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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary thing. It unfolded during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The rock journalism had hardly covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a smaller London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their performance was the big attraction 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 reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously drawing in a much larger and more diverse audience than typically displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the expanding acid house scene – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a world of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable truth 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 argument that the tune of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were doing behind it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the songs that graced the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds quite distinct from the usual indie band influences, which was completely correct: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great northern soul and groove music”.

The fluidity of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s him who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into free-flowing funk, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, relentless bass. When you think of 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 artistically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but thought its flaws might have been fixed by cutting some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually coincide with the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is totally at odds with the lethargy of all other elements that’s going on 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 folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a disastrous headlining set 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 cool 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 present – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his playing to the fore. His popping, mesmerising bass line is very much the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, clubbable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was invariably broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously styled and permanently grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reunion did not lead to anything beyond a long succession of hugely lucrative concerts – a couple of fresh singles put out by the reformed quartet served only to prove that any spark had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to recapture 18 years later – and Mani discreetly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally offered “a good 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 range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a desire to transcend the standard commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious direct effect was a kind of groove-based change: in the wake of their initial success, you suddenly 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 bass and drums are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”