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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary thing. It took place during a span of one year. At the start of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely ignored by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The rock journalism had hardly mentioned their most recent 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 debuted on the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable state of affairs for most alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can identify any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a much larger and more diverse audience than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning dance music scene – their confidently defiant attitude and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a scene of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way entirely different from anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point that the melody of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were doing underneath it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that featured on the decks at the era’s indie discos. You in some way got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds quite distinct from the standard indie band set texts, which was absolutely right: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good Motown-inspired and funk”.

The fluidity of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s him who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into loose-limbed groove, his jumping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the singing or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, relentless bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing 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 funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its flaws 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 handful of highlights usually occur during the moments when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can hear him figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is totally at odds with the lethargy 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 unremarkable country-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 following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a disastrous top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively energising effect on a band in a slump after the cool reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, heavier and increasingly fuzzy, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his playing to the fore. His percussive, mesmerising bass line is very much the star turn on the brilliant 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 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 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reunion failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy succession of hugely lucrative concerts – a couple of new tracks put out by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that whatever magic had existed in 1989 had proved impossible to rediscover nearly two decades later – and Mani quietly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on fly-fishing, which additionally offered “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 influential in a variety of manners. Oasis certainly observed their swaggering attitude, while Britpop as a whole was shaped by a aim to transcend the standard market limitations of indie rock and attract a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate influence was a sort of groove-based shift: following their initial success, you abruptly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted to make their fans 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.”