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By any metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional source of buzz in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a more modest London venue 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 attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can find numerous causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously attracting a much larger and more diverse audience than usually displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning dance music scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic 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 entirely different from anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point that the tune 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 playing behind it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the tracks that graced the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music rather different to the standard indie band influences, which was absolutely right: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great northern soul and funk”.

The fluidity of his performance was the secret sauce 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 free-flowing groove, his octave-leaping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy 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 initial element that comes to thought is the bass line.

Indeed, 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 “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a staunch supporter of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses might have been fixed by removing some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks often coincide with the instances when Mounfield was really given free rein – 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 performance on Tightrope is completely contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to add a some energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript folk-rock – not a style one suspects anyone was in a hurry 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 set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising impact on a band in a slump after the cool reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, weightier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his bass work to the fore. His popping, hypnotic bass line is certainly the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an affable, sociable presence – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was always broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously styled and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reunion failed to translate into anything beyond a long series of extremely lucrative concerts – two new tracks put out by the reformed four-piece served only to prove that any spark had been present in 1989 had proved impossible to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani discreetly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which furthermore provided “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis certainly observed their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped 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 direct influence was a kind of rhythmic shift: following their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for alternative acts 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 averred. “That’s what they’re for.”