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By every measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable thing. It unfolded during a span of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a local cause of excitement in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a smaller London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their performance was the main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously attracting a far bigger and broader audience than typically displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were set apart by their look – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a scene of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way entirely 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 could not to most of the tracks that featured on the decks 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 brought up on sounds rather different to the standard alternative group influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s Mani who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing 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 is not the singing or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the breakbeat taken 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 view, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by removing some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “reverting to the groove”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can sense him metaphorically willing the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is completely at odds with the listlessness of everything else that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to add a some pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable country-rock – not a style anyone would guess listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a catastrophic top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising effect on a band in a slump 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 distorted, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – particularly on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his playing to the front. His popping, mesmerising low-end pattern is certainly the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, clubbable figure – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently smiling axeman Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything more than a long succession of hugely lucrative concerts – a couple of new singles released by the reconstituted quartet only demonstrated that whatever spark had been present in 1989 had proved impossible to recapture 18 years later – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a desire to break the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a wider general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious direct effect was a sort of groove-based change: following their early success, you abruptly encountered many alternative acts who aimed to make their fans move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”