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By any measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely overlooked by the established channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a more modest London venue 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 attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable situation for most alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can identify numerous reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously attracting a far bigger and broader audience than usually showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning dance music movement – their cockily belligerent attitude and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way entirely unlike any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point that the tune of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were doing behind it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the songs that featured on the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music quite distinct from the usual alternative group influences, which was absolutely right: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great northern soul and funk”.

The smoothness of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s Mani who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into loose-limbed groove, his octave-leaping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point 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 snaking, driving bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced guitar and “reverting to the groove”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights often coincide with the instances when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can sense him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the lethargy of everything else that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to inject a some pep into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable folk-rock – not a style one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a catastrophic top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising effect on a band in a decline after the cool reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, weightier and increasingly 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 push his bass work to the fore. His popping, mesmerising low-end pattern is certainly the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, sociable figure – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was always punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy succession of hugely lucrative concerts – two new tracks put out by the reconstituted four-piece served only to prove that any magic had existed in 1989 had turned out impossible to recapture 18 years on – and Mani discreetly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which additionally provided “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis certainly observed their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a aim to break the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious direct influence was a kind of groove-based shift: in the wake of their early success, you suddenly encountered many indie bands who wanted 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 stated. “That’s what they’re for.”