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By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It took place during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional source of buzz in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the established outlets for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack 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 attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable situation for most alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly drawing in a far bigger and broader audience 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 expanding acid house movement – their confidently defiant attitude and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a scene of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

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 point 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 really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the tracks that featured on the decks at the era’s indie discos. You somehow got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds quite distinct from the standard indie band influences, which was completely right: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s Mani who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed groove, his octave-leaping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

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

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

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks often occur during the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can sense him figuratively willing the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is totally contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise some unremarkable country-rock – not a style 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 following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a catastrophic headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising effect on a band in a decline after the tepid response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, heavier and more distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – particularly on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his bass work to the fore. His percussive, hypnotic low-end pattern is certainly the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an affable, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was always broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything beyond a lengthy series of hugely profitable concerts – two new singles put out by the reformed four-piece served only to prove that any spark had been present in 1989 had proved impossible to recapture 18 years later – and Mani quietly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which additionally provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of ways. Oasis certainly observed their confident approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a aim to break the standard market limitations of alternative music and reach a wider general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest direct influence was a kind of groove-based shift: following their initial success, you abruptly couldn’t move for indie bands who aimed to make their fans move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”