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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary thing. It took place during a span of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional source of buzz in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The music press had hardly mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack 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 appearance was the big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable situation for most alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously drawing in a far bigger and broader audience than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding dance music scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way entirely different from anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument that the melody of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were playing underneath it certainly did not: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that graced the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds rather different to the standard indie band set texts, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good northern soul and groove music”.

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

Sometimes the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the drum sample taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the bass line.

Indeed, 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 “needed more groove, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its weaknesses could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks often occur during the instances when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is totally at odds with the lethargy of all other elements that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable country-rock – not a style anyone would guess anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a disastrous top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising impact on a band in a decline after the tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, heavier and more fuzzy, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his playing to the front. His popping, hypnotic low-end pattern is certainly the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an affable, clubbable figure – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reunion failed to translate into anything more than a lengthy succession of extremely lucrative concerts – two new singles released by the reformed quartet served only to prove that whatever spark had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani discreetly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on angling, which furthermore provided “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d done enough: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of manners. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a desire to transcend the standard market limitations of alternative music and attract a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious direct effect was a sort of groove-based change: in the wake of their early success, you suddenly encountered many indie bands who wanted to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”