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By any metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable thing. It took place during a span of one year. At the start of 1989, they were just a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the established outlets for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The music press 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 huge. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their performance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable state of affairs for most 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 drawing in a much larger and broader audience than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the expanding dance music movement – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way entirely unlike anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument that the melody of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were doing behind it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the songs that graced the decks at the era’s indie discos. You somehow felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music quite distinct from the standard indie band influences, which was completely right: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and funk”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s Mani who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing funk, his jumping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece 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 writhing, driving 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 stumbled musically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a staunch defender of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “reverting to the groove”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can hear him metaphorically willing the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is totally at odds with the listlessness of everything else that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable folk-rock – not a style one suspects anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a catastrophic headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising effect on a band in a decline after the tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the fore. His popping, mesmerising low-end pattern is certainly the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an affable, sociable presence – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was always broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously styled and constantly smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reunion failed to translate into anything beyond a long series of extremely profitable concerts – two new singles put out by the reformed four-piece served only to prove that any magic had been present in 1989 had turned out 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 more concerned with angling, which furthermore offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their confident attitude, while Britpop as a whole was shaped by a aim to transcend the usual market limitations of alternative music and attract a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious immediate influence was a sort of groove-based shift: in the wake of their initial success, you suddenly encountered many alternative acts who aimed to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”