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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable thing. It took place during a span of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a local cause of excitement in Manchester, largely overlooked by the established channels for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had hardly covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a smaller London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their performance was the big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously attracting a far bigger and more diverse crowd than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock 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, openly masterful in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way entirely different from anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument that the tune 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 underneath it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the tracks that graced the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way felt that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music rather different to the standard alternative group influences, which was absolutely right: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good northern soul and groove music”.

The smoothness of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s Mani who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed groove, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the vocal melody 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 snaking, driving bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough funky. 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 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 Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “returning to the rhythm”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks often coincide with 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 figuratively urging the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is totally at odds with the lethargy of everything else that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to inject a bit of pep into what’s otherwise just some nondescript folk-rock – not a genre one suspects anyone was in a hurry 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 collapsed completely after a catastrophic top-billed set 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 response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, weightier and increasingly fuzzy, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – particularly on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the front. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is certainly the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an affable, clubbable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness 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 legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reunion failed to translate into anything beyond a long series of extremely profitable concerts – a couple of new singles released by the reformed four-piece served only to prove that whatever magic had been present in 1989 had turned out impossible to recapture nearly two decades on – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with angling, which additionally provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis certainly observed their confident approach, while the 90s British music scene 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 effect was a sort of groove-based shift: following their early success, you abruptly encountered many indie bands who aimed to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”