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By any measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional channels for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack 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 performance was the big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable situation for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify numerous reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly attracting a much larger and more diverse audience than usually showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding acid house movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful 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 old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were doing behind it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the tracks that featured on the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music rather different to the usual alternative group set texts, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great northern soul and groove music”.

The smoothness of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s Mani who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his jumping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the singing 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 snaking, driving bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a strong supporter of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses might have been fixed by removing some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually occur during the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can sense him metaphorically willing the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is totally at odds with the listlessness of all other elements that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-rock – not a style one suspects listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a disastrous top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising effect on a band in a decline after the cool reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly fuzzy, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his bass work to the front. His percussive, mesmerising bass line is very much the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an affable, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly smiling axeman Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything more than a lengthy series of hugely lucrative gigs – a couple of fresh tracks put out by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated that any magic had been present in 1989 had turned out impossible to recapture 18 years on – and Mani quietly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which furthermore offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a aim to transcend the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their clearest direct influence was a kind of rhythmic change: following their initial success, you abruptly couldn’t move for alternative acts who wanted to make their fans 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.”