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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary phenomenon. It took place during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had hardly mentioned their most recent 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 main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable situation for the majority of alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find numerous reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly drawing in a far bigger and more diverse audience than usually 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 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 undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way completely different from any other act in British alt-rock 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 playing behind it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the tracks that graced the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music rather different to the usual indie band influences, which was completely right: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great northern soul and groove music”.

The fluidity of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s him who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into loose-limbed funk, his jumping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the singing or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, relentless bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the low-end melody.

Indeed, 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 underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a strong supporter of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by cutting some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can sense him metaphorically willing the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is totally at odds with the lethargy of all other elements that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-rock – not a style one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a catastrophic headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising effect on a band in a slump after the tepid response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, heavier and more distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – particularly on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his bass work to the fore. His percussive, hypnotic low-end pattern is very much the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, sociable figure – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was invariably broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. This reunion failed to translate into anything more than a long succession of extremely profitable concerts – a couple of fresh tracks put out by the reformed quartet served only to prove that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani quietly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on fly-fishing, which additionally provided “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their confident attitude, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a desire to transcend the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct effect was a sort of groove-based shift: in the wake of their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who aimed to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”