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By every metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary thing. It unfolded over the course of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a local source of buzz in Manchester, mostly ignored by the established channels for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a more modest London club 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 big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously attracting a far bigger and broader audience than usually showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning dance music movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy 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 argument that the tune of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were doing behind it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that featured on the decks at the era’s indie discos. You somehow felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds rather different to the usual alternative group influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s Mani who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his jumping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the singing 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, driving bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a strong supporter of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “returning to the groove”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually occur during the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can sense him metaphorically willing the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is completely at odds with the lethargy of everything else that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to add a some pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable country-rock – not a genre one suspects anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a catastrophic 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 tepid response to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his playing to the front. His percussive, mesmerising low-end pattern is certainly the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best 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 invariably broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything beyond a long succession of hugely lucrative concerts – a couple of new singles released by the reformed quartet served only to prove that any magic had existed in 1989 had turned out impossible to rediscover nearly two decades later – and Mani discreetly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a great excuse 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 range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their confident approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a aim to break the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate effect was a sort of groove-based change: in the wake of their initial success, you suddenly encountered many alternative acts who wanted to make their fans move. 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.”