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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable thing. It unfolded over the course of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely overlooked by the traditional outlets for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The music press had barely covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a more modest London venue 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 main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable situation for the majority of indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously drawing in a much larger and broader crowd than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding dance music scene – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a scene of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way completely unlike any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument that the tune 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 underneath it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the songs that featured on the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music quite distinct from the standard indie band set texts, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good northern soul and groove music”.

The fluidity of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s Mani who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into loose-limbed groove, his octave-leaping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bass. When you think of 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 insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was lackluster, he suggested, 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 weaknesses could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights usually occur during the instances when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically willing the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is totally contrary to the lethargy of everything else that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to inject a some pep into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were in vain: 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 galvanising impact on a band in a decline after the tepid reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, heavier and more fuzzy, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – particularly on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his bass work to the front. His percussive, mesmerising 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 best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an affable, sociable presence – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always broken 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 styled and constantly smiling axeman Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything beyond a long succession of extremely profitable gigs – two new tracks released by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that whatever magic had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to recapture 18 years on – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of manners. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a whole was shaped by a aim to break the standard market limitations of alternative music and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious immediate influence was a kind of groove-based shift: following their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who aimed to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”