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By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable thing. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional outlets for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The music press had hardly covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a more modest London club 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 big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable situation for the majority of alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find numerous causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously drawing in a much larger and broader 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 movement – their cockily belligerent attitude and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a world of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way entirely unlike anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point 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 behind it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that featured on the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music quite distinct from the standard indie band influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and funk”.

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 shifts from soulful beat into loose-limbed groove, his jumping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving 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 musically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a strong supporter of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “returning to the rhythm”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually occur during 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 sense him metaphorically willing the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the lethargy of all other elements that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to inject a bit of energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a style anyone would guess listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s release, 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 galvanising impact on a band in a decline after the tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, heavier and more distorted, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the fore. His percussive, hypnotic low-end pattern 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 made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an affable, sociable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reunion failed to translate into anything more than a lengthy series of extremely lucrative gigs – a couple of new singles released by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that any spark had been present in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture 18 years on – and Mani discreetly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which additionally provided “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of manners. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their confident approach, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a desire to break the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a wider general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious immediate influence was a kind of groove-based change: following their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for alternative acts who wanted to make their fans dance. 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.”