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By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a more modest 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 main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable situation for the majority of alternative groups in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously attracting a far bigger and broader audience than typically showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding dance music movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a scene of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way entirely different from anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument that the tune of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were playing behind it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you could not to most of the tracks that featured on the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music rather different to the standard alternative group set texts, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The fluidity of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s Mani who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his octave-leaping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the drum sample 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 springs to mind is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a strong defender of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by cutting some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar 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 allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can hear him figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to inject a bit of energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a disastrous top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising impact on a band in a slump after the tepid response to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – particularly on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his playing to the fore. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is certainly the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an friendly, sociable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was invariably punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reunion did not lead to anything more than a lengthy succession of hugely profitable gigs – a couple of fresh singles released by the reformed quartet served only to prove that any spark had been present in 1989 had proved impossible to recapture 18 years later – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which furthermore offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a desire to transcend the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a wider general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate influence was a sort of groove-based change: following their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”