quartet served only to prove that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture 18 years later – and Mani discreetly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with angling, which furthermore provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was informed by a desire to transcend the standard commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct effect was a kind of rhythmic change: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for alternative acts who wanted to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”