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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of one year. At the start of 1989, they were merely a local 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 covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a more modest London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable state of affairs for the majority of alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly drawing in a far bigger and broader audience than typically showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the expanding acid house scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way completely 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 bass and drums were playing behind it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the songs that featured on the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music quite distinct from the usual alternative group influences, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good northern soul and funk”.

The fluidity of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s him who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into loose-limbed groove, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, relentless bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a strong defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its flaws could have been rectified by cutting some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “reverting to the groove”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is totally at odds with the listlessness of all other elements that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely 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 decline after the cool reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – especially on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his playing to the fore. His percussive, mesmerising low-end pattern is very much the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an affable, clubbable presence – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was invariably punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything beyond a long series of extremely lucrative concerts – a couple of fresh tracks released by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that whatever magic had been present in 1989 had turned out unattainable to rediscover nearly two decades later – and Mani discreetly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which additionally provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of ways. Oasis certainly observed their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a whole was shaped by a aim to transcend the standard market limitations of indie rock and attract a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious immediate effect was a kind of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”