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By any metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded during a span of one year. At the start of 1989, they were merely a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional channels for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a smaller London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their performance was the main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable situation for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify numerous causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly attracting a much larger and broader crowd than usually displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their cockily belligerent attitude and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a world of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way entirely unlike any other act in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument that the tune of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were doing behind it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the songs that featured on the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds rather different to the standard alternative group set texts, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good northern soul and funk”.

The fluidity of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s him who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into loose-limbed groove, his jumping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, 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 first thing that comes to thought is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, 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 flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the rhythm”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often occur during the moments when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can sense him metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is completely contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to add a some pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-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 departed the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a catastrophic top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising impact on a band in a decline after the cool response to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, heavier and more distorted, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his bass work to the fore. His popping, mesmerising low-end pattern is very much the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an friendly, clubbable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and constantly smiling axeman Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything more than a long succession of extremely lucrative concerts – a couple of fresh singles released by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that whatever magic had been present in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture nearly two decades on – and Mani quietly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their swaggering attitude, 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 shift: following their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for indie bands who aimed to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”