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By any measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional source of buzz in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a smaller 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 main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable situation for most indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously drawing in a far bigger and broader crowd than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding acid house movement – their cockily belligerent attitude and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact 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 argument that the melody 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 dance 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 in some way got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds quite distinct from the standard alternative group set texts, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good northern soul and groove music”.

The smoothness of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s him who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into free-flowing funk, his jumping 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 singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the drum sample 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 initial element that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses could have been rectified by removing some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks often coincide with the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – 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 at odds with the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to add a some pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-rock – not a style one suspects anyone was in a rush 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 headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively energising impact on a band in a decline after the cool response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly fuzzy, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – particularly on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the front. His popping, mesmerising low-end pattern is certainly the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, sociable figure – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was always punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. This reunion failed to translate into anything more than a lengthy succession of extremely profitable gigs – two new singles released by the reformed four-piece served only to prove that whatever magic had been present in 1989 had proved impossible to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which furthermore offered “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis certainly took note of their confident 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 general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate effect was a sort of groove-based change: in the wake of their early success, you suddenly encountered many 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.”