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By any metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were merely a local cause of excitement in Manchester, largely overlooked by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The rock journalism had hardly mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a more modest London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable situation for most indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously drawing in a much larger and more diverse audience than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the expanding dance music movement – their confidently defiant attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a world of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way completely different from anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point that the melody 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 behind it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the tracks that featured on the turntables 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 brought up on music quite distinct from the usual alternative group set texts, which was completely right: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great northern soul and groove music”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s Mani who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bassline. 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 went wrong musically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses could have been rectified by cutting some of the layers of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is totally contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to inject a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript country-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone 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 release, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a disastrous 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 slump after the tepid response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – especially on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his bass work to the front. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is certainly the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, sociable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was invariably broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. This reunion did not lead to anything beyond a lengthy series of extremely lucrative concerts – a couple of new tracks put out by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated 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 focused on fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of manners. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a desire to break the standard market limitations of indie rock and reach a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate effect was a kind of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly encountered many indie bands who wanted to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”