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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary thing. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were merely a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely overlooked by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a smaller 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 attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously drawing in a far bigger and more diverse crowd than usually showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their cockily belligerent attitude and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way completely unlike anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument that the melody of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were doing 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 got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds rather different to the usual indie band set texts, which was absolutely right: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good northern soul and funk”.

The fluidity of his playing 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 Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his octave-leaping lines 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 vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the breakbeat taken 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 comes to thought is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the groove”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually coincide with the instances when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can hear him figuratively willing the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise some unremarkable 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 departed the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a catastrophic top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising effect on a band in a slump after the tepid response to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, weightier and more distorted, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – especially on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the front. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is certainly the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an affable, clubbable figure – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. Said reunion failed to translate into anything more than a lengthy series of hugely lucrative gigs – a couple of fresh singles released by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that any spark had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to rediscover nearly two decades later – and Mani discreetly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with angling, which furthermore provided “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis certainly observed their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a aim to break the usual commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious immediate effect was a sort of groove-based change: in the wake of their early success, you suddenly encountered many alternative acts who wanted to make their fans move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”