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By any measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It unfolded during a span of one year. At the start of 1989, they were just a local source of buzz in Manchester, mostly ignored by the traditional channels for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The music press had hardly mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a smaller London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their performance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable state of affairs for the majority of alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can find numerous causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously drawing in a far bigger and more diverse audience than typically displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were set apart by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a scene of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way entirely unlike any other act 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 dance to it in a way that you could not to most of the tracks that graced the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music rather different to the usual alternative group set texts, which was absolutely right: Mani was a huge fan 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 hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s Mani who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into loose-limbed groove, his jumping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses could have been rectified by cutting some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is completely contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to add a some energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript country-rock – not a style anyone would guess anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a disastrous headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising impact on a band in a slump after the tepid response to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, weightier and more distorted, 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 playing to the fore. His popping, hypnotic low-end pattern is very much the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an affable, sociable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy series of hugely lucrative concerts – two fresh singles released by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that any magic had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to recapture nearly two decades on – and Mani quietly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which furthermore provided “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d done enough: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of manners. Oasis certainly took note of their swaggering attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a aim to transcend the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious immediate effect was a kind of groove-based shift: in the wake of their initial success, you abruptly couldn’t move for indie bands who aimed to make their fans move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”