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By every metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable phenomenon. It took place during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional source of buzz in Manchester, mostly ignored by the established channels for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The music press had hardly mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a smaller 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 main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable situation for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can identify numerous causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly drawing in a far bigger and broader audience than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock 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 demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a scene of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way entirely unlike anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point 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 behind it really didn’t: you could move 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 drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds quite distinct from the usual indie band influences, which was absolutely right: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “good Motown-inspired and groove music”.

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

At times the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really 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 writhing, driving bassline. 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 went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough funky. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a staunch defender of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually occur during the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is completely contrary to the listlessness of everything else that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript folk-rock – not a genre one suspects anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a catastrophic headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising effect 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, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – especially on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to push his bass work to the front. His popping, hypnotic low-end pattern is certainly the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, clubbable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was always broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation failed to translate into anything more than a lengthy series of extremely profitable concerts – a couple of new tracks put out by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that any spark had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture 18 years later – and Mani discreetly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with angling, which additionally offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their swaggering attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a aim to transcend the standard market limitations of alternative music and reach a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious immediate influence was a kind of rhythmic change: following their early success, you abruptly encountered many indie bands who wanted to make their fans 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.”