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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It took place during a span of one year. At the start of 1989, they were just a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly ignored by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The music press had barely covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill 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 big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify numerous causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a far bigger and more diverse crowd than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning dance music scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a scene of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way entirely unlike anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument that the melody of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were doing underneath it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that featured on the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised 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 northern soul and groove music”.

The smoothness of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s Mani who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into free-flowing groove, his jumping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a strong supporter of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses might have been fixed by removing some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually coincide with the instances when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can sense him figuratively urging the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the lethargy of all other elements that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a genre one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a catastrophic top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively energising impact on a band in a decline after the tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, heavier and increasingly fuzzy, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – especially on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his playing to the front. His popping, hypnotic bass line is certainly the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an friendly, sociable figure – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was invariably broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. Said reunion did not lead to anything beyond a long series of extremely profitable gigs – two fresh singles put out by the reconstituted quartet served only to prove that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani quietly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally offered “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 variety of manners. Oasis certainly took note of their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a desire to transcend the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct effect was a sort of rhythmic shift: following their early success, you suddenly encountered many 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 averred. “That’s what they’re for.”