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By any measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary phenomenon. It took place during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly ignored by the traditional outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a smaller 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 barely conceivable state of affairs for most indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a far bigger and broader crowd than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a world of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way completely different from any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument that the tune 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 doing underneath it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the songs that graced 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 alternative group set texts, which was absolutely right: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s Mani who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into loose-limbed funk, his octave-leaping riffs that add bounce 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 guitar work, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses might have been fixed by removing some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually occur during the instances when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can hear him figuratively urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is completely at odds with the listlessness of all other elements that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to inject a some pep into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a genre one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a catastrophic headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising effect on a band in a slump after the tepid response to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, weightier and increasingly fuzzy, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – especially on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his bass work to the fore. His percussive, hypnotic low-end pattern is certainly the highlight 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 magnificent.

Consistently an friendly, clubbable presence – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was always broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything more than a long series of extremely lucrative concerts – a couple of fresh singles put out by the reformed quartet served only to prove that whatever magic had been present in 1989 had turned out unattainable to rediscover nearly two decades on – and Mani quietly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which additionally provided “a good excuse 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 confident approach, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was informed by a aim to transcend the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate effect was a kind of groove-based change: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted to make their fans 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.”