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By any metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a local source of buzz in Manchester, mostly ignored by the traditional outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had hardly 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 debuted on the charts at No 8 and their performance was the big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously drawing in a much larger and broader crowd than usually displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning dance music movement – their confidently defiant attitude and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a scene of fuzzy 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 alt-rock at the time. There’s an point that the tune 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 doing behind 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 turntables at the era’s indie discos. You somehow felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds rather different to the standard alternative group set texts, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good northern soul and groove music”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s him who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into free-flowing groove, his jumping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the drum sample borrowed 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 stumbled musically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a strong supporter of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by cutting some of the layers of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights often occur during the instances when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can sense him figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the lethargy 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 pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable country-rock – not a style one suspects anyone was in a hurry 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 slump after the tepid response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, weightier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – especially on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his bass work to the fore. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is very much the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, clubbable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was invariably punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. Said reunion did not lead to anything more than a lengthy series of extremely lucrative concerts – a couple of new tracks released by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated that any magic had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover nearly two decades later – and Mani quietly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of manners. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their swaggering attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a aim to break the standard market limitations of indie rock and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct influence was a kind of groove-based change: following their initial success, you abruptly couldn’t move for indie bands who aimed to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”