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By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable thing. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were merely a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the established channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a smaller London club 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 late 80s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a far bigger and broader crowd than usually displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding acid house scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a scene of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way entirely unlike anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point that the melody 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 underneath it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that graced the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music quite distinct from the standard alternative group set texts, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good northern soul and groove music”.

The smoothness of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s him who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into free-flowing funk, his octave-leaping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the singing or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a strong defender of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the layers of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “reverting to the groove”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often coincide with the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is completely contrary to the listlessness of all other elements that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a some energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a disastrous 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 decline after the tepid response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, weightier and more fuzzy, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – especially on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his bass work 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 – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, sociable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was invariably broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and constantly smiling guitarist Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything beyond a long series of hugely lucrative gigs – a couple of new singles put out by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated that whatever spark had been present in 1989 had turned out 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 undoubtedly took note of their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a aim to break the usual commercial constraints of alternative music and reach a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious immediate effect was a kind of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their initial success, you suddenly encountered many 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 stated. “That’s what they’re for.”