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By any measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary phenomenon. It took place over the course of one year. At the start of 1989, they were merely a local source of buzz in Manchester, mostly ignored by the established channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely covered 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 performance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable state of affairs for most alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a much larger and broader audience 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 expanding acid house scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a scene of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact 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 bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were playing underneath it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the tracks that featured on the turntables at the era’s indie discos. 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 indie band set texts, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good northern soul and groove music”.

The fluidity of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s Mani who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a strong supporter of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks often occur during the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can sense him metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is completely at odds with the lethargy of all other elements that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable folk-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 in the wake of Second Coming’s release, 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 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 more echo-laden, weightier and more fuzzy, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – especially on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his playing to the front. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is very much the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, sociable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show 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 reformation failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy series of hugely profitable concerts – a couple of fresh singles put out by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that whatever spark had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover nearly two decades 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 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 variety of manners. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a whole was informed by a desire to break the usual commercial constraints of alternative music and reach a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their clearest direct 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 audiences 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.”