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By every measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable thing. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were merely a local source of buzz in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the established outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a smaller London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable situation for most alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find numerous reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a far bigger and more diverse crowd than typically displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were set apart by their look – which seemed to align them more to the expanding acid house scene – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the talent of the lead 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 different from anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument that the tune of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s early 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 simply couldn’t to the majority of the tracks that graced the turntables at the era’s indie discos. You in some way felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music quite distinct from the standard indie band influences, which was completely right: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s him who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into loose-limbed groove, his jumping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient was quite obvious. 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, relentless bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a staunch supporter of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by cutting some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “reverting to the groove”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s handful 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 turgid songs, you can hear him figuratively willing the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is totally at odds with the listlessness of all other elements that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable country-rock – not a style anyone would guess listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a catastrophic top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising impact on a band in a decline after the tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, weightier and more fuzzy, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his playing to the fore. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is certainly the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, clubbable figure – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was always punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously styled and permanently smiling axeman Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything beyond a lengthy succession of extremely profitable gigs – two fresh tracks released by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated that any spark had existed in 1989 had turned out impossible to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of manners. Oasis undoubtedly observed their confident approach, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was informed by a aim to break the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and reach a more general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest direct effect was a kind of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their initial success, you abruptly couldn’t move for alternative acts who aimed to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”