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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable thing. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely overlooked by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The music press had barely covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a smaller London club 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 barely imaginable situation for the majority of alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly drawing in a much larger and broader crowd than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a scene of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth 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 bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were playing underneath it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the tracks that featured on the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds quite distinct from the standard indie band set texts, which was completely right: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s him who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into free-flowing funk, his octave-leaping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, relentless bass. 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 artistically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but thought its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can hear him metaphorically willing the band to increase the tempo. His playing 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 clearly trying to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript country-rock – not a style one suspects listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed 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 slump after the cool response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, heavier and more fuzzy, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – particularly on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his bass work to the front. His percussive, mesmerising low-end pattern 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 best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an affable, sociable figure – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always 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 displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously styled and constantly smiling guitarist Dave Hill. Said reunion did not lead to anything more than a lengthy succession of extremely lucrative gigs – a couple of new singles put out by the reconstituted quartet only demonstrated that whatever magic had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani quietly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which furthermore offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of manners. Oasis certainly took note of their swaggering attitude, while Britpop as a whole was informed by a aim to break the standard commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious immediate influence was a kind of groove-based change: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for 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.”