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By any metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It took place over the course of one year. At the start of 1989, they were merely a local cause of excitement in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The music press had hardly covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a smaller London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. 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 scarcely imaginable situation for the majority of alternative groups in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can identify any number of reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously attracting a far bigger and more diverse crowd than usually showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding acid house scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way completely different from any other act in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point that the melody of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance 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 dance 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 quite distinct from the usual indie band set texts, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great northern soul and funk”.

The smoothness of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s him who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into loose-limbed groove, his octave-leaping lines 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 vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses 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 standout tracks often coincide with the moments when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is totally at odds with the lethargy of everything else that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a style anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a disastrous top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively energising impact on a band in a slump after the tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, weightier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – especially on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his playing to the front. His percussive, 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, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an friendly, clubbable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur 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 displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy series of hugely lucrative concerts – a couple of new singles put out by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that whatever magic had been present in 1989 had proved impossible to recapture nearly two decades on – and Mani discreetly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with angling, which furthermore offered “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of manners. Oasis certainly observed their confident approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a aim to transcend the standard commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious immediate effect was a sort of rhythmic shift: following their initial success, you suddenly encountered many alternative acts who wanted to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”