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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of one year. At the start of 1989, they were just a regional source of buzz in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional channels for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely 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 huge. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the main draw 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 identify numerous causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously drawing in a much larger and broader audience than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning dance music scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a scene of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way entirely different from any other act in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point 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 playing underneath it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the tracks that graced the decks at the era’s indie discos. You somehow got the impression that the percussionist 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 correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s Mani who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his jumping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a strong defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “reverting to the groove”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually coincide with the instances when Mounfield was truly given free rein – 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 performance on Tightrope is totally contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to add a some energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a genre one suspects anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a catastrophic headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively 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 sound became dubbier, weightier and more distorted, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – especially on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his playing to the fore. His popping, hypnotic low-end pattern is certainly the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an friendly, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently grinning guitarist Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything beyond a lengthy series of hugely profitable concerts – a couple of new tracks put out by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that whatever magic had existed in 1989 had turned out impossible to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani discreetly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of manners. Oasis certainly took note of their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was informed by a desire to transcend the usual commercial constraints of alternative music and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their clearest direct influence was a kind of groove-based change: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly encountered many alternative acts who aimed to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”