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By every measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable thing. It unfolded during a span of one year. At the start of 1989, they were just a local source of buzz in Manchester, mostly ignored by the traditional channels for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill 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 attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable situation for the majority of indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly drawing in a far bigger and more diverse audience than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a world of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way entirely different from anything else 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 certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that featured on the turntables 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 brought up on sounds rather different to 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 northern soul and groove music”.

The smoothness of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s Mani who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, relentless bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually coincide with the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically willing the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the lethargy of all other elements that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise just some nondescript folk-rock – not a style one suspects listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a disastrous top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising impact on a band in a slump after the cool reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – particularly on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the front. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is very much the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an friendly, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously styled and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reunion failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy series of hugely lucrative concerts – a couple of new tracks put out by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had turned out impossible to rediscover nearly two decades on – and Mani quietly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which furthermore offered “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their confident attitude, while Britpop as a movement was informed by a aim to transcend the standard commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a wider general public, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious direct effect was a kind of groove-based change: following their early success, you suddenly encountered many alternative acts who aimed to make their audiences 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.”