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By any metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary thing. It took place over the course of one year. At the start of 1989, they were just a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional outlets for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The music press had hardly mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able 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 performance was the main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable situation for most alternative groups in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously attracting a much larger and more diverse audience than typically displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding dance music scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a scene of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact 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 argument that the melody of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were playing underneath it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the songs that graced the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music rather different to the usual alternative group influences, which was absolutely right: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good Motown-inspired and funk”.

The smoothness of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s Mani who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into free-flowing groove, his jumping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the singing or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the drum sample borrowed 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 springs to mind is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by cutting some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks often coincide with the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can hear him figuratively willing the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is totally at odds with the listlessness of all other elements that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable country-rock – not a style anyone would guess anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a catastrophic top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising effect on a band in a slump after the tepid reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, weightier and increasingly fuzzy, but the groove that had provided 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 playing to the front. His percussive, hypnotic low-end pattern 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 finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, sociable presence – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was always broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything beyond a lengthy series of hugely lucrative concerts – a couple of fresh singles put out by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that any spark had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to recapture nearly two decades on – and Mani quietly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on fly-fishing, which furthermore provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis certainly took note of their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a aim to break the standard commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a more general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest direct influence was a sort of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their early success, you suddenly encountered many 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, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”