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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary thing. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a local cause of excitement in Manchester, largely overlooked by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had hardly covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a more modest London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the big attraction 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 retrospect, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly drawing in a far bigger and broader crowd than typically showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the expanding acid house movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a world of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way entirely unlike anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument that the tune 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 playing underneath it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the songs that graced the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music quite distinct from the standard alternative group influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great northern soul and funk”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s Mani who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed groove, his octave-leaping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece 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 writhing, relentless bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a strong supporter of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced guitar and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually coincide with the instances when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can sense him figuratively willing the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is completely at odds with the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to add a some pep into what’s otherwise just some nondescript folk-rock – not a style one suspects anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a catastrophic headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising impact on a band in a slump after the tepid reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, weightier and more fuzzy, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – especially on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his bass work to the front. His percussive, mesmerising low-end pattern is certainly the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an affable, sociable figure – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was always 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 displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reunion did not lead to anything more than a long succession of extremely lucrative concerts – a couple of new singles put out by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that whatever spark had been present in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture 18 years on – and Mani quietly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally offered “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of manners. Oasis certainly took note of their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a aim to transcend the usual market limitations of alternative music and attract a more general public, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious immediate effect was a kind of rhythmic change: in the wake of their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for alternative acts who aimed to make their fans move. 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.”