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By any measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely overlooked by the traditional channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a more modest London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. 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 conceivable state of affairs for most alternative groups in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly drawing in a far bigger and more diverse audience than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning dance music scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact 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 tune of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were doing underneath it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the songs that graced the decks at the era’s indie discos. You somehow felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music rather different to the standard alternative group influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good Motown-inspired and funk”.

The fluidity of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s him who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into free-flowing funk, his jumping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce was quite obvious. 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 taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element 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 somewhat stiff”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often 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 figuratively willing the band to increase the tempo. His performance 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 clearly attempting to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript country-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a catastrophic top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively energising impact on a band in a slump after the cool reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, heavier and more distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – especially on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his bass work to the fore. His percussive, hypnotic low-end pattern is very much the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an friendly, sociable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously styled and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything beyond a long series of extremely lucrative gigs – two fresh tracks released by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated that whatever magic had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to recapture 18 years on – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with angling, which additionally provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of manners. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering attitude, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a aim to transcend the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a more 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 early success, you suddenly encountered many indie bands who wanted to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”