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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely overlooked by the established channels for indie music in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling 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 performance was the main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable situation for most alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can identify any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a much larger and broader crowd than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the expanding dance music movement – their cockily belligerent attitude and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way completely unlike any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point 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 rhythm section were doing behind it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that graced the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music rather different to the standard indie band influences, which was absolutely right: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ bassist 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’ eponymous debut album: it’s Mani who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his octave-leaping 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 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, relentless bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but believed its flaws could have been rectified by cutting some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “reverting to the groove”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can sense him figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is completely contrary to the listlessness of all other elements that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise just some nondescript country-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a disastrous top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising impact on a band in a decline after the tepid response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, weightier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – particularly on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his bass work to the front. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is very much the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an affable, clubbable presence – the author John Robb once noted 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 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently smiling axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion did not lead to anything more than a lengthy series of extremely profitable concerts – a couple of new tracks released by the reformed four-piece served only to prove that whatever magic had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to recapture nearly two decades later – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with angling, which furthermore provided “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was informed by a desire to transcend the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a wider general public, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious immediate influence was a kind of groove-based shift: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for alternative acts who wanted to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”