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By every metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary thing. It unfolded during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional source of buzz in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a smaller London club 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 state of affairs for most indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find numerous causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly attracting a much larger and broader crowd than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their confidently defiant attitude and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way completely different from anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point that the melody of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were playing behind 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 indie discos. You somehow felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds rather different to the usual alternative group influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good northern soul and funk”.

The smoothness of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s him who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his jumping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the breakbeat taken 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 comes to thought is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “reverting 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 allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can sense him figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is completely at odds with the lethargy of everything else that’s going on on the song, 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 listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a catastrophic headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising effect on a band in a decline after the tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven 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 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, hypnotic bass line is very much the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an friendly, clubbable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was always broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously styled and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion failed to translate into anything more than a long series of extremely profitable gigs – a couple of fresh singles released by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that any spark had been present in 1989 had turned out impossible to recapture nearly two decades later – and Mani quietly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of ways. Oasis certainly took note of their confident approach, while Britpop as a whole was shaped by a desire to break the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious direct effect was a kind of groove-based change: following their early success, you abruptly encountered many 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 averred. “That’s what they’re for.”