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By every measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded during a span of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely ignored by the established outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a more modest 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 attraction 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 any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously attracting a far bigger and broader crowd than typically showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their confidently defiant attitude and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a scene of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way completely different from any other act 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 early 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 simply couldn’t to the majority of the tracks that featured on the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds rather different to the usual indie band influences, which was absolutely right: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s Mani who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his jumping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, relentless bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a strong supporter of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its flaws might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “reverting to the groove”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often coincide with the instances when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically willing the band to increase the tempo. His playing 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 pep into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-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 following Second Coming’s launch, 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 remarkably galvanising impact on a band in a slump after the cool response to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, weightier and increasingly fuzzy, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – especially on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his playing to the front. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is certainly the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an affable, clubbable figure – the author 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 show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently grinning guitarist Dave Hill. Said reunion failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy series of hugely profitable concerts – two fresh singles put out by the reconstituted quartet only demonstrated that any magic had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with angling, which additionally offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of manners. Oasis certainly took note of their confident approach, while Britpop as a whole was shaped by a desire to transcend the usual 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 rhythmic shift: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for alternative acts who wanted 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 averred. “That’s what they’re for.”