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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary thing. It unfolded during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the established outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a more modest London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their performance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable state of affairs for most indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can find numerous reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously attracting a much larger and more diverse crowd than typically showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding dance music scene – their confidently defiant attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way completely unlike anything else 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 old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were doing behind it really didn’t: you could move 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 somehow got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds rather different to the standard alternative group set texts, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s Mani who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into free-flowing funk, his jumping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, 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 initial element that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a strong defender of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but believed its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often coincide with the instances when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can hear him metaphorically willing the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is completely contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to inject a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable country-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a disastrous headlining set 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 cool reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, heavier and more fuzzy, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – especially on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his bass work to the fore. His percussive, mesmerising bass line is very much the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an affable, clubbable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the inscription “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 released by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that whatever magic had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani discreetly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with angling, which furthermore provided “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of manners. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was informed by a aim to break the usual market limitations of alternative music and reach a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct effect was a sort of groove-based change: following their early success, you suddenly encountered many indie bands who aimed to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”