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By any measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary thing. It took place during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a local cause of excitement in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional channels for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a more modest London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on 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 most alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can find numerous reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly 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 look – which seemed to align them more to the expanding acid house scene – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way entirely different from any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point that the melody 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 behind it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the tracks that featured on the decks at the era’s indie discos. You in some way felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music rather different to the usual alternative group influences, which was completely 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’ self-titled debut album: it’s Mani who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into free-flowing groove, his octave-leaping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not 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 bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a strong supporter of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually occur during the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can sense him metaphorically willing the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is completely at odds with the lethargy of everything else that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable folk-rock – not a style anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a catastrophic headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising impact on a band in a slump after the cool response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – especially on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his bass work to the fore. His percussive, mesmerising bass line is certainly the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, clubbable presence – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and constantly smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything beyond a lengthy series of extremely profitable concerts – a couple of fresh singles put out by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover nearly two decades later – and Mani quietly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally offered “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their swaggering attitude, while Britpop as a whole was informed by a desire to transcend the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate effect was a sort of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for alternative acts who aimed to make their fans 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.”