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By any metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary phenomenon. It took place 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 established 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 struggling to fill even a smaller London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify numerous causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously attracting a much larger and more diverse audience than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their confidently defiant attitude and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a scene of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way entirely unlike anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument 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 playing underneath it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the tracks that graced the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds rather different to the standard indie band set texts, which was completely correct: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great northern soul and groove music”.

The smoothness of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s Mani who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed groove, his jumping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its flaws could have been rectified by cutting some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks often occur during the moments when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can sense him figuratively urging the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is completely contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to inject a bit of energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a style anyone would guess 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 collapsed entirely after a catastrophic top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising effect on a band in a decline after the tepid reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, weightier and increasingly distorted, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the fore. His popping, mesmerising low-end pattern is certainly the highlight on the brilliant 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.

Always an friendly, clubbable figure – the author 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 customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything more than a lengthy series of hugely lucrative concerts – a couple of fresh tracks put out by the reformed four-piece served only to prove that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to recapture 18 years later – and Mani discreetly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which furthermore provided “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their swaggering attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was informed by a aim to transcend the standard market limitations of alternative music and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious immediate effect was a kind of groove-based shift: in the wake of their early success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who aimed to make their audiences 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.”