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By every measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It took place during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a local source of buzz 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 latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling 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 appearance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely 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 much larger and broader audience than typically showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning dance music scene – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a world of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way entirely different from anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument 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 playing behind 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 turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music quite distinct from the usual alternative group set texts, which was absolutely right: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s him who propels the point 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 sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the drum sample taken 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 springs to mind is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a strong supporter of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often coincide with the moments 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 figuratively willing the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is totally at odds with the lethargy of all other elements 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 just some nondescript folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

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 impressively energising effect on a band in a slump after the tepid response to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, weightier and more distorted, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – especially on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his playing to the front. His percussive, mesmerising bass line is very much the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, sociable figure – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was invariably punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and constantly grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything beyond a long succession of extremely profitable concerts – two new singles put out by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated that whatever magic had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture 18 years on – and Mani quietly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on fly-fishing, which furthermore provided “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of manners. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their swaggering attitude, while Britpop as a whole was informed by a desire to transcend the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate effect was a kind of groove-based change: in the wake of their early success, you suddenly couldn’t move for alternative acts who wanted to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”