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By any metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable thing. It unfolded over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly ignored by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The rock journalism had hardly covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a smaller London club 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 big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable situation for the majority of alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a much larger and more diverse audience than usually showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way completely unlike any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point that the tune 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 simply couldn’t 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 bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music rather different to the standard alternative group influences, 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 smoothness of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s him who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bass. 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 view, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses could have been rectified by cutting some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is totally at odds with the listlessness of all other elements that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to inject a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript folk-rock – not a style anyone would guess anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a disastrous headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising impact 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 more fuzzy, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – especially on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his playing to the front. His popping, hypnotic bass line is certainly the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, clubbable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was invariably broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly smiling axeman Dave Hill. This reunion failed to translate into anything more than a long series of extremely lucrative gigs – two fresh tracks put out by the reformed quartet served only to prove that any spark had been present in 1989 had proved impossible to recapture 18 years on – and Mani discreetly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which furthermore provided “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of ways. Oasis certainly took note of their confident approach, while Britpop as a movement was informed by a desire to break the standard commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their clearest direct influence was a sort of groove-based change: following their early success, you abruptly encountered many alternative acts who wanted to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”