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By every measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary thing. It unfolded during a span of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the established outlets for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The music press had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to fill even a more modest 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 conceivable state of affairs for the majority of alternative groups in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously drawing in a far bigger and more diverse crowd than usually displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were set apart by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding acid house scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a scene of distorted aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way completely unlike anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point that the melody of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were playing underneath it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the tracks that featured on 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 raised on music quite distinct from the usual alternative group influences, which was completely correct: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s him who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into loose-limbed groove, his jumping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the drum sample borrowed 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 springs to mind is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor 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 might have been fixed by cutting some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of highlights usually occur during the instances when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can sense him figuratively willing the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is completely at odds with the lethargy of all other elements that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to inject a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed 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 subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising effect on a band in a slump after the cool reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, weightier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his playing to the fore. His popping, mesmerising bass line is very much 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 best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an friendly, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was always broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously styled and permanently smiling axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion failed to translate into anything beyond a long series of extremely lucrative gigs – two fresh tracks put out by the reconstituted quartet served only to prove that whatever magic had been present in 1989 had proved impossible to rediscover 18 years on – and Mani quietly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which additionally offered “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of manners. Oasis certainly observed their confident approach, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a aim to break the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a wider general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious direct influence was a kind of groove-based change: following their early success, you abruptly encountered many alternative acts who aimed to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”