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By every measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It unfolded during a span of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely overlooked by the traditional channels for indie music in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The music press had barely covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a smaller London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their performance was the big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable state of affairs for most alternative groups in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a far bigger and more diverse audience than typically showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a scene of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way completely different from anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument that the tune of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section 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 got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds quite distinct from the standard indie band set texts, which was completely right: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “good 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 drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into loose-limbed groove, his octave-leaping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece 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 bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a strong supporter of their frequently criticized second album, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights usually coincide with the instances when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is completely contrary to the listlessness of all other elements that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to inject a bit of pep into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a style one suspects anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a catastrophic headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively energising effect on a band in a decline after the tepid reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, heavier and more distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – particularly on the laid-back funk of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his playing to the fore. His percussive, mesmerising low-end pattern is very much the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, sociable presence – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was always punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a personalised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly smiling axeman Dave Hill. Said reformation failed to translate into anything more than a long series of extremely profitable concerts – a couple of fresh tracks released by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had proved impossible to recapture 18 years on – and Mani discreetly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which furthermore offered “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a desire to break the standard commercial constraints of indie rock and attract a wider general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct effect was a sort of groove-based change: following their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who aimed to make their fans move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”