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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable phenomenon. It unfolded during a span of one year. At the start of 1989, they were merely a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional channels for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a more modest London club 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 barely imaginable state of affairs for most indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a far bigger and broader crowd than typically displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were set apart by their look – which seemed to align them more to the expanding dance music movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a scene of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way completely unlike anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument that the melody of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s early 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 could not to the majority of the songs that featured on the decks at the era’s indie discos. You somehow felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music rather different to the standard indie band influences, which was completely correct: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good northern soul and groove music”.

The fluidity of his playing 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 Motown stomp into loose-limbed groove, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce 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 wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, relentless bassline. 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 groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws might have been fixed by cutting some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “reverting to the groove”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights usually occur during the instances when Mounfield was truly given free rein – 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 contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a catastrophic top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising impact on a band in a decline after the cool reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, weightier and increasingly distorted, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – especially on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the front. His popping, mesmerising low-end pattern is certainly the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like 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 performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently smiling axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion failed to translate into anything beyond a long succession of hugely profitable concerts – two fresh tracks released by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that any magic had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani discreetly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on fly-fishing, which furthermore provided “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their swaggering attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a desire to break the standard market limitations of indie rock and reach a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct effect was a sort of rhythmic change: in the wake of their initial success, you abruptly encountered many alternative acts who aimed to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”