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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary thing. It unfolded during a span of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly ignored by the traditional channels for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack 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 big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable situation for most indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find numerous reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly attracting a far bigger and more diverse audience than usually showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the expanding acid house scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

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 argument that the melody of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were playing behind it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the tracks that graced the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. 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 indie band influences, 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’ self-titled first record: it’s him who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing 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 centerpiece 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, driving bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. 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 staunch supporter of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the rhythm”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights usually occur during the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is totally contrary to the listlessness of all other elements that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a rush 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 disastrous top-billed 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 guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, weightier and increasingly fuzzy, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the fore. His popping, hypnotic bass line is very much the highlight on the fantastic 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 made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an affable, sociable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was always punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and constantly smiling axeman Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything more than a lengthy succession of hugely lucrative concerts – two new singles put out by the reconstituted quartet served only to prove that any spark had been present in 1989 had turned out unattainable to rediscover nearly two decades later – and Mani quietly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on fly-fishing, which additionally offered “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of manners. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a whole was shaped by a aim to break the standard market limitations of indie rock and attract a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious direct effect was a kind of rhythmic change: following their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for alternative acts who aimed to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”