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By every metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable thing. It took place during a span of one year. At the start of 1989, they were merely a local cause of excitement in Manchester, largely 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 struggling to fill even a more modest London venue 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 main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable situation for most indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously drawing in a much larger and broader crowd than usually displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were set apart by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a scene of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way entirely different from any other act in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point that the melody of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance 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 the majority of the songs that graced the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music rather different to the usual alternative group influences, which was absolutely correct: 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 fluidity of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s him who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into loose-limbed funk, his jumping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, relentless bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up 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 follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can sense him metaphorically willing the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is completely at odds with the lethargy of all other elements that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre one suspects 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 set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively energising impact on a band in a slump after the tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, weightier and more distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – especially on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his bass work to the fore. His popping, hypnotic 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, easily the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, clubbable figure – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media 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 personalised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously styled and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion did not lead to anything more than a long succession of hugely profitable gigs – a couple of fresh singles put out by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that any spark had been present in 1989 had turned out impossible to recapture 18 years later – and Mani quietly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of ways. Oasis certainly took note of their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a movement was informed by a desire to transcend the usual market limitations of indie rock and reach a wider general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate influence was a sort of groove-based shift: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for alternative acts who wanted to make their fans move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”