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By every metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary phenomenon. It took place during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a local cause of excitement in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely covered their latest 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 performance 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 identify numerous reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously drawing in a much larger and broader audience than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the expanding dance music movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a scene of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way completely 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 bass and drums were doing behind it really didn’t: 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 in some way got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music quite distinct from the standard alternative group set texts, which was absolutely right: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good northern soul and funk”.

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

Sometimes the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the breakbeat taken 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 comes to thought is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a strong defender of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but believed 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 may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of highlights usually occur during 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 figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the lethargy of all other elements that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to inject a bit of energy into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a disastrous headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising impact on a band in a decline after the cool response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly fuzzy, but the groove that had provided 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 skill to bring his bass work to the front. His popping, hypnotic low-end pattern is certainly the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an affable, sociable figure – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was always broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently grinning guitarist Dave Hill. Said reformation failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy succession of extremely profitable concerts – two fresh singles put out by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with angling, which additionally provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of manners. Oasis certainly took note of their confident approach, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a aim to transcend the usual market limitations of indie rock and reach a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious direct influence was a kind of groove-based shift: in the wake of their early success, you suddenly couldn’t move for alternative acts who aimed to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”