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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary thing. It unfolded during a span of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a regional source of buzz in Manchester, mostly ignored by the established channels for indie music in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The music press had barely mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a smaller London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify numerous reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly drawing in a far bigger and more diverse audience than typically showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning dance music scene – their confidently defiant attitude and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a scene of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way completely unlike any other act in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument 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 playing behind it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the songs that graced 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 quite distinct from the usual alternative group influences, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s him who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his jumping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bass. 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 not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a strong defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses might have been fixed by removing some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights often coincide with the instances 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 performance on Tightrope is completely contrary to 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 some pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely 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 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 groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – especially on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his bass work to the front. His popping, mesmerising bass line is certainly the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an friendly, clubbable presence – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was always punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. Said reformation failed to translate into anything more than a long series of extremely profitable concerts – two fresh singles released by the reformed quartet served only to prove that any magic had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture nearly two decades on – and Mani quietly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which additionally provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of manners. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a aim to break the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their clearest direct influence was a sort of rhythmic shift: following their early success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who aimed to make their fans 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.”