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By any measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a local source of buzz in Manchester, mostly ignored by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely mentioned 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 debuted on the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can find numerous causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously drawing in a far bigger and more diverse crowd than usually showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning dance music movement – their cockily belligerent attitude and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way entirely different from any other act in British alternative music 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 move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the songs that graced the decks 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 rather different to the standard alternative group set texts, which was absolutely right: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good northern soul and funk”.

The fluidity of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s him who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into loose-limbed groove, his jumping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, relentless bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses might have been fixed by removing some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the groove”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering 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 increasingly sluggish songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the lethargy of everything else that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to inject a bit of energy into what’s otherwise some unremarkable country-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a catastrophic headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively energising impact on a band in a slump after the cool response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, heavier and more fuzzy, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – especially on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the fore. His popping, hypnotic low-end pattern is certainly the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an affable, clubbable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was always punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently grinning guitarist Dave Hill. Said reunion did not lead to anything more than a long succession of hugely lucrative gigs – two new singles put out by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that any magic had been present in 1989 had turned out impossible to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani discreetly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally offered “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis certainly observed their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a whole was shaped by a desire to transcend the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious immediate effect was a sort of groove-based change: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly encountered many indie bands who wanted to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”