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By any measure, the ascent 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 local source of buzz in Manchester, largely overlooked by the traditional channels for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The music press had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a more modest 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 big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable situation for the majority of alternative groups in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously drawing in a far bigger and more diverse audience than usually 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 scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a world of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way entirely 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 early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were playing behind it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the songs that graced the turntables at the era’s indie discos. You in some way felt 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 completely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good Motown-inspired and funk”.

The smoothness of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s Mani who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into loose-limbed groove, his jumping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, relentless bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a strong supporter of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses might have been fixed by removing some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often coincide with the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can sense him metaphorically willing the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is completely at odds with the listlessness of all other elements that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a genre one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a catastrophic headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising effect on a band in a decline after the cool reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly fuzzy, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – especially on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his playing to the front. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is certainly the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an friendly, sociable figure – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was always punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently smiling axeman Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything more than a long series of hugely profitable gigs – a couple of new singles released by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that any spark had existed in 1989 had proved impossible to recapture 18 years later – and Mani discreetly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on fly-fishing, which additionally offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d achieved plenty: 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 whole was shaped by a aim to transcend the usual commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct influence was a sort of groove-based change: following their initial success, you abruptly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted to make their fans move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”