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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable thing. It unfolded during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely overlooked by the established 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 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 appearance was the main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable state of affairs for most alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly drawing in a far bigger and more diverse audience than typically showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding acid house movement – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way entirely unlike any other act 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 rhythm section 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 in some way felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music quite distinct from 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 “good Motown-inspired and funk”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s him who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into free-flowing groove, his jumping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce was quite obvious. 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 drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, relentless bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a strong supporter of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “reverting to the groove”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often occur during the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can sense him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is completely at odds with the lethargy of all other elements that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to inject a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some nondescript folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a disastrous top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising effect on a band in a slump after the cool response to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, weightier and more fuzzy, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his bass work to the front. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is certainly the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an friendly, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always punctured 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 nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reunion did not lead to anything beyond a lengthy series of extremely lucrative concerts – a couple of fresh tracks released by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that any spark had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover nearly two decades on – and Mani quietly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which furthermore offered “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis certainly took note of their swaggering attitude, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a aim to break the standard market limitations of indie rock and reach a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious immediate influence was a sort of groove-based change: following their initial success, you abruptly encountered many indie bands who wanted to make their fans dance. 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.”