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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It took place during a span of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional source of buzz in Manchester, mostly ignored by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The rock journalism had hardly covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a more modest London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had entered 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 the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can find numerous causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly drawing in a much larger and more diverse crowd than typically displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their cockily belligerent attitude and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way entirely different from anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument 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 underneath it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the songs that featured on the turntables 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 brought up on music quite distinct from the usual alternative group influences, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great northern soul and groove music”.

The smoothness of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s him who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his octave-leaping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, relentless 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 view, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a strong supporter of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “reverting to the groove”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s handful of highlights usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more 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 everything else that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to inject a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a style one suspects listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a catastrophic headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising effect on a band in a decline after the cool reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – particularly on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his bass work to the fore. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is very much the highlight on the fantastic 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 superb.

Consistently an friendly, clubbable presence – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion failed to translate into anything more than a long series of hugely lucrative gigs – a couple of new singles put out by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that whatever magic had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to recapture 18 years later – and Mani quietly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with angling, which additionally offered “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of manners. Oasis certainly observed their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a desire to break the standard market limitations of indie rock and reach a wider general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious direct influence was a kind of groove-based change: following their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”