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By every metric, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary thing. It unfolded over the course of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly ignored by the established channels for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able 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 appearance was the big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable state of affairs for the majority of indie bands in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a much larger and more diverse crowd than usually displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning dance music movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the lead guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a scene of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way completely unlike any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument that the melody of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were playing underneath it really didn’t: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the tracks that featured on the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds quite distinct from the standard alternative group influences, which was completely correct: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro 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 debut album: it’s him who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce 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, relentless bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was underwhelming, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a staunch supporter of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses could have been rectified by cutting 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 often coincide with the instances when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can sense him figuratively willing the band to increase the tempo. His playing 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 clearly trying to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable country-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His efforts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely 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 guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, weightier and increasingly fuzzy, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – especially on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the fore. His percussive, 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 highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the media was invariably punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and permanently grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reformation did not lead to anything more than a lengthy succession of extremely profitable gigs – two fresh singles released by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated that any spark had been present in 1989 had proved impossible 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 fly-fishing, which furthermore offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of ways. Oasis certainly took note of their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a aim to transcend the standard commercial constraints of alternative music and attract a wider general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious direct effect was a kind of groove-based change: following their early success, you abruptly encountered many indie bands who aimed to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”