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By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded during a span of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely ignored by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The music press had hardly mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a more modest London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. 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 scarcely imaginable 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 attracting a much larger and broader audience than typically showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding acid house scene – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a scene of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way completely unlike anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument that the tune of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were doing behind it really didn’t: you could dance 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 somehow got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds rather different to the usual alternative group set texts, which was completely right: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and funk”.

The fluidity of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s Mani who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into loose-limbed funk, his jumping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the vocal melody 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 snaking, driving bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a strong defender of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the layers of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the groove”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of highlights usually occur during the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can sense him figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is completely contrary to the lethargy of everything else that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to inject a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable folk-rock – not a style anyone would guess listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a catastrophic top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising impact on a band in a decline after the tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, heavier and increasingly fuzzy, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – especially on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his bass work to the front. His percussive, 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 standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best 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 media was always punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show 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 reformation did not lead to anything beyond a lengthy succession of extremely lucrative concerts – two fresh singles put out by the reconstituted quartet served only to prove that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had turned out impossible to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani discreetly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which furthermore offered “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a whole was shaped by a desire to transcend the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate influence was a kind of groove-based shift: following their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted 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.”