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By any measure, the rise 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 local cause of excitement in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional channels for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The music press had barely covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a smaller London club 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 main 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 numerous causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously attracting a far bigger and broader audience than usually showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a scene of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way completely unlike anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument 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 rhythm section were playing underneath it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that featured on the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music rather different to the standard alternative group influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great Motown-inspired and funk”.

The fluidity of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s him who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his octave-leaping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by cutting some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually occur during the instances 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 willing the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is completely at odds with the listlessness of all other elements that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to inject a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a disastrous top-billed performance 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 cool reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – especially on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his bass work to the fore. His popping, hypnotic low-end pattern is very much the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an affable, clubbable presence – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was always broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously styled and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reunion did not lead to anything more than a long series of hugely profitable gigs – a couple of fresh singles put out by the reconstituted quartet only demonstrated that any magic had been present in 1989 had proved impossible to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on fly-fishing, 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 variety of ways. Oasis certainly observed their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a desire to transcend the standard market limitations of alternative music and reach a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious direct influence was a sort 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 artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”