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By every measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable thing. It unfolded during a span of one year. At the start of 1989, they were merely a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The music press had hardly covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a more modest London venue 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 big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable state of affairs for most indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify numerous causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly attracting a much larger and broader crowd than typically showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were set apart by their look – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning dance music movement – their confidently defiant attitude and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way entirely unlike 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 old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were doing underneath it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you could not to the majority 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 bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music rather different to the usual alternative group set texts, which was completely right: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good Motown-inspired and funk”.

The smoothness of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s him who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the breakbeat borrowed 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.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a strong supporter of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced guitar and “reverting to the groove”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks often occur during the moments when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically willing the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the listlessness of all other elements that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a catastrophic headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising impact on a band in a slump after the cool reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, weightier and more distorted, but the swing 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 skill to bring his bass work to the fore. His popping, hypnotic bass line is very much the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an affable, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. Said reunion failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy succession of extremely profitable concerts – two fresh singles released by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that whatever spark had been present in 1989 had turned out impossible to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani quietly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with angling, which additionally provided “a good 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 variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their swaggering attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a aim to break the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct influence was a kind of groove-based change: in the wake of their initial success, you suddenly encountered many alternative acts who wanted to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”