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By any metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It took place during a span of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack 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 big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable situation for most indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously attracting a far bigger 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 expanding acid house movement – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way entirely different from any other act 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 bass and drums were doing behind it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the tracks that graced the decks at the era’s indie discos. You in some way got the impression that the percussionist 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 correct: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The fluidity of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s him who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into free-flowing groove, his octave-leaping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a staunch defender of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses might have been fixed by removing some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “returning to the rhythm”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights often coincide with the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him figuratively willing the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is totally contrary to the listlessness of all other elements that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable country-rock – not a style one suspects anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a catastrophic top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising impact on a band in a slump after the cool reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, weightier and more fuzzy, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – especially on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his bass work to the fore. His popping, hypnotic low-end pattern is very much the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an friendly, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was always broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything more than a lengthy succession of extremely lucrative gigs – a couple of new singles released by the reformed four-piece served only to prove that whatever spark had been present 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 more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally offered “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a aim to break the standard market limitations of indie rock and reach a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate influence was a kind of groove-based change: following their early success, you suddenly encountered many alternative acts who aimed to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”