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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable phenomenon. It unfolded during a span of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a local source of buzz in Manchester, largely overlooked by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a smaller London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable state of affairs for most indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify numerous causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously attracting a far bigger and broader crowd than usually displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning dance music scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way entirely unlike any other act 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 bass and drums were playing underneath it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the tracks that featured on the decks 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 completely right: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The fluidity of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s Mani who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his octave-leaping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bass. When you recall 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 stumbled artistically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but believed its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights often occur during the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is completely at odds with the lethargy of everything else that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a disastrous top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising 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, weightier and increasingly fuzzy, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – especially on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his bass work to the front. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is certainly the star turn on the brilliant 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 superb.

Consistently an affable, sociable presence – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was invariably broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously styled and constantly smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reunion failed to translate into anything more than a lengthy series of hugely lucrative concerts – a couple of fresh tracks put out by the reformed four-piece served only to prove that any magic had been present in 1989 had proved impossible to recapture 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 additionally offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis certainly took note of their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a desire to transcend the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate effect was a sort of rhythmic change: following their initial success, you suddenly encountered many alternative acts who wanted to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”