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By every measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable thing. It took place during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly ignored by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had hardly mentioned 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 main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable state of affairs for most alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously drawing in a much larger and broader crowd than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning dance music scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way completely unlike any other act in British alt-rock 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 rhythm section were doing underneath it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the tracks that graced the turntables at the era’s indie discos. You somehow felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music rather different to the standard indie band set texts, which was absolutely right: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s Mani who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into loose-limbed groove, his jumping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the bass line.

Indeed, 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 lackluster, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a strong supporter of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “reverting to the groove”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of highlights usually occur during the instances when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can sense him metaphorically willing the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is completely contrary to the lethargy of all other elements that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript folk-rock – not a style one suspects anyone was in a hurry 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 launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a disastrous top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively energising impact on a band in a slump 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 laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his bass work to the fore. His percussive, 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 standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an friendly, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reformation failed to translate into anything more than a lengthy series of extremely lucrative concerts – a couple of fresh singles put out by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that whatever magic had been present in 1989 had turned out impossible to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which furthermore provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a aim to transcend the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and reach a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct effect was a sort of groove-based change: in the wake of their early success, you suddenly couldn’t move for alternative acts who wanted to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”