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By any measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It took place during a span 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 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 appearance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable situation for most alternative groups in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can find numerous reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a much larger and broader audience than typically showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were set apart by their look – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a scene of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way entirely unlike any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point 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 underneath it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the tracks that graced the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music quite distinct from the usual indie band influences, which was absolutely right: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great northern soul and funk”.

The smoothness of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: 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 put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, relentless bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights usually occur during the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can hear him metaphorically willing the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is completely contrary to the lethargy of all other elements 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 nondescript country-rock – not a style anyone would guess listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a disastrous top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising effect on a band in a slump after the tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, weightier and more fuzzy, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – especially on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his bass work to the front. His popping, hypnotic bass line is certainly the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an friendly, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently smiling axeman Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy succession of hugely lucrative gigs – a couple of new tracks released by the reconstituted quartet only demonstrated that any magic had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to recapture 18 years later – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which furthermore offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was informed by a desire to transcend the usual market limitations of alternative music and reach a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious direct effect was a kind of rhythmic change: following their initial success, you suddenly encountered many indie bands who aimed to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”