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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It took place during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely overlooked by the traditional channels for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The music press had hardly mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a smaller 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 appearance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable situation for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify numerous reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously drawing in a much larger and broader audience than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning dance music movement – their cockily belligerent attitude and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a scene of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung 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 could not to most of the songs that featured on the turntables at the era’s indie discos. You somehow felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music quite distinct from the standard alternative group set texts, which was absolutely right: Mani was a massive 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’ eponymous debut album: it’s him who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed groove, his octave-leaping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a strong defender of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses might have been fixed by removing some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced guitar and “reverting to the groove”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually coincide with the instances when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can sense him figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is totally at odds with the lethargy of all other elements that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to inject a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a style anyone would guess listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a disastrous 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 decline after the tepid reception to 1994’s rock-y 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 – particularly on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his playing to the front. His popping, mesmerising low-end pattern is very much the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an friendly, sociable presence – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything beyond a lengthy succession of extremely profitable concerts – two new singles released by the reconstituted quartet served only to prove that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had proved impossible to recapture 18 years later – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which furthermore provided “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of manners. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their confident attitude, while Britpop as a whole was informed by a aim to transcend the usual market limitations of alternative music and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate effect was a kind of groove-based shift: following their early success, you suddenly 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 bass and drums are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”