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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of one year. At the start of 1989, they were merely a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely overlooked by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had hardly 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 huge. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable state of affairs for the majority of alternative groups in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of 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 set apart by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning dance music movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way completely unlike any other act 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 old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were doing underneath it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the songs that graced the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds rather different to the usual alternative group set texts, which was completely right: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The fluidity of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s him who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his jumping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, relentless bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the layers of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “reverting to the groove”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can hear him metaphorically willing the band to pick up the pace. 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 trying to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript folk-rock – not a style one suspects listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a catastrophic headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising impact on a band in a slump after the cool reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the front. His popping, mesmerising bass line is certainly the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an affable, sociable figure – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and constantly smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reunion failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy series of extremely profitable concerts – two fresh singles released by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated that any spark had been present in 1989 had proved impossible to recapture nearly two decades on – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on fly-fishing, which furthermore offered “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of manners. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a movement was informed by a desire to break the standard market limitations of indie rock and attract a more general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate effect was a kind of rhythmic shift: following their early success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”