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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable thing. It unfolded over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a local source of buzz in Manchester, largely ignored by the established channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The music press had barely mentioned 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 entered the charts at No 8 and their performance was the main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable state of affairs for most indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly drawing in a far bigger and broader audience than usually displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding dance music movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way completely different from any other act in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument that the melody of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were doing behind it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the songs that featured on the decks at the era’s indie discos. You somehow got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds rather different to the standard indie band influences, which was absolutely right: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s him who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his jumping 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 singing or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bassline. When you recall 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 musically 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 little bit rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “reverting to the groove”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks often coincide with the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can sense him figuratively willing the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is totally at odds with the listlessness of all other elements that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a some energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely 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 cool response 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 point of difference was still present – especially on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his bass work to the front. His popping, hypnotic bass line is very much the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, sociable figure – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly smiling axeman Dave Hill. Said reformation failed to translate into anything beyond a long series of extremely lucrative gigs – two new singles put out by the reconstituted quartet only demonstrated that any spark had been present in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture 18 years on – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis certainly took note of their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a whole was shaped by a desire to break the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious direct influence was a kind of groove-based shift: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly encountered many indie bands who aimed to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”