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By any metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable thing. It took place during a span of one year. At the start of 1989, they were just a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a smaller London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable state of affairs for most alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can identify numerous reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously attracting a much larger and more diverse crowd than typically displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning dance music scene – their confidently defiant attitude and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way completely different from anything else in British alt-rock 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 rhythm section were doing behind it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the tracks that featured on the turntables at the era’s indie discos. You somehow got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music rather different to the usual alternative group influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good Motown-inspired and funk”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s him who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into free-flowing groove, his octave-leaping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the vocal melody 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 recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a strong defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its flaws could have been rectified by cutting some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks often occur during the instances when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the listlessness of all other elements that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to inject a bit of pep into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable country-rock – not a style anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a disastrous top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising effect on a band in a slump after the tepid response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, weightier and more fuzzy, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – particularly on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his bass work to the front. His popping, mesmerising low-end pattern is very much the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an affable, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was always punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently grinning guitarist Dave Hill. Said reformation failed to translate into anything beyond a long series of extremely lucrative gigs – a couple of fresh singles put out by the reconstituted quartet only demonstrated that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had proved impossible to recapture nearly two decades later – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which additionally offered “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a desire to transcend the standard commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate effect was a sort of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their initial success, you suddenly encountered many alternative acts who aimed to make their fans move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”