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By every metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of one year. At the start of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely overlooked by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The music press had hardly covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a more modest London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify numerous causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously drawing in a far bigger 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 scene – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a scene of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way entirely different from anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point that the melody of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were playing underneath it really didn’t: you could move 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 drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music rather different to the standard alternative group influences, which was completely right: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great Motown-inspired and funk”.

The fluidity of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s him who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into free-flowing funk, his jumping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes 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 breakbeat 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 springs to mind is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, 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 strong defender of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “reverting to the groove”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually occur during the instances when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can hear him figuratively urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is totally contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to inject a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a style 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 top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig 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 increasingly distorted, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – especially on the low-slung funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his playing to the front. His percussive, mesmerising low-end pattern is certainly the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an affable, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once noted 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 playing a personalised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything beyond a long series of hugely lucrative concerts – two new tracks put out by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that any magic had been present in 1989 had turned out impossible to recapture 18 years later – and Mani discreetly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of manners. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a desire to break the standard market limitations of alternative music and attract a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct effect was a kind of groove-based change: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly encountered many indie bands who aimed to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”