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By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary thing. It unfolded over the course of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely ignored by the established channels for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a more modest London club 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 draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable situation for most alternative groups in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously attracting a much larger and broader crowd than typically displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning dance music movement – their confidently defiant attitude and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a scene of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way completely unlike anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point that the melody of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were playing underneath 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 drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music rather different to the usual indie band influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good northern soul and groove music”.

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

At times the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a staunch defender of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but thought its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually coincide with the instances 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 metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable country-rock – not a style one suspects listeners 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 catastrophic headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising effect on a band in a slump after the tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, heavier and increasingly fuzzy, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his bass work to the front. His popping, mesmerising low-end pattern 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 magnificent.

Always an affable, clubbable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was always broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy series of hugely profitable gigs – two new tracks put out by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated that any spark had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to recapture 18 years later – and Mani quietly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with angling, which additionally provided “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of ways. Oasis certainly observed their confident approach, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was informed by a desire to break the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and reach a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate influence was a kind of groove-based shift: following their initial success, you abruptly couldn’t move for alternative acts who aimed to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”