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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely overlooked by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely mentioned their latest 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 performance was the big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable state of affairs for the majority of alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly drawing in a much larger and broader audience than usually displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were set apart by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their confidently defiant attitude and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way completely different from anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point 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 really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you could not 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 raised on sounds quite distinct from the standard indie band set texts, which was absolutely 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 playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s him who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his jumping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, 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 comes to thought is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a strong supporter of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the rhythm”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks often occur during the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can sense him metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is totally at odds with the listlessness of everything else that’s happening 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 style anyone would guess listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a disastrous top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising impact on a band in a slump after the tepid response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, weightier and increasingly distorted, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – especially on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the front. His popping, hypnotic low-end pattern is certainly the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an affable, clubbable figure – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly smiling axeman Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything beyond a long succession of extremely profitable concerts – two new singles released by the reconstituted quartet only demonstrated that any spark had been present in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture 18 years on – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with angling, which additionally offered “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering attitude, while Britpop as a whole was shaped by a desire to break the usual market limitations of indie rock and attract a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate influence was a kind of rhythmic change: following their initial success, you abruptly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”