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By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable thing. It unfolded over the course of one year. At the start of 1989, they were merely a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the established channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a more modest London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. 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 imaginable situation for the majority of alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously drawing in a far bigger and broader crowd than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which seemed to align them more to the expanding dance music scene – their confidently defiant 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’ bass and drums grooved in a way completely unlike anything else 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 early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were doing underneath it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you could not to most of the tracks that featured on the turntables at the era’s indie discos. You somehow got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds rather different to the standard indie band set texts, which was completely right: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and funk”.

The fluidity of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s him who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing funk, his octave-leaping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, 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 initial element that springs to mind is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “reverting to the groove”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often 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 sense him metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. 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 clearly trying to inject a bit of energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a style anyone would guess listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a disastrous headlining 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 reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, heavier and increasingly fuzzy, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his playing to the front. His percussive, mesmerising bass line is certainly the highlight on the fantastic 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 superb.

Consistently an affable, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently smiling axeman Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything beyond a lengthy succession of hugely profitable concerts – two new tracks put out by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that any magic had been present in 1989 had proved impossible to recapture nearly two decades later – and Mani quietly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with angling, which additionally provided “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis certainly observed their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a desire to break the standard commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a wider general public, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious direct influence was a kind of groove-based change: following their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”