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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable phenomenon. It took place during a span of one year. At the start of 1989, they were just a local source of buzz in Manchester, mostly ignored by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism 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 big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly drawing in a far bigger and more diverse audience than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning dance music scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a scene of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way completely different from anything else 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 old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were doing behind it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the songs that graced the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow 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 indie band set texts, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good Motown-inspired and funk”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s Mani who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his jumping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, 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 funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a strong defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its flaws could have been rectified by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks often coincide with the moments when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can sense him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is completely contrary to the lethargy of everything else that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to add a some pep into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a style one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a catastrophic top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising impact on a band in a slump after the tepid reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, weightier and more fuzzy, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the front. His popping, hypnotic low-end pattern is very much the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an friendly, clubbable figure – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously styled and constantly grinning axeman Dave Hill. This reunion failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy series of extremely lucrative gigs – a couple of new singles put out by the reconstituted quartet served only to prove that any spark had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture nearly two decades on – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with angling, which furthermore provided “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 range of manners. Oasis undoubtedly observed their confident approach, while Britpop as a movement was informed by a aim to break the usual market limitations of alternative music and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate effect was a kind of rhythmic change: in the wake of their initial success, you suddenly encountered many indie bands who wanted to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”