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By any measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It unfolded during a span of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a local cause of excitement in Manchester, largely overlooked by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The rock journalism had hardly covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a more modest London venue 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 barely imaginable situation for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a far bigger and broader audience than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding acid house scene – their confidently defiant attitude and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a scene of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way completely different from any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point that the tune 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 doing underneath it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the songs that graced the decks at the era’s indie discos. You somehow felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music quite distinct from the standard alternative group set texts, which was completely correct: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s Mani who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed groove, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses could have been rectified by cutting some of the layers of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually occur during the moments when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can sense him figuratively willing 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 track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to inject a bit of 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 efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a catastrophic headlining performance 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 tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, weightier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – particularly on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his bass work to the front. His popping, hypnotic 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, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was invariably 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 displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and constantly grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion failed to translate into anything beyond a long succession of hugely lucrative gigs – a couple of fresh singles put out by the reformed quartet served only to prove that any spark had been present in 1989 had proved impossible to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally offered “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis certainly observed their swaggering attitude, while Britpop as a movement was informed by a desire to transcend the standard market limitations of alternative music and attract a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct effect was a sort of groove-based change: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly encountered many alternative acts 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 averred. “That’s what they’re for.”