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By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It took place during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a local cause of excitement in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had hardly covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a smaller London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. 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 imaginable situation for the majority of 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, clearly attracting a far bigger and more diverse audience than typically displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding acid house movement – their confidently defiant attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic 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 completely different from any other act in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point that the melody of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were playing 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 turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds rather different to the standard alternative group influences, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good northern soul and groove music”.

The smoothness of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s Mani who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into loose-limbed funk, his octave-leaping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the sauce wasn’t so secret. 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, relentless bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a strong supporter of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by cutting some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights often coincide with the instances when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. His performance 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 inject a some energy into what’s otherwise some unremarkable country-rock – not a style anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a disastrous 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 response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, weightier and more fuzzy, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – particularly on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his playing to the fore. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is very much the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an affable, clubbable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was always punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously styled and permanently smiling axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion did not lead to anything more than a lengthy succession of extremely profitable concerts – two new tracks put out by the reformed quartet served only to prove that whatever magic had been present in 1989 had proved impossible to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani discreetly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on fly-fishing, which additionally offered “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a desire to transcend the usual market limitations of alternative music and attract a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious immediate effect was a sort of groove-based change: in the wake of their initial success, you suddenly encountered many alternative acts who aimed to make their audiences dance. 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.”