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By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It took place over the course of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly mentioned their latest 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 entered 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 indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly drawing in a much larger and broader audience than usually showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the expanding acid house scene – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a scene 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 alternative music at the time. There’s an point that the melody of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were playing underneath it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the songs that graced the turntables 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 raised on music rather different to the usual alternative group influences, which was completely correct: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good northern soul and funk”.

The smoothness of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s Mani who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into free-flowing groove, his jumping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, relentless bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor 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 follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights often coincide with the moments when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is totally at odds with the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable country-rock – not a style one suspects anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a catastrophic top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising impact on a band in a decline after the tepid response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – particularly on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his playing to the fore. His popping, hypnotic low-end pattern is very much the highlight on the fantastic 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 made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an affable, sociable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was invariably broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously styled and constantly smiling axeman Dave Hill. This reunion did not lead to anything more than a lengthy succession of hugely lucrative concerts – a couple of new singles released by the reformed four-piece served only to prove that whatever spark had been present in 1989 had turned out unattainable to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani discreetly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which additionally offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their confident attitude, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a desire to transcend the usual market limitations of alternative music and attract a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious direct influence was a kind of rhythmic change: in the wake of their initial success, you abruptly encountered many indie bands who aimed to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”