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By any metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of one year. At the start of 1989, they were merely a local source of buzz in Manchester, largely ignored by the established outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The rock journalism had hardly covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a smaller London venue 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 imaginable situation for most alternative groups in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can find numerous causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly attracting a much larger and broader audience than typically displayed an interest in indie music 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 skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a scene of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way entirely unlike anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point 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 rhythm section were playing underneath it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you could not to most of the tracks that graced the decks at the era’s indie discos. 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 rather different to the standard alternative group set texts, which was absolutely right: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s him who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into free-flowing groove, his jumping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not 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 bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by removing some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights often coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the listlessness of all other elements that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable country-rock – not a style anyone would guess listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a catastrophic top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising impact 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 distorted, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his bass work to the fore. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is certainly the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an friendly, clubbable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion did not lead to anything more than a lengthy succession of hugely lucrative gigs – two new tracks released by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that any magic had existed in 1989 had proved impossible to rediscover nearly two decades on – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which additionally provided “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d done enough: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of ways. Oasis certainly took note of their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a aim to break the standard commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate influence was a kind of rhythmic change: following their early success, you suddenly couldn’t move for alternative acts who aimed to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”