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By every measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable phenomenon. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional source of buzz in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a smaller London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their performance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable state of affairs for most indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a far bigger and broader audience than typically showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the expanding dance music scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way entirely unlike anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument 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 bass and drums were doing underneath it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you could not 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 brought up on music quite distinct from the usual indie band set texts, which was absolutely right: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s Mani who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his octave-leaping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the singing or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but believed its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks often occur during the instances 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 willing the band to pick up the pace. 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 clearly attempting to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise just some nondescript country-rock – not a genre one suspects listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a catastrophic headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably 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 tone 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 funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his bass work to the fore. His percussive, hypnotic low-end pattern is very much the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, sociable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was invariably broken if Mani “let his guard down” – 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 moniker of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and constantly smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything more than a lengthy series of hugely profitable gigs – two new singles put out by the reformed four-piece served only to prove that any spark had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with angling, which additionally provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their confident approach, while Britpop as a movement was informed by a desire to break the standard commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct influence was a kind of groove-based shift: 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.”