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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable thing. It took place during a span of one year. At the start of 1989, they were just a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional outlets for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had hardly covered 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 massive. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable state of affairs for most alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly drawing in a much larger and broader crowd than usually displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning dance music scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a scene of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way completely different from anything else 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 early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were playing behind it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the songs that graced the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds quite distinct from the standard indie band influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ bassist 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’ self-titled first record: it’s Mani who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into loose-limbed groove, his jumping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the vocal melody 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, relentless bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the bass line.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming follow-up One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a staunch supporter of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He likely had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights often coincide with the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can hear him figuratively willing the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is completely contrary to the lethargy of everything else that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise just some nondescript country-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a catastrophic headlining performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising effect on a band in a slump after the tepid reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, weightier and more distorted, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – especially on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his bass work to the fore. His percussive, mesmerising bass line is very much the star turn on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an friendly, clubbable presence – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was always punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently smiling axeman Dave Hill. This reunion failed to translate into anything beyond a lengthy succession of extremely lucrative gigs – two new singles put out by the reformed quartet only demonstrated that whatever magic had existed in 1989 had turned out 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 fly-fishing, which furthermore offered “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was informed by a desire to transcend the usual commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious immediate influence was a kind of groove-based change: following their early success, you suddenly encountered many indie bands who wanted to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”