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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary phenomenon. It took place during a span of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the established channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had hardly covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a smaller 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 appearance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can identify any number of reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously attracting a much larger and broader audience than usually showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were set apart by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding dance music scene – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way entirely unlike any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument 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 bass and drums were playing underneath it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the songs that graced the turntables at the era’s indie discos. You somehow got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds rather different to the standard indie band set texts, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great northern soul and groove music”.

The smoothness of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s Mani who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into free-flowing funk, his octave-leaping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the singing or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a strong defender of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced guitar and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks often coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can sense him figuratively urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is totally contrary to 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 energy into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable country-rock – not a genre one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a disastrous headlining performance 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 cool response 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 provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – particularly on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his playing to the fore. His percussive, hypnotic low-end pattern 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 best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an affable, sociable presence – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and constantly smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything more than a lengthy series of hugely profitable gigs – two new tracks released by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that any spark had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani discreetly 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 thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of manners. Oasis certainly took note of their confident approach, while Britpop as a whole was shaped by a aim to break the standard commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a wider general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate effect was a sort of groove-based shift: in the wake of their initial success, you suddenly encountered many alternative acts who aimed to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”