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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 just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly ignored by the traditional outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The rock journalism had hardly mentioned 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 huge. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their performance was the main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable state of affairs for most alternative groups in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can find numerous causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly attracting a much larger and more diverse audience than typically displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way completely unlike anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point that the melody of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were doing underneath it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the songs that graced the decks at the era’s indie discos. You in some way got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music rather different to the standard indie band influences, which was absolutely right: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s Mani who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into free-flowing funk, 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 wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, relentless bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the layers of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “reverting to the groove”.

He likely had a point. 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 more turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the lethargy of everything else that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to inject a bit of pep into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable country-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a disastrous top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising effect on a band in a slump after the tepid reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, weightier and more distorted, but the swing 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 push his playing to the front. His popping, mesmerising low-end pattern is very much the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and constantly smiling axeman Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything more than a long succession of extremely lucrative concerts – two new tracks put out by the reformed four-piece served only to prove that whatever magic had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover nearly two decades on – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on fly-fishing, which additionally offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of manners. Oasis undoubtedly observed their confident approach, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a aim to transcend the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a more general public, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious direct influence was a kind of groove-based change: following their early success, you suddenly couldn’t move for alternative acts who aimed to make their audiences dance. 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.”