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By every measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary thing. It unfolded over the course of one year. At the start of 1989, they were just a local source of buzz in Manchester, mostly ignored by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a smaller London venue 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 imaginable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can identify numerous causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously drawing in a much larger and more diverse audience than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way entirely different from anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point 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 certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to most of the tracks that featured on the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow 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 admirer 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 secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s Mani who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his octave-leaping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, relentless bassline. 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 went wrong artistically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but believed its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “reverting to the groove”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can sense him figuratively willing the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is completely at odds with the lethargy of all other elements that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to inject a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a catastrophic top-billed set 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 response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly fuzzy, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – especially on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his bass work to the front. His popping, mesmerising bass line is certainly the star turn on the brilliant 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 superb.

Always an friendly, clubbable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. Said reunion did not lead to anything beyond a lengthy succession of extremely profitable concerts – two new singles released by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that whatever magic had been present in 1989 had proved impossible to rediscover nearly two decades later – and Mani quietly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which additionally offered “a good reason 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 confident approach, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a desire to break the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate influence 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 fans move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”