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By every measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary phenomenon. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were merely a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly ignored by the established outlets for alternative rock 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 entered the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable state of affairs for most alternative groups in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify numerous reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously drawing in a far bigger and more diverse audience than usually showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the expanding dance music movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way completely unlike anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument that the melody 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 doing underneath it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to most of the tracks that featured on the decks at the era’s indie discos. You in some way felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music rather different to the standard indie band influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great northern soul and funk”.

The smoothness of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s him who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into free-flowing funk, his jumping riffs that add bounce 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 snaking, driving bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong 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 little bit stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but believed its flaws might have been fixed by cutting some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks often occur during the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear 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 going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to add a some pep into what’s otherwise some nondescript folk-rock – not a style one suspects anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a disastrous top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising 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 more echo-laden, heavier and more fuzzy, but the groove that had given 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 bring his playing to the front. His percussive, mesmerising low-end pattern is certainly the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an affable, clubbable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything more than a lengthy series of extremely lucrative gigs – two new singles put out by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that any spark had been present 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 fly-fishing, which additionally offered “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d done enough: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis certainly observed their confident approach, while Britpop as a whole was informed by a aim to break the usual market limitations of indie rock and attract a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious direct influence was a sort of groove-based shift: following their early success, you abruptly encountered many alternative acts who wanted to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”