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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable thing. It took place during a span of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack 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 performance was the big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable situation for the majority of alternative groups in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify numerous causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a far bigger and more diverse audience than typically displayed an interest in 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 cockily belligerent demeanor and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

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 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 bass and drums were playing behind it certainly did not: 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 drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds quite distinct from the standard alternative group influences, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good northern soul and groove music”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s Mani who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into free-flowing funk, his octave-leaping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the breakbeat 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.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights usually occur during the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can sense him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the lethargy of everything else that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript folk-rock – not a genre one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a disastrous headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively energising impact on a band in a slump after the tepid response to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, heavier and more fuzzy, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – especially on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his playing to the fore. His popping, hypnotic low-end pattern is very much the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, clubbable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously styled and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. Said reunion did not lead to anything more than a long succession of extremely profitable concerts – two fresh tracks put out by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that any spark had been present in 1989 had turned out impossible to recapture 18 years on – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of manners. Oasis certainly took note of their confident approach, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a desire to break the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious direct effect was a sort of rhythmic change: following their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for 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 stated. “That’s what they’re for.”