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By any measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable phenomenon. It unfolded during a span of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a local cause of excitement in Manchester, largely ignored by the established channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The music press had hardly mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a more modest London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their performance was the big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable state of affairs for the majority of alternative groups in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly attracting a far bigger and more diverse audience than typically showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning dance music movement – their confidently defiant attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way completely unlike any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point that the tune of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s early 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 featured on the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music quite distinct from the standard indie band set texts, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good northern soul and groove music”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s Mani who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into loose-limbed groove, his octave-leaping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

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

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a strong defender of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of highlights usually occur during the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can sense him figuratively willing the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is completely at odds with the listlessness of all other elements that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to add a some energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript country-rock – not a style one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a catastrophic headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively energising effect on a band in a decline after the cool response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, heavier and increasingly fuzzy, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his playing to the front. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is very much the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an affable, sociable figure – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was always punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and constantly smiling guitarist Dave Hill. Said reunion failed to translate into anything beyond a long series of hugely profitable concerts – a couple of fresh singles released by the reconstituted quartet only demonstrated that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had turned out impossible to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani quietly announced his retirement 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 felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of manners. Oasis certainly took note of their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a desire to transcend the usual commercial constraints of alternative music and reach a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious direct effect was a kind of groove-based change: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly encountered many indie bands who aimed to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”