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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary thing. It took place during a span of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely overlooked by the traditional channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely covered their most recent 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 debuted on the charts at No 8 and their performance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable situation for the majority of alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously drawing in a much larger and more diverse audience than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which seemed to align them more to the expanding dance music scene – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way completely different from any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point 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 bass and drums were playing 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 in some way felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music rather different to the standard alternative group set texts, which was absolutely right: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good Motown-inspired and funk”.

The smoothness of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous first record: it’s Mani who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into loose-limbed groove, his octave-leaping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient was quite obvious. 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 snaking, relentless bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights often coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is completely contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript country-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

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 disastrous 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, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – especially on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his playing to the front. His percussive, mesmerising low-end pattern is very much the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an affable, clubbable presence – the writer John Robb once observed 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 show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy series of extremely lucrative concerts – two fresh singles released by the reformed four-piece served only to prove that any magic had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani quietly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which furthermore offered “a great reason 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 manners. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a desire to transcend the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a more general public, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious immediate influence was a sort of groove-based shift: following their early success, you abruptly encountered many alternative acts 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.”