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By every metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional outlets for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a smaller London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. 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 barely conceivable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can identify numerous causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously attracting a far bigger and more diverse crowd than typically showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding acid house movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact 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 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 playing underneath it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority 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 quite distinct from the standard indie band influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great northern soul and groove music”.

The fluidity of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s Mani who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into loose-limbed groove, his jumping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, relentless bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch defender of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is totally at odds with the listlessness of all other elements that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a some pep into what’s otherwise just some nondescript country-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded completely 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 tepid response to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, weightier and more distorted, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his bass work to the fore. His popping, hypnotic low-end pattern is certainly the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an friendly, clubbable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was invariably broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage 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 styled and constantly smiling guitarist Dave Hill. Said reunion did not lead to anything more than a long series of extremely profitable gigs – a couple of new singles put out by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that whatever spark had been present in 1989 had turned out impossible to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani quietly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a aim to break the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious direct effect was a sort of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their early success, you suddenly encountered many indie bands who aimed to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”