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By any measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable phenomenon. It unfolded during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional source of buzz in Manchester, mostly ignored by the established outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a smaller London club 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 barely conceivable state of affairs for most alternative groups in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify numerous reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly attracting a far bigger and more diverse audience than typically showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were set apart by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a scene of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way entirely unlike anything else in British alt-rock 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 underneath it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that featured on the decks at the era’s indie discos. You somehow felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds quite distinct from the usual indie band set texts, which was absolutely right: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great northern soul and funk”.

The fluidity of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s Mani who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his jumping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but believed its flaws might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “reverting to the groove”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks often coincide with the moments when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is totally at odds with the lethargy of all other elements that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to inject a bit of energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a catastrophic headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising impact on a band in a decline after the cool reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, weightier and increasingly fuzzy, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – 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 bass line is certainly the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, sociable presence – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a personalised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything beyond a lengthy series of extremely profitable concerts – two fresh singles released by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that whatever magic had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with angling, which additionally provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis certainly took note of their confident attitude, while Britpop as a movement was informed by a desire to transcend the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and reach a wider general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest direct effect was a sort of rhythmic change: in the wake of their early success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”