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By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary thing. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly ignored by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The music press had barely covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a smaller 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 scarcely imaginable situation for most alternative groups in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify numerous causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly drawing in a far bigger and broader crowd than typically displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were set apart by their look – which seemed to align them more to the expanding dance music scene – their confidently defiant attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way completely different from any other act in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument that the tune of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were doing behind it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the tracks 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 brought up on sounds rather different to the usual alternative group influences, which was completely right: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good northern soul and groove music”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s Mani who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into free-flowing funk, his jumping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times 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 borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, relentless bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses might have been fixed by removing some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “reverting to the groove”.

He likely 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 sluggish songs, you can sense him metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is completely at odds with the lethargy of all other elements that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre one suspects listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a disastrous headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively energising impact on a band in a decline after the cool reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, weightier and more fuzzy, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – especially on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his playing to the front. His popping, mesmerising bass line is certainly the star turn on the fantastic 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 made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an friendly, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and constantly smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything more than a long succession of hugely lucrative concerts – a couple of fresh singles put out by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that whatever magic had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable 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 offered “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of manners. Oasis certainly took note of their confident approach, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a desire to transcend the usual commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious direct influence was a sort of rhythmic shift: following their early success, you suddenly couldn’t move for alternative acts who wanted 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 stated. “That’s what they’re for.”