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By every measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable phenomenon. It unfolded during a span of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely overlooked by the established outlets for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely covered their most recent 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 scarcely imaginable state of affairs for the majority of alternative groups in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly attracting a far bigger and more diverse crowd than typically showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – 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 virtuosic in a world of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way entirely different from any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an point 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 doing 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 somehow got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music rather different to the usual alternative group influences, which was completely correct: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great northern soul and groove music”.

The smoothness of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s Mani who propels the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into loose-limbed groove, his octave-leaping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the vocal melody 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 bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

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 defender of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by cutting some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar and “returning to the rhythm”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually occur during the instances when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can sense him figuratively urging the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is completely contrary to the lethargy of all other elements that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to add a some energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a catastrophic headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role 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 tone became dubbier, heavier and more distorted, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still present – particularly on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his bass work to the front. His popping, hypnotic bass line is very much the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an affable, sociable presence – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and permanently grinning guitarist Dave Hill. This reunion failed to translate into anything more than a lengthy succession of hugely profitable concerts – a couple of new tracks put out by the reconstituted quartet served only to prove that any spark had existed in 1989 had proved impossible to rediscover nearly two decades later – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on fly-fishing, which furthermore provided “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of manners. Oasis certainly took note of their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a aim to transcend the standard commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a more general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest direct influence was a sort of rhythmic shift: following their initial success, you abruptly encountered many alternative acts who aimed to make their fans move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”