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By every metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary thing. It unfolded over the course of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were merely a regional source of buzz in Manchester, mostly ignored by the traditional channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had hardly covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling 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 main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable state of affairs for most indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can identify any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously drawing in a much larger and more diverse crowd than typically displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way entirely different from anything else in British alt-rock 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 playing behind it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that graced the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds quite distinct from the standard indie band influences, which was completely right: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good northern soul and funk”.

The smoothness of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s Mani who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his jumping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a strong defender of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses might have been fixed by removing some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually coincide with the instances when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can hear him figuratively willing 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 song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to inject a bit of energy into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a catastrophic headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising effect on a band in a decline after the cool reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly fuzzy, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – particularly on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his playing to the front. His popping, mesmerising low-end pattern is very much the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an affable, clubbable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was always broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. Said reformation failed to translate into anything beyond a long series of extremely profitable concerts – two fresh tracks released by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated that any spark had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to rediscover nearly two decades on – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on fly-fishing, which furthermore provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of manners. Oasis certainly took note of their swaggering attitude, while Britpop as a movement was informed by a desire to transcend the usual market limitations of indie rock and attract a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate effect was a kind of groove-based shift: following their initial success, you abruptly couldn’t move for indie bands who aimed to make their fans move. 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.”